Illinois Rape Case Update

Judge Kerry Kennedy has backed off his threat to send a woman to jail for refusing the view the videotape of her attack and has refused to dismiss charges against the defendant.

The judge's action angered victims' rights advocates, and a group of lawyers worked overnight to prepare an argument to present to the judge this morning, according to Lyn Schollett, general counsel for the Springfield-based Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

"The court cannot knowingly inflict this kind of distress on a victim," Schollett said.

She said the group of attorneys argued in a legal pleading that making the woman watch the tape was an invasion of privacy under Illinois law and irrelevant to the case.

That’s the very good news.

The bad news? The update article still contains the reference to an unrelated case in which the accuser recanted.

There is absolutely no purpose to the inclusion of a reference to 10-year-old case the details of which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the current case being prosecuted. Why in the name of all that’s holy does the integrity of a victim whose attack was videotaped by her rapists have to be undermined by the media?

That victims’ rights advocates had to intervene on behalf of an alleged victim to keep her out of jail, and that the media consistently peddles the assumption that any woman who reports a rape is to be presumed guilty of lying, are infuriating. That an accused rapist should be considered innocent until proven guilty does not mean that the victim should be considered a liar until proven otherwise. And this bullshit about revictimizing alleged rape victims by threatening them with jail if they don’t perform to an arbitrary standard needs to stop immediately.