This Is Appalling

[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape apologia; class warfare.]

Last year in Columbus, Ohio, 54-year-old Paul Hubert raped a 47-year-old woman, who is homeless. (I will call her Jane Doe.) Jane was sleeping under a bridge when Hubert found her, struck her in the head repeatedly, and sexually assaulted her. When questioned by police, he said that Jane Doe was a sex worker whom he'd paid for a consensual encounter, but her injuries suggested otherwise. Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty to the rape to avoid a trial, and, in exchange for his plea, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

Columbus police detective James Ashenhurst says that Hubert "was counting on her not showing up. If it wasn't for her cooperation, he would have walked."

So it seems like police and prosecutors would have done everything they could to help Jane Doe pursue justice in her case. But, yeah, not so much:

A homeless woman who was raped while sleeping under a bridge last year sometimes begged for bus money or walked up to 8 miles over the past year so she could face her attacker in court.

Her determination to be in court helped win a conviction against the man, said a police officer who investigated the case.

...The 47-year-old woman said she made it to about a half-dozen court hearings by getting bus passes from prosecutors or panhandling for bus fare. At least twice, she walked to courthouse — a journey that took about three hours, she said.

"I didn't want to see him do it to anyone else," she told The Columbus Dispatch. "If he would do that to me, imagine what he might do to his next victim."

...Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Michael Hughes told the judge who sentenced Hubert about the woman's efforts to help prosecute Hubert.

"Not in every case do we have people who show this kind of resolve," Hughes said. "She always got here, no matter what her circumstances."

Jane Doe is a fucking hero. But she shouldn't have had to be. If prosecutors were able to get her bus passes sometimes, why not every time? Why on earth was Jane Doe—who "has been homeless for two years and now hopes to find a place to live even though she has remained on the streets since she was raped"—not given temporary housing, or assistance in finding shelter? Why did she care more about showing up and giving consequences to a rapist than police and prosecutors?

If the case rested entirely on her cooperation, then why wasn't law and order doing everything they could to make sure she was able to cooperate? She wasn't a reluctant witness; she was an eager witness.

Her tenacity is inspiring and profoundly moving, but it shouldn't have been necessary. Not in a decent world.

On top of this aggressively cruel expectation for a survivor who is homeless to find her own way to half a dozen court hearings, Jane Doe also had to navigate the usual victim-blaming and rape apologist horseshit from the man who raped her and his defense team.

Once police failed to buy Hubert's tall tale about Jane Doe being a sex worker who invented a rape claim (rapists are liars), then his defense team set to work with this garbage:

His attorney, Brian Rigg, said Hubert has a problem with drugs and alcohol that causes him to be "a completely different person."

Listen, I know everyone needs and deserves a robust defense, and that's better than the straight-up victim-blaming we often see in rape defenses, but this is still gross. "The drugs and alcohol made him do it!"

I guess that's the problem with rape: It's utterly indefensible.

My thoughts are with Jane Doe. I desperately hope she will get access to the resources she needs to heal, to survive, and to thrive.

[H/T to Shaker Aaron.]