Posted on 11/01/2007 5:07:20 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
In a rare rebuke, the city's bar association condemned a judge who dismissed rape charges in the alleged gang rape of a prostitute and instead called it a theft of services.
The prostitute admitted going to a home on Sept. 20 to have paid sex with a customer but said she was instead gang-raped by four men, including the customer, while he fixed a gun on her.
Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni dropped the rape and sexual-assault charges at an Oct. 4 preliminary hearing, but upheld robbery, false imprisonment and conspiracy charges against Dominique Gindraw.
Deni has since heightened the furor in defending her decision to a newspaper.
''She consented and she didn't get paid,'' Deni told the Philadelphia Daily News. ''I thought it was a robbery.''
(Excerpt) Read more at mcall.com ...
An earlier report of the incident hadn’t made clear there were multiple attackers. Had there been only the customer, depending very much on the niceties of the laws defining rape, prostitution, theft of services and precedents in PA concerning sexual consent, it was just barely conceivable that the judge might have been right as a point of law.
As it is, I agree with calls for her disbarrment: the legal reasoning applied here would make all rapes of prostitutes into theft of services cases, since the other attackers in this incident plainly did not have any agreement explicit or implied from the victim to have sex. Were the precedent allowed to stand, any rapist who attacked a prostitute could advance the defense against the rape charge that he was just stealing her services.
Did you read this part?
“She went to a North Philadelphia home to meet the customer, who had agreed to pay her $150 for sex. He then said a friend was coming with the money, and that the friend would pay her another $100 for sex.”
She agree to sex with at least two men. That’s her own testimony.
One was bringing the money the other did not have. That does not mean she consented to sex with two men.
As I could refuse service to anyone in my store, if I had one, so should she be able to choose.
Some of these responses are just as gross as the judge’s ruling.
Re: I hope she finds Jesus and gets off the streets.
Because there are no Church going people who participate in prostitution, male or female, right?
The responses are are simply revolting.
I can’t believe the other poster understands anything about the effect having a gun held on you, with the possibility of death at any moment, has on a person. I hope that is all it is, and not abject callousness and even stupidity. (I’m sorry to even have to wonder about that last one, but I do)
No one asked anyone to feel sorry for her. Your reasoning is beyond strange, it’s scary.
Red, just stop. You know you’d miss the rest of us if you didn’t log in and you’re not making headway with this nutcase.
Just be glad that we are not subject to her reasoning (or lack thereof)
I would miss some, not others;-)
Of course. Let’s just back slowly out of this. Her mind is warped and closed. We aren’t going to talk her into normalcy.
“Gang rape is boo hoo PC crap?
I might just give up on FR if this is the only type of ratiocination here.”
no, but changing what was actually posted like you did is..
You are spot-on. Determining each person's accountability in this situation includes this question: "In whose care, and under whose authority are you willingly placing yourself, and to whom are you granting access to the body God gave you?"
Protecting an individual woman against an individual man's intentions is a huge undertaking for the rest of society, and doing justice is complicated by subtleties, mixed motives, changes of heart, dishonesty, betrayal, and all the other vagaries of the human spirit. That is why, until the 1970s (if I recall correctly), a man could not be prosecuted in any state for "raping" a woman whom he had legally married. She consented to be his wife, and enjoys a legally enforceable right of support from him—therefore, she knew sex was part of the bargain.
And claims of rape in other circumstances were looked at in light of whether the woman had taken reasonable measures to protect her virtue. In far less serious matters, the logic of this is understood: Your insurance company, if you want them to pay for a stereo stolen from your house, demands two things: 1) proof that the stereo was not the property of the "thief," through sale or gift; and 2) some sign of forced entry.
A woman is accountable for the company she keeps because, even though she is the weaker party, in the larger sense, she is not. We are all there—the rest of society, with armed police—to intervene, through measures we would extend to protect a grown man. Her side of the compact is that she will not call on our aid for capricious reasons, and that she treat the gift of life-creation God gave her as something worthy of respect and protection. A prostitute is taking this gift, which has the power of changing history itself, and selling it cheaply. That is why society at large is disinclined to value it more highly than she herself is wiling to do.
I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect that in earlier decades, the woman in this case would have no standing to file a criminal complaint in this situation at all. This does not mean I endorse what was done to her. The men are thieves, brutes, and fornicators. But if an adult refuses to protect herself, it is impossible to protect her.
Interesting. I think you make some good points. Thanks.
Ooops. I meant, "through measures we would NEVER extend to protect a grown man."
So if they shot her between the eyes, no crime?
I am curious how this case could be affected if prostitution were legal. The act would then be reduced (elevated?) to simply a service being provided. As I see it, it would be much easier to argue the "theft of services" defense if the prostitute is, at least in a legal sense, simply providing a service.
If you offer to let someone punch for you a $5, and then 4 people show up and beat the crap out of you, they can't get off the hook for assault and battery because one punch at $5 was already agreed upon.
While it is true that the prostitute has degraded sex into a commercial transaction, the law still does not regard it as a mere commercial transaction. Sex without explicit and particular consent is still sexual violation, each and every time.
Another analogy: say she had offered to sell one of her children for $200, and men showed up and kidnapped 4 of her children. She was gravely wrong to offer the sale, but still abducting children is not mere theft of property in the eyes of the law: it's kidnapping.
It sounds right to me.
Re: A prostitute is taking this gift, which has the power of changing history itself, and selling it cheaply. That is why society at large is disinclined to value it more highly than she herself is wiling to do.
That is why YOU are disinclined to value her.
There. Fixed it.
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