Rape Case Revisited

It doesn't happen very often, and doesn't prove innocence or guilt, but every once in awhile a rape case is reopened.

When it is a professional athlete who has been accused of rape, as is common for most legal matters, it is the client with the more convincing (more expensive) legal representation who will have his or her day in court. Meaning win. Ditto for world-renowned politicians, political activists, and celebrities.

The latest is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, accused by a Swedish woman of rape. Now the charges are revisited, ostensibly as a smear campaign. The United States military, the brass at the Pentagon, surely many voters, are seething that WikiLeaks posts tens of thousands of military secrets on the Internet, communications about the war Afghanistan, government secrets. And WikiLeaks isn't finished. More secrets to come.

The chief prosecutor of the rape case in Stockholm, Eva Finne, dismissed Assange last week. But Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny has reopened it saying there is new information. Reversals are not uncommon in Sweden in the case of sex crimes according to journalist Malin Rising at Yahoo.

Why that's the case in Sweden and not here, in the United States, is one good question. In a country thought to be more liberal, one might think that it would be the opposite.

Claes Borgstrom, the lawyer who represents the woman who accuses Assange, delighted that the case is reopened, claims that his client has been dragged through the mud online for having made up things to frame Assange. Her life will never be the same, most likely.

Another question of course, is why anyone would do that, make themselves the subject of public scrutiny and ridicule as the victim of a rape. Most women, if not nearly all women, run from such a thing, community tongues wagging. Blaming the victim is still a myth gingerly tossed about--

She wanted it
She deserved it
She shouldn't have put herself in that position

In this case it is the entire international community talking about the victim, gossiping about her.

Not to accuse anyone, but the common thinking in the therapeutic community is that nobody wants that kind of press.

Linda Freedman, PhD, LCSW, LMFT