19 April 2006 Blog Home : April 2006 : Permalink
I realise this isn’t an original observation, but the blogosphere is like a trestle table at the global village fete, creaking under the weight of fruitcakes.
This is in re: the Euston Manifesto, something that seems to upset a lot of lefties. Harry's Place has the cut and paste guide to criticising it, and Stephen Pollard has a Maida Vale manifesto. As Tim W noted it irritates those of us who aren't statists so while I'm sympathetic to the aims I, personally, will not be signing it.I’m beginning to see how the initially differing accounts of what happened could be reconciled. This is pure hypothesis from 1000s of miles away so it has as much value as you are paying for it - i.e. 0
Firstly it seems pretty clear now that the victim was assaulted and probably raped by somebody that night. The question is who, when and where. The problem I had was that the timetable of events didn’t seme to match up and the statements from the frat boys which stated that the victim was unable to perform as expected and seemed intoxicated and in bad shape when the first saw her. This seemed to indicate that she was raped before going on this call - which seemed ummm implausible - but which seemed to be strengthened by the lack of DNA evidence. So how to square the circle?
I think what happened is that the two dancers showed up and were almost immediately separated into two chnageing rooms/closets/bathrooms. The victim discovered that two or three of the frat boys - who probably guided her to her "changing room" - wanted a bit more than a dance, which she refused, was then possibly drugged, and was then assaulted in some closet - probably using convenient brushes for penetration because she was insulting about the rapists' "equipment". The rapists then left her and went back to the party and she was left to finish changing. Not surprisingly any performance she made after that was poor.
I’m sure there was loud music playing, there was clearly much alcohol, I see no reason why any of the other (drunk) frat boys should have noticed that two or three of their number were missing for 5-10 minutes, hence their statements and their willingness to stick together and defend a rapist.
The key point, it seems to me, is that the evidence strongly suggests she was raped - the question is where, when and by whom? if it wasn't the Duke students who have been arrested then who was it? Nasty though it is I find myself hoping that she was in fact raped by the Duke students because if not the case is going to do a lot of harm to the chances of future sex workers who are rape victims getting a fair hearing.