“Sex On Trial” (3) — Review

Unlike the first two episodes, this one concentrates solely on one incident, the disgraceful and quite sordid Steubenville High School rape case. What actually happened here has been thoroughly documented, conveniently by the perpetrators themselves. Briefly, a teenage girl went to a party, got blind drunk or was got blind drunk, and was then “used” by a couple of high school football players. The rape consisted of digital penetration, and even the district attorney who prosecuted the case said they didn’t appear to realise what they did constituted rape. (It does in Ohio, but not in every jurisdiction).

Besides the usual suspects, the outrage generated over the case was down to a) the perception that it was being swept under the rug by the authorities and b) the sympathy engendered for the two convicted in juvenile court. Though the verdict was just, one can sympathise to a degree with two high-spirited but utterly stupid high school kids being branded as rapists over what they considered “fun”, even though they received extremely lenient sentences.

The two Steubenville rape case defendants.

Perhaps a comparison with the far more notorious Vanderbilt University rape case is in order. This saw the three main defendants awarded sentences of fifteen, fifteen and seventeen years respectively, but these sentences were warranted on account of the treatment they meted out to the unconscious victim, who in addition to being drunk was almost certainly drugged to ensure she remained unconscious the whole time.

The most interesting aspect of the current case was the testimony of an expert witness concerning alcohol-induced blackouts. Although it was rejected in this instance on purely evidential grounds, the science behind it is sound. Namely, someone who has consumed a lot of alcohol may do things consciously and voluntarily, but the transition from short term memory to long term memory is blocked, so a woman may wake up the next morning and genuinely believe she has not consented to sex. To this one should add the well recognised fact that alcohol breaks down inhibitions, including sexual inhibitions. Members of both sexes may engage in behaviour after a few drinks they wouldn’t dream of when sober. One should add further that women have a lower tolerance for alcohol than men.

A striking example of alcohol-induced blackout occurred in June 2018 when a woman named Amanda Barrow was filmed performing a sex act on a total stranger on a train at Aldermaston. Like the imbeciles they are, the British police wasted no time tracking down the perpetrator of this outrage to public decency. When she appeared in court, Miss Barrow did not dispute it was her on the film but said she had absolutely no memory of the incident.

If she was telling the truth, and she almost certainly was, this sort of blackout/amnesia could and probably does account for the majority, perhaps the vast majority of rape cases in which women claim they were too drunk to consent. This means that Steubenville aside, there are very likely hundreds of innocent men behind bars convicted of rape in the UK alone. Evidence from other sources including Operation Matisse, bears that out. Sadly, instead of highlighting this reality, the series continued to plug the ludicrous rape culture narrative of Lisa Avalos, whose voice can be heard at the start of the programme claiming that only 3% of rapists are ever brought to book.

[The above article was first published on Medium, May 26, 2019].