Central Park Attacks letter to the editor
I’m watching Dateline NBC… the special on the attacks in Central Park of women during the Puerto Rican parade.
I was outraged by this special, and not just at what happened, but at the way that you reported it. You blamed the victims and made excuses for the criminals, and that is wrong, plain wrong.
I can walk naked down the street with a rose in my teeth, and no one has a right to touch me without my permission. If they do, they should be arrested, and spend every second of the rest of their lives in jail. It’s as simple as that. The young women who were laughing and flirting before they were attacked were NOT at fault for what happened to them. They have a right to be out in public, enjoying themselves, and enjoying attention paid to them.
You practically apologized for the behavior of the men involved. You cited things like testosterone, beer, marijuana as the causes, not moral bankruptcy and total lack of conscience. Then you had the unmitigated gall to cite the squeaky clean backgrounds of some of the young men.
These young men were criminals. They’re bad and evil, and deserve to spend their lives in jail. I don’t care if his brother is a cop, or if he’s a barber.
Our society has this weird mass delusion that rapists are men that hide in the bushes and just jump out and rape women all day, as though that’s their job.
Rapists are people’s brothers, basketball stars, fathers and sons. They are regular people. The fact that we can’t realize this and deal with it is the reason that we can’t stop rape, and the reason that women can’t get justice when they’re attacked.
Watching this special, I got up several times and walked around my apartment, acting out what I would do if I were caught in this situation. I was raped in 1989, so this isn’t the first time I’m acted out this scene. And every scenario I came up with involves me attacking and hurting, maiming or killing one or more of these men.
I can’t begin to express the rage I feel that this can happen in our society and that we, rather than deal with the issue swiftly and punitively, make rationalizations about why it happened.
