Re: Do victims bear any responsibility for sexual assault if they are 'blackout' drun
How about being that drunk and heading down to Watts for a stroll then?
Not everyone in Watts is going to mug you or worse. The ones that do are breaking the law and should be prosecuted just as the rapist should. You have a Constitutional right to walk in any US neighborhood you wish, unmolested. That's why we have laws.
Or heading out into Fallujah wearing an American flag?
Fallujah is not aprt of the US and not subject ot our laws, or societal and cultural norms.
Would you say that's stupid?
Sure, both are stupid, as is getting so drunk that you pass out cold. However, stupidity does not equate to responsibility for the actions of others. Just because we may do something stupid that makes us vulnerable (like walking in a crime-prone area at night) does not legally equate to being responsible for the actions others decide to take against us.
The point is that we're seemingly trying to avoid looking at the burden borne by us all when putting ourselves into a dangerous situation.
Of course we have a moral burden to protect ourselves by not putting ourselves into a vulnerable position. In the military we called it SA - Situational Awareness (or CSA - Combat Situational Awareness) .
If we want to stop this sort of behavior we need not only to use the rapist as a teaching tool, but the victim (to a point) as well.
That a different subject. Using awareness of actions or lack of actions that can put us in a vulnerable position to where we are more likely to fall prey to a violent act perpetrated against us is of course something that should be taught to all our children as they grow into adulthood. I did for my two sons. Teaching a daughter would be no different.
However, again, that does not equate to legal culpability. In my opinion, it doesn't even equate to ethical, or moral culpability either.
Let's say a young lady sleeps in the nude, and also walk in her sleep. One night, she has a hard time getting to sleep so she takes a sleeping aid, a pill. She also has two glasses of wine with some cheese and crackers, right before she goes to bed.
Later on that night, she begins to sleep walk and goes out the door of her apartment into the hall, naked, and then lies down on the floor, still asleep.
The young college boys that live down the hall come out of their apartment and see her lying on the floor, naked and asleep (basically unconscious due to the wine and sleeping pills).
Do the boys have a right to now rape the woman? Would she be responsible if she was raped? What if she didn't have the wine or the pills and still found herself naked in the hall and on the floor getting raped after she walked out of her apartment while still asleep? Is she still responsible? What if she wasn't naked, but rather slept in a t-shirt with no panties and when she was asleep on the hallway floor her lower half was uncovered? Would that make it her fault that some male couldn't stop himself from putting a part of his body inside a part of her body?
Rape is never justified. Rape is never the fault of the victim. Rape can always be stopped by the actor, not always by the victim. The actor is responsible for rape, not the victim.
