Rape Defense
Okay, get ready for some really beyond the pale shit. From Rebecca to De to me… and now to you all. Rape… now pay attention… rape as a convicted crime is mitigated by having been in combat… because the “prolonged psychological stress to which the accused was subjected and the lowered importance he ended up giving to the life and wellbeing of those around him can only have influenced the committing of the crimes.”
There we have it. A judge has declared that not only does war promote sociopathic behavior, one can have the severity of a criminal sentence reduced because the perpetrator was victimzed by the experience of war. In this case, the crime was beating, then handcuffing, then vaginally and anally raping, then leaving a woman to wander the streets naked.
Here is the Reuters version, dated March 7th:
US soldier’s rape sentence cut due to Iraq stress
By Robin Pomeroy
ROME, March 7 (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who raped a Nigerian woman in Italy was given a lighter sentence because the court deemed his tour of duty in Iraq had made him less sensitive to the suffering of others.
According to an Italian court document obtained by Reuters on Tuesday, James Michael Brown, a 27-year-old paratrooper from Oregon stationed in northern Italy, was sentenced to five years and eight months for rape in February 2004.
Brown beat and handcuffed the woman, a Nigerian resident in the town of Vicenza. He raped her vaginally and anally and left her to wander the streets naked in search of help.
The crime would have earned him an eight-year sentence, but the judges reduced the penalty due to the “extenuating circumstances” of the psychological effects of Brown’s year of service in Iraq, the document said.
Brown, who is being held at a U.S. military prison in Mannheim, Germany, may never serve his rape sentence as, under Italian law, he may be allowed to return to the United States pending an appeal to the conviction.
In a detailed explanation of the reasons for the sentence, the judges said U.S. soldiers in Iraq faced “a guerrilla war against an invisible enemy, conducted using all means, to which there is still no end in sight, which is extremely wearing for the occupation troops.”
“For about a year, the professional role of parachutist Brown was not just to kill and capture the enemy, but also to avoid unpredictable ambushes set using all kinds of methods.”
“The prolonged psychological stress to which the accused was subjected and the lowered importance he ended up giving to the life and wellbeing of those around him can only have influenced the committing of the crimes.”
Brown’s lawyer, Antonio Marchesini, denied the soldier had used his term in Iraq as an excuse for rape. “Before it was accepted, there was a detailed examination of his personality,” he told Reuters.
Marchesini said he was “partially satisfied” with the ruling. He had hoped to further reduce the sentence due to his client’s diminished responsibility.
Brown is set to be discharged from the army, Marchesini said.
Yolanda Carrington:
This is about the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard about rape, and that’s saying a HELLVA lot. So, if you’ve fought armed combat and you suffer from PTSD, you can commit rape against your will, thereby causing SOMEONE ELSE to suffer from PTSD.
What’s so infuriating about this is that it’s one of the oldest excuses in the book for rape. Because a man has experienced trauma, he can’t be held responsible for intentionally and methodically brutalizing a woman? Dude had the presence of mind to kidnap and hold this woman against her will, and then leave her naked in the streets afterward. Why the hell is he not responsible?
Now I don’t believe in patriarchy olympics (as if one society’s oppression is any worse or better than another’s), but from what I understand, Italy has a particularly insidious rape culture. Rape was not even a crime under Italian law until a decade ago, and since then, many rapists have been let off the hook because of their victim’s choice of clothing and/or perceived lack of virginity. The craziest case I heard was of a rapist being acquitted because his victim was wearing denim jeans, thus he couldn’t have possibly raped her without her “voluntarily” unzipping her pants. Shit like that. Also, note that—as with the Duke lacrosse case—a nationally privileged man (US soldier) is accused of assaulting an oppressed woman of color. The “unrapability” of nationally oppressed women seems to be universal.
Patriarchy and white supremacy must die.
Yolanda
26 April 2006, 7:09 pmR. S. Morris:
I’m sooooo proud to be an American… male…ex-soldier…white…
yeah, right.
Shame.
26 April 2006, 7:44 pmDeAnander:
A Nigerian woman in Italy may, possibly, have been a victim of trafficking — I hesitate to leap to the conclusion, but many Nigerian women in Italy are trafficked prostitutes. It is a recognised pattern of coercion and crime.
We dunno whether James Michael was white or Black. It’s a name that could be pure WASP or mainline African American. Did the Italian court rule leniently because the woman was a prostitute? because she was Black? if JMB had raped a white Italian bourgoise would the PTSD defence have held? so many unanswered questions. Maybe more details will be revealed later, but more likely the case will disappear off the media radar w/in 24 hours. (Unlike Missing White Brides who can generate frontpage banners for weeks).
26 April 2006, 7:55 pmJulreal Real:
Modified by JR: In a detailed explanation of the reasons for the sentence, the judges said [women in the world] faced “a guerrilla war against an invisible enemy, conducted using all means, to which there is still no end in sight, which is extremely wearing for the [oppressed].â€
“The prolonged psychological stress to which [women are] subjected and the lowered importance [they] ended up giving to the life and wellbeing of those around [them and themselves] can only have influenced the committing of the [abusive and self-abusive] crimes.â€
So, if we take this logic, women of all Colours should start shooting men right and left, and men of Colour should start shooting white men, because of prolonged exposure to dehumanising conditions, for which there is still no end in sight. Nice to know some court will reduce the sentence of the oppressed killing the oppressor… NOT.
Why he didn’t, instead, develop an eating disorder, self-mutilation rituals, depression resulting in withdrawal from society, is not explained. That a white man would rape a woman of Colour, due to the circumstances of his life, due to duress of some kind, is not even peripherally examined as insane (patriachal, imperialist, racist) “logic”.
26 April 2006, 7:56 pmNelson H.:
So, for the legally confused and European illiterate among us, does this one judge’s opinion have the potential to serve as “precedent” in other cases in other EU nations? Or is it a state specific kind of thing?
Stan, further analysis of this would make a great military matters column (and a good pitch for folks to get the new book). Not saying that to encourage profit making off really heinous shit, but because for more people to really understand the forces that create this particular type of evil, more people need to read Sex and War.
27 April 2006, 8:21 amStan:
Hey Nelson,
I feel as if I owe you money after that plug. Thanks.
Yolanda’s post on Italian law is interesting, and I’d encourage her to explain more of what she knows about it. I am not knowledgeable in the least on the juridico-legal ramifications of Maastricht or the EU Constitution, so if others have something on that… this might be the place to get at the meat of this matter.
My problem now is time. I blog while I’m having coffee as a rule, but right now I’m buried in IVAW business and doing research on the Tillman case… also trying to cobble together another book — Energy War.
The thing about this case is that there are apparetnly multiple jurisdictions. He is serving his sentence in a US miltary lock-up. US military forces have something called Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA) with host nations, that lay out how these things get “handled”. That’s how troops in Korea have gotten away with negligent homicide, rape, and a host of other crimes, where the SOFA removed them from the legal power of the host nation.
Unfortunatley, as Yo points out, Italian society doesn’t seem particularly exercised by the rape of an African woman (who may very well have been the victim of trafficking).
If there are any Italian-speakers afoot, perhaps you could Google up the Italian media and get their take on this. Plenty of lefties and feminists there who bear no particular affection for the US military establishment or the presence of US bases in Italy.
27 April 2006, 8:59 amfrank:
Yeah, I’m with Mr. Morris - wow. what a shame-
27 April 2006, 11:12 amOn a side note, I googled Martin lee Anderson’s name and the first page up belonged to the state of Florida, the FDLE to be exact; sick.
Stan:
I just linked Nelson’s excellent blog. Strongly recommended.
Pottawatomie Creek
http://pottawatomie.blogspot.com/
Thanks brother.
27 April 2006, 12:51 pmElaina:
Nelson is certainly a good egg. Glad to see his commentary here.
Would it be inappropriate to point out that, on the “home” front, military service/combat experience is often used to excuse all kinds of fucked-up shit?
“Your papaw just never was right after he got back from the war.”
In my family, this served to “excuse” my granpa on a number of levels- from his abuse of his grandchildren to his membership in the KKK.
Because we were supposed to think that he really was, deep down inside, a good person. Even if he acted like a scary, dirty, mean old man who shot stray kittens and would tell you, right in front of everybody, that your legs looked like christmas hams. Or sundry other fucked-up shit.
The idea was that he wouldn’t have “sacrificed so much” in combat if he wasn’t really a good person, even if we weren’t able to see him as a good person, on account of all the fucked-up shit that he did to us.
I’ve heard other women tell me about their own experiences with abuse, especially from men in their families, and use this “the military made him nuts” defense against their own abusers.
And when I read this article you posted, I thought, Jesus christ, here’s just one more place where women are supposed to see their exploitation and abuse as just one more thing that’s intrinsict to the maintenence of some sort of Gringo-derived “order.”
Fuck.
I need coffee.
27 April 2006, 1:13 pmNeilcaff:
Just to let you know, because Italy is a civil law juristiction court decisions are not legally binding as precedent. As far as any implications for European law there are none. European law mostly covers the governing of the common market within the EU and the operation of the Euro. Despite the hype the recent Euro Treaties contain little that enhances anybody’s rights whether they’re women, workers, immigrants or whatever. The European Court of Justice has studiously avoided taking any steps that would enforce social change on a member state. The last time that was tried was where women tried to have abortion legalized in Ireland by arguing abortion was a service that should be available to all consumers in the EU. The ECJ sent them away with a flea in their ear although they did allow information on abortion services in the UK should not be banned as it was up to then. (Most generous of them)
27 April 2006, 1:15 pmThe story has made a bit of a splash here in Europe mostly on the internet. I’ve passed this over to a few Italian mates of mine but according to them it hasn’t shown up much on the Italian internet media. Whether its different in the print or TV media I don’t know.
Unfortunately Yoland’s point about the judiciary in Italy is depressingly true check this story out from February
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4726002.stm
Although of course no country can claim to be a feminist paradise for women. Sweden is about the best of them but any Swedish woman will tell you there’s a long way for the struggle to go there as well.
Yolanda Carrington:
The case that I mentioned earlier is from 1999, when the Italian Court of Cassation (appeals court) overturned the conviction of Carmine Cristiano, a driving instructor who had been convicted of raping an eighteen-year-old student in 1997. Here is a CNN report about the case: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9902/11/jeans.rape.02/
Before February 1996, rape in Italy was legally defined as an offense against “public morality” rather than an act of violence against a person. So people as INDIVIDUALS have only been recognized as the harmed party in a rape for ten years. The “moral outrage” definition of rape had been in place since 1936—at the height of the Facsist era—and women legislators fought hard to get the law changed (Source: Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, May 1998).
The Italian rape culture-patriarchy can also be gauged by another ruling the CoC made in 1997. The 410-man and ten-woman court tossed out a sexual harassment lawsuit in which a woman had been fired for resisting her boss because they found that he only forcibly kissed her because he was “being gallant” and was “in love with her.” Absolutely stellar jurisprudence that was.
Damn.
27 April 2006, 3:21 pmdenisdekat:
Do you suppose that the fact that the woman was Nigerian (most likely black) and the soldier was American (Any idea onthe ethnicity) had to do with this? I bet it did…
Had he raped a blond northen Italian girl, who knows what may have gone down…
4 May 2006, 7:45 pmElaina:
There probably would have been more press coverage in the white-supremacist media, but probably not much would have happened to him, at the end of the day. That’s my guess, anyways. I don’t know too awful much about the media in Italy. I’m saying that if the woman had been “white” it might have made the news here. As such I’ve not seen/heard anything about it in the mainstream press.
4 May 2006, 11:51 pmDolls:
If this is the way of doing justice to the victim than I think all the rapist and murderers has some or other logic behind doing any henious crime. Even a serial killer who likes to see blood or kill can justify by his liking or bad chidhood experience. This is bullshit. Justice is not about the criminal, it is about the victim and society. Even a prostitute has right of her body and will. Even if the women were trafficked or whatever one can not deny her basic right of protection against any brutuality, inhumane conditions and threat to life. I believe the punishment to the soldier should have been more intense. As a soldier he was suppose to protect a vulnerable or weaker person who was not enemy.
28 September 2007, 5:52 amAllister:
I don’t know what you all are arguing about here… I think its pretty clearcut. War and military fucks people up, and those people can’t be held accountable for their post conflict actions. The only answer is to outlaw war and the military.
29 February 2008, 8:44 pmCASSIE:
this is to allister
8 April 2008, 11:54 amI am a female OEF and OIF veteran i served two tours in Iraq and one tour in Afghanistan as well as Civil Affairs operations in various Central American and Asian countries - You cant say I dont have PTSD Ive withstood IEDs to RPGs and more gunfire and death on a daily basis than half the males in the United States will ever see combined as i served right alongside the Infantry 24/7
and I will speak from experience RAPE is still the RAPISTS choice - he still has a damn concience and if he doesnt because the war TRAUMATISED HIM… !!