It's my fault, I'm female

This article in the New York Times came to my attention earlier today. Reporting of the brutal (and recorded) gang rape of an eleven year-old girl, it is full of the little insinuations about the victim's responsibility in the matter that we have grown so accustomed to as a society.

The article, complete with pictures and details of the run-down trailer where parts of the assault took place, wastes no time in making sure the reader knows that this was not the vicious, conscious deciscions of eighteen boys and men; but something that just happened. As if the men in question were victims too; victims of oh-so-tragic and unfortunate events in which they ha no control. Those poor, poor boys, who will, like the article continues to mention, "have to live with this for the rest of their lives."

Well, guess what? Somewhere in America, now in a hidden location to avoid the media and the shameful glances of peers and town citizens, is an eleven year-old girl. Somewhere out there is an eleven year-old girl who, too, has to live with this for the rest of her life. A girl that not only very likely has physical damage so bad it will scar her for life, but whose innocence has been crushed and whose world has collapsed. Trust in adults, trust in men, trust in justice...all that may well be destroyed, or at best a massive task to build back up. And that's without the New York times deciding that things may have ended differently had she not worn so much make up or "hung around with boys at the playground." (Exactly, at the playground. She's a child.)

The article continues with the comments of "Ms. Harrison"; a neighbour whose opinion the New York Times somehow decided was relevant to the news value of the story. Ms. Harrison, clearly shaken, exclaims, "Where was her mother?", and continues along the publication's line of finding someone, anyone, to blame but the eighteen boys that carried out the rape of which the article is about in the first place. It is interesting how no one - while we're blaming the parents here - seems to be asking where her father was, but I guess this is just about the potential mistakes of females. It usually is.

And while everyone is wondering where the mother in question was while her child was being raped, no one is asking where the mothers or fathers of the boys and men were when their sons held a child down on a bed and the floor of  a bathroom while raping her and filming their abuse. But, as the article also mentions; one of the boys is a basketball star student, and one father is a school board member, and I guess we don't want to mess with those. They are, after all, popular, powerful men in powerful positions. The mother of the eleven year-old girl, on the other hand, is just female trailer trash; not worth more than the filthy sofa on which her daughter was raped. Well done, New York Times. I hope you're proud.


To sign the petition demanding the New York Times apologize for their biased reporting, please visit http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-the-new-york-times-to-apologize-for-blaming-a-child-for-her-gang-rape