An Open Letter To Justice Vic Timblamer

Dear Queen’s Bench Justice V. Timblamer:*

Good afternoon! I’m writing to thank you for your recent sentencing decision in the case of convicted rapist Kenneth Rhodes. Everyone’s talking about it! 

As the owner of not one, but several orifices that are capable of being sexually penetrated against my will, it is very important for me to know that the severity of a violent crime committed against my body is largely dependent on whether or not I was sending out signals that “sex was in the air.”

In fact, until I had read your decision, it had never even occured to me that I might be giving out these signals unintentionally! Now I know that if I don’t want to have sex with someone, but they rape me anyway, it won’t be that bad because my rapist thought I was attractive. (This will save me lots of money in therapy bills.)

See, as a woman, I want to be seen as attractive. So it’s reassuring to know that rapists will understand that, no matter what I say or do to indicate otherwise – and that some judges totally get where they are coming from and will make sure that nobody goes to jail just for knowing what I really wanted. Sure, it might not have been what I really wanted, at all,  but that’s okay as long as the rapist really thought it was. It’s not like they’d make that stuff up!

Besides, you hit  the nail on the head when you described this particular rapist as a “clumsy Don Juan.” Hey, not everyone is good at romance! I am bad at it myself — the last time I tried to cook a romantic dinner I accidentally set the stove on fire. So it would be really unfair and discriminatory to send a rapist to jail just because he didn’t do a good enough job of seducing a woman. I mean, if he looked like James Franco or Ben Roethlisberger this probably wouldn’t have happened.

After all the useful information you’ve given me about what to expect from the justice system in the event that I am raped unwittingly give off signals that I want to be raped, I wanted to find a way of expressing my thanks. The least I can do is to help fill in one blank for you:

Dewar said the case was not “typical” of ones the courts often see…

I can’t imagine how distressing it must have been for you to come across such a highly unusual case, where a woman was raped by a man she was hanging out with. Incredibly, this happens more often than you may think! Experts generally conclude that at least 1 in 6 North American women will be sexually assaulted at least once in her lifetime, maybe as many as 1 in 3. The large majority of these women know their rapists.

That sounds like a whole lot, but you’re right: the courts don’t often see it, so it’s actually really unusual.  Now, I’m not a judge or anything, but I think I may be able to help you understand why this case was so wacky. See, we know that a lot of women get raped, mostly by people they know. We also know that most rapists rape more than once.

“Whoa!” you’re thinking. “Why aren’t we seeing more of them in court?”

I can answer that! See, rapists rape so many women because they know they’ll probably get away with it. And they know they’ll get away with it, because they know that about 90% of sexual assaults in Canada are never reported to police.

Why aren’t they reported? Well, because in most cases the victim realizes that she probably gave her rapist a signal that “sex was in the air,” even if she didn’t mean to. (Thanks again for that!) She knows that by having a drink, or by mentioning skinny-dipping, she let her rapist know, as you so aptly put it, that she “wanted to party.”

Thanks to these helpful reminders, most victims see right away that it’s unfair to blame their rapist for committing a violent crime against them. Instead, they just blame themselves. (It’s cool! Everyone else will do it too.) Then they hop on down to La Senza to buy some bras so that it doesn’t happen again.

“Ah-ha!” you say. “But what about the others?”

You are very perceptive! True, there are still the 10% or so of survivors who barge ahead and do report their rape to police. Luckily, there are some stalwart folks at this level who are working to protect rapists from being held responsible for their natural carnal urges. Thanks at least in part to their efforts, only about 1 in 3 of reported sexual assaults ever result in an arrest or charges being laid.

True, some sad few do get arrested. No worries! There’s still another line of defense: the trial. This is where, despite rape shield laws, savvy defense lawyers still manage to raise reasonable doubt about how much the victim really wanted it. (The rapist might also have some friends who know what’s what who can help get the word out.)

Thanks to their hard work, less than half of all sexual assault trials result in convictions — even though in the U.S. at least, the FBI found that fewer than 1 in 10 accusations was unfounded, and an American law research center found that only 2% to 8% of reported claims in the U.S., Britain and Canada were false.

Still, if a conviction happens — that’s when things get really scary for the rapist.

But all is not lost yet. Because even if all the odds are against them, and somehow the rape does get reported, and does go to trial, and — in a strike of spectacularly bad luck — they do manage to get themselves convicted, they can still have hope.

Why? Because there are judges like you, who know that no matter how traumatized the survivor is, it wouldn’t be fair to send the rapist to jail just for thinking she was all up for getting freaky with him. Thanks to you folks, 4 in 10 convicted rapists never have to spend a day in an icky, smelly jail. Those that do, usually spend less than a year behind bars.

Add it all up, as I just did on my computer calculator (!), and you’ll see that only somewhere around 1% of all sexual assaults ever result in someone having to go to jail for what they did. Or, if you’re a pessimist, you could go by RAINN’s statistics, which found that about 6% of rapists spend at least one day in jail — but let’s not be a negative nelly. 

Don’t know where we’d be without judges like you! Keep up the good work!

Sincerely,

Double Em Martin

P.S. — You have a lot of male fans out there too! All of my guy friends were really flattered to hear that proceedings in a court of law recognized that when it comes to chicks wearing tube tops with their nipples totally sorta poking through, men just can’t control themselves. It’s a big compliment to have someone acknowledge that you just get so into it that there’s no way to know if the babe’s really up for being raped or not. Men appreciate that vote of confidence in their abilities.

* I’m sorry, I just realized your name is in fact Justice Robert Dewar. My mistake!