Five years ago, Kenneth Rhodes raped a woman alongside a highway outside Thompson, Man.
He callously reassured his victim during the attack that it would “only hurt for a little while.”
Rhodes’ victim, now a 26-year-old single mother, is still dealing with the mental and physical scars. She has difficulty trusting people and is afraid to leave he own home. That fear won’t subside anytime soon after she was victimized by the judge who gave her attacker a slap on the wrist.
Last month, Justice Robert Dewar handed Rhodes a two-year conditional sentence to be served in the community.
Dewar suggested “sex was in the air” that night in 2006, referring to Rhodes as a “clumsy Don Juan” rather than a rapist.
As for the victim’s role in the attack, the judge noted she wore a tube top with no bra, high heels and makeup, she had been drinking and she accompanied Rhodes willingly.
All of those factors had to be considered to assess “moral blameworthiness,” Dewar concluded.
In short, the rape was the result of a simple misunderstanding, right?
Wrong. Dewar’s comments are appalling in their insensitivity and callousness. They are inexcusable, considering the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the principle of “no means no” in 1999.
Sadly, Dewar’s comments reflect society’s ongoing assault of women, who are viewed as objects who enjoy sexual violence.
Dewar’s comments echoed those made earlier this year by a police officer who attended at a campus safety information session at York University in Toronto. The university’s student paper, Excalibur, reported the officer told the audience that women could avoid being raped if they stopped dressing like “sluts.”
The assault on women and women’s rights is particularly severe south of the border.
Joseph A. Rehyansky, a former member of the Chattanooga, Tenn., District Attorney’s office and a retired Vietnam veteran, suggested last year that lesbians should be allowed in the United States military, “giving straight male GIs a fair shot at converting (them) and bringing them into the mainstream.”
Last month, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives proposed the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.
In its original form, the bill denied U.S. federal abortion funding to women who were unable to prove they were raped by force. Victims who are drugged, drunk or unconscious when they are raped wouldn’t qualify. Neither would victims of incest.
Needless to say, the backlash was swift, with many commentators pointing out the obvious: rape implies violence, regardless of the victim’s state-of-mind.
Not satisfied with sanctioning violence against women, the Republican majority approved an amendment barring Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding. The same bill also eliminated Title X, a national family planning program that provides birth control, cancer screenings and sexually transmitted diseases testing for low-income women.
Bobby Franklin, a Republican lawmaker in Georgia, has taken assault on women to the extreme. He recently introduced a bill in the state to re-classify victims of rape, stalking, harassment and family violence as “accusers.”
His other bill would make abortion the equivalent of murder and require all miscarriages to be investigated by authorities.
The idea that a woman recovering from the trauma of a miscarriage would be the subject of an investigation to rule out the possibility that she is a murderer is repugnant to Canadians. But it highlights the lengths that some lawmakers are willing to go in their war on women.
The danger of these comments, whether by Dewar or U.S. lawmakers, is that they will diminish society’s sensitivity to the suffering of rape victims and encourage the belief that violence against women is somehow acceptable.
The officer who attended the campus information session at York University is reported to have prefaced his comments with, “I’ve been told I shouldn’t say this. . . .”
He’s right, he shouldn’t have, and his superiors have already disciplined him for his poor judgment.
Dewar should have known better, too. He will continue to sit as a judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench but will not hear cases of a sexual nature, pending the outcome of a review by the Canadian Judicial Council.
Removing Dewar from the bench altogether would reassure women that Canada does not condone violence against women and that they will not be doubly victimized by the court system.
While waiting for the council’s verdict, we must remain vigilant against the likes of Dewar, lest more women become prisoners in their own homes for the simple act of wearing makeup.
Cameron Kennedy is an Advocate editor.