When Does the Sentence End for the Rape Victim?

It happened again 11 days ago.

Another rapist was let out of jail after serving only a fraction of his sentence.

A jury had found him guilty in 1992 of one count of rape and two counts of criminal deviate conduct after hearing moving testimony from the woman he attacked in 1991.

A judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

Little more than two years into his sentence, as was his right, he asked a judge to set him free. The judge refused.

She didn’t have much choice. He had failed to complete an academic or vocational program, as Indiana requires of inmates seeking early release. The law also requires that convicts show signs of rehabilitation. Yet when he asked for his freedom, the rapist said, “I believe I am innocent of this charge, and I don’t have any reason to apologize. I committed no crime and I’m going to stick with that until my grave.”

“What can you tell me that would assure me this would never happen again?” asked the judge.

“I only give you my word,” said the prisoner.

A jury had already determined the value of that.

After nine more months of incarceration, after serving less than a third of his sentence, he was released. Four years of the sentence were suspended and he earned one day off for good behavior for every day spent behind bars. In the alchemy of an overburdened penal system, that’s how a 10-year sentence is served in three.

What sort of uproar ensued?

It was extraordinary. People mobbed him. They came by foot, by car, by helicopter. They came from around the world. They brandished cameras and microphones and notebooks.

They waved signs.

“We missed you, Champ,” said one. “Welcome back to your family,” said another.

Yellow ribbons bedecked his driveway.

The rapist, of course, was Mike Tyson.

Many folks continue to labor under the misimpression that rape is not really rape if the attacker and victim know each other or if, say, the victim was star-struck by the attentions of a man whose prodigious talents in the boxing ring have made him a superstar and multimillionaire.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” said Tyson’s lawyer in his closing arguments, “I submit to you that your intelligence is insulted when you are told that a young woman of this level of sophistication would enter a man’s bedroom at 2 a.m., sit on the bed and not know what was coming.”

The jury’s intelligence was indeed being insulted. And in their verdicts, they unanimously declared by whom.

Statements like the one made by the defense attorney reinforce lingering doubts in the public’s mind about what really constitutes rape. (If I may: Rape is forced sex. It’s a pretty simple legal concept.)

There is an idea afloat on the waves of the popular culture, promulgated by feminist contrarians, that teaching women about date rape is tantamount to hurling them backward in time to the Victoria era, instilling in them the notions that they are weaker, easily victimized and in need of special protections. This, say the contrarians, is an attempt to undermine the independence and strength of women, which is wrong.

I tend toward the old-line thinking myself, which is that women should know that date rape is real, that it can happen to anyone, that you can take steps to protect yourself and that if someone has sex with you without your consent, a rape has been committed, which is wrong.

The contrarian view puts women in a bind, the very bind in which Desiree Washington, Tyson’s victim, found herself after he invited her on a late-night sightseeing tour of Indianapolis in his limousine and she agreed to accompany him to his room to “pick something up” and “meet his bodyguard.”

On one hand, young women are derided as stupid or misguided for not understanding that they are tacitly agreeing to sex if they find themselves in a man’s room after midnight, even if it turns out they were lured there on a pretense. On the other, they are called paranoid and retro if they think of themselves as potential victims of male sexual aggression.

Pardon us if we are a little confused.

Tyson’s conviction has done precious little to change these attitudes, and his apologists are legion. He has paid his debt, they say, so let the money flow. His first fight, they estimate, could bring him $50 million.

In time, with princely fighting purses and another heavyweight championship or two, people may forget Tyson was ever convicted of rape.

“The rapists get out of prison, but a lot of the victims feel they serve a life sentence,” says Gail Abarbanel, a pioneer in the rape treatment movement. “Nobody seems worried about Tyson getting out of jail. If it were anyone else, they would be worried about him being returned to the community. There would be uproar and outrage.”

But, of course, there is none of that, not even a hint.

Nor is there a yellow ribbon anywhere in sight for Desiree Washington.