Woman reveals she went out with rapist, and blogosphere jumps all over it

1. Modern Love: I Fell for a Man Who Wore an Electronic Ankle Bracelet -- by ASHLEY CROSS

FOR nearly three years I dated a guy who had been dismissed from Harvard over accusations of raping another student. I lived with him during a summer of his house arrest for his conviction on sexual assault charges and traveled to be with him during the school year.

Throughout, I strove to create a relationship of hopeful normalcy despite his electronic ankle bracelet, public ridicule and compromised future. Until finally, sadly, our affair ended, though not for reasons you might guess.

We had met at a summer camp where we were both counselors. He was 20, a swim instructor who caught my attention with his blue eyes, swollen lips and penchant for performing silly “Saturday Night Live” routines during the evening skits.

I was a 19-year-old equestrian recuperating from a traumatic break-up with my first love. As such, I wasn’t looking for a new relationship. But I found myself falling for him anyway, and soon we were inseparable, referred to by one annoyed counselor as “an endless J. Crew ad.”

One evening, as we were sharing coffee and cigarettes at a local diner while trading quips from “Casablanca,” he subtly blew smoke in my face. For all I knew it was unintentional, but I smiled at the gesture.

“If you were Humphrey Bogart,” I said, “then you’d know that blowing smoke in a woman’s face is an invitation for sex.”

Rather than smile back, he blanched. “I didn’t know that,” he said, then changed the subject.

Driving back to camp he was uncharacteristically quiet, and later, in the privacy of my platform tent, he sat on my floor and told me he didn’t feel comfortable with our developing relationship unless I knew something about him.

It sounded so ominous; I couldn’t imagine what dark secrets he possessed. “What?” I asked.

He said it flat out: “I’m on leave from college because a friend accused me of raping her.”

I didn’t say anything at first. I was shocked, yes, but not frightened. We hadn’t yet slept together, and his physical advances so far bordered on old-fashioned. I ransacked my memory to recall if I had missed clues to his character or ways I might have misjudged him, but I came up empty.

Almost all of his close friends were girls. From what I knew, he had a strong relationship with his parents, who were progressive and intelligent and nurturing. He was a rule follower, a brilliant and dedicated student, a chronic people pleaser. He had a history of serial monogamy. I simply couldn’t reconcile the smart, gentle guy I knew with this startling revelation.

As I peppered him with questions, he talked me through the fateful night of only a few months before, when he and the girl, who’d been a friend, had mingled at a party and drifted off drunk together before winding up back in her room, where, several hours later, they had sex. She became hysterical, claiming he forced himself on her. He left, bewildered and distraught. That night he wrote her a letter apologizing for upsetting her and left it at her door. He told me the letter was an attempt to salvage the friendship.

“Did you rape her?” I asked.

“We had sex,” he said. “But I didn’t mean to hurt her, no.”

Nothing he had done that summer made me disbelieve him. Later, as events unfolded, I would learn everything I could about the case, not only from all the news media coverage but also from visiting Harvard and talking to mutual friends and co-workers of theirs. At the urging of his parole officer, I read the accuser’s statement of what had happened. Still, I believed him and supported him.

He had left school immediately after the incident. He knew the university was investigating the allegations and that he might face dismissal. What he didn’t know was that he soon would face consequences much more severe than being forced to leave school. Rather than allow the college administration to handle the situation, his accuser filed criminal charges.

When he learned this news later that summer while we were still at camp, he was stunned. He realized it was going to be his word against hers, with a letter acknowledging remorse on his part. In the fall, faced with the possibility of real jail time if he was convicted, he accepted a plea bargain that called for him to spend 18 months under house arrest.

Despite the turmoil, and perhaps because of it, he and I stayed together. Our relationship had deepened throughout the summer, and that fall, when I returned to college in another state, I continued to visit him once or twice a month in his new home, where he began serving his house arrest.

During this time my friends couldn’t fathom why I supported him, much less continued as the willing girlfriend of a convicted sex offender. But for me the experience had fundamentally altered my previously programmed reaction to stories of alcohol-fueled date rape on college campuses. No longer was my response autopilot compassion for the girl. No longer would I assume the guilt of intoxicated boys in the company of intoxicated girls everywhere.

My boyfriend’s house arrest allowed him to leave his apartment only to work (he’d gotten a job at a hotel) and an additional four hours a week to leave for other reasons: shopping, laundry, errands. During this time he also was required to undergo sexual offender rehabilitation.

BEFORE his plea bargain, he was asked to submit to an evaluation process that was particularly distressing: he was shown lewd images of various kinds, including those of prepubescent girls, with his state of arousal at each image being measured, judged, dissected.

The evaluation determined that he was not a likely sexual predator, but he still faced rehabilitation as part of his sentence. These sessions, of which he spoke very little, clearly were intended to positively influence how he treated others. But the reality was somewhat more complicated.

Already he felt the shame of the charge and conviction. With the sexual evaluations, he was forced to question the normalcy of his impulses. Now the rehabilitation extinguished the remaining spark he had left, the irreverence I’d originally fallen in love with, replacing it with a generic “respect” for others that in reality was a kind of bland and suffocating politeness.

Yet I stayed with him. I thought I could help reclaim the spirited guy I had met at camp. In between my visits, he would fall asleep cradling the phone to his ear as our nightly conversations met morning, and this told me everything I needed to know — I had become his lifeline.

But I could do little to stem the decline of our romantic life. From the beginning, sex was never the centerpiece of our connection. We became close friends and lovers through intimate conversations that made us both feel understood. But because we were young and healthy, I expected that we would have an unguarded sex life like normal 21-year-olds.

When we first met at camp, the physical attraction was palpable. His touch was impulsive and eager and certain. But as the effects of the case and its repercussions began to take their toll, I felt it was as if he was being reprogrammed to overrule his own impulses and passion.

Desire, once joyful, became a source of stress, something dangerous and potentially ugly that needed to be suppressed, and an awkward civility overtook our love life. Anything sexual between us became for him an urge not of primitive pleasure but of apologetic shame.

Regardless of how much I reassured him that everything was fine, he grew increasingly afraid of touching me in an authoritative way. In public, we stopped kissing or even holding hands. And during sex, any sound I made alarmed him, and he’d recoil, so I learned to stay silent.

Even so, he began asking, constantly, if I was O.K. But I didn’t want to be O.K. — I wanted to have bold, carefree, shameless sex with the man I wanted. One night I grew so tired of him asking me if I was all right that I snapped: “Don’t ask me that ever again! I’m fine. Don’t ask me that.” Which, of course, only led him to apologize about asking me, and then to apologize about apologizing — “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

He even began to apologize profusely for such minor things as not putting the toothpaste cap back on, ordering out of turn or not listening intently enough to what I was saying. He grew so cowed that I almost began to hope for a politically incorrect slur or diatribe to spring from his lips, unburdened by the worry of offense.

WHEN a national television news show asked for an interview with him, I thought that this was his chance to publicly address his version of truth. As the only child of a family anchored in academia, I was taught to defend my ideas and beliefs at all costs.

But he refused, saying, “I just want it to be over.” He didn’t want to give ammunition to groups targeting him as the preppy rapist. He didn’t want his televised face to be connected with the night he suddenly became known as a monster.

Yet what alarmed me was not some sinister side of him I never saw but a passivity and retreat that I saw far too much of. In the end, I found it harder to love an emasculated boyfriend than one accused of rape.

As I was graduating from college, we ended our relationship, making good on our promise to remain friends. I had traveled abroad during my senior year, and we were spending more and more time apart, so that helped us ease out of the relationship.

But I’ll always regret what might have been. His ordeal will always haunt me. In my mind, he was not seeking to humiliate and subjugate a woman on that night many years ago. I believe he was a boy who endeavored for hours in the dark to express his drunken, fumbling desire in a way that, fair or not, ended up unraveling his life. I wish he had found me first.

(Ashley Cross lives in New York City and attends Columbia University.)


2. "She wasn't accusing him of plagiarism" -- by Scott Lemieux/Lawyers, Guns and Money

Adam B does a very good job with this exceedingly strange SundayStyles column. But I was particularly struck by this:

“He had left school immediately after the incident. He knew the university was investigating the allegations and that he might face dismissal. What he didn‚Äôt know was that he soon would face consequences much more severe than being forced to leave school. Rather than allow the college administration to handle the situation, his accuser filed criminal charges.”

Obviously, the phrasing here is profoundly offensive, implying that the victim should have "allowed" the university pat her on the head and give her a lollipop, wasn't the victim of a violent assault . But my question is: how common is it for rapes involving students to be dealt with by internal procedures? How much are victims persuaded to do this? Whenever I teach U.S. v. Morrison --a case involving an alleged gang rape at Virginia Tech that resulted in a crucial provision of the Violence Against Women Act being struck down--students always act why it was initially a case of internal university discipline rather than criminal law. And I never have a good answer. I can understand why sexual harassment--where behavior that would otherwise be OK is rendered unethical by the particular relationships of trust in a teaching or employment relationship--is a case for internal procedures. But I really can't see where rape should be considered an purely internal university matter. It's a violent crime; it shouldn't stop being treated as such because the victim is a college student. I wonder how widespread Cross's attitude is.


3. 'Times': Rapists Aren't That Great In Bed – from Gawker.com

It's not news that the Modern Love column is typically an example of the Times turning into the world's creepiest personal ads section. But this weekend's entry was probably one of the off-the-charts ickiest; it concerns Columbia student Ashley Cross, whose affair with an accused rapist changed her mind about a lot of things:

“During this time my friends couldn't fathom why I supported him, much less continued as the willing girlfriend of a convicted sex offender. But for me the experience had fundamentally altered my previously programmed reaction to stories of alcohol-fueled date rape on college campuses. No longer was my response autopilot compassion for the girl. No longer would I assume the guilt of intoxicated boys in the company of intoxicated girls everywhere.”

In other words, Ashley realized that those whores were asking for it. But unfortunately, lasting bliss with her rapey bf was not to be, for one important reason:

“Desire, once joyful, became a source of stress, something dangerous and potentially ugly that needed to be suppressed, and an awkward civility overtook our love life. Anything sexual between us became for him an urge not of primitive pleasure but of apologetic shame.

“Regardless of how much I reassured him that everything was fine, he grew increasingly afraid of touching me in an authoritative way. In public, we stopped kissing or even holding hands. And during sex, any sound I made alarmed him, and he'd recoil, so I learned to stay silent.”

We totally understand Ashley's point of view: a rape conviction can sort of impede a relationship, sure -- but bad sex? That's a dealbreaker.


4. Blogreaders’ comments:

I wonder ...

Guy has a choice between going to a jury and taking a no-jail-time deal? Even if the guy is innocent he might have taken the deal just to avoid the possibility of jail. Moreover, if the prosecutor had a decent case at all, why such a favorable deal? Sorry, but plenty of innocent people have given a phony allocution to avoid jail. Don't believe me? I'll introduce you to some of them. (And yes, I am a lawyer thank yo very much - a public interest lawyer.)

Color me skeptical of all sides in this story.
-- Richard Goblin

I have friends who are defense attorneys and am a big fan of a well-executed defense.

Am going to agree with Richard Goblin here. Often someone will allocute to a guilty plea instead of going to jail for a long time. That's how the system is set up. Even if what they're copping to is not just a lie, but something which will haunt them the rest of their life.

This is he said / she said. No one knows what actually went on. Regardless of what he admitted to. With a jury trial and the possibility of 8-10 years in prison if found guilty, something quite likely perhaps if the woman in question was a persuasive witness, it may have been the smarter deal.

We don't know. And we don't know what happened.
-- Jesse Wendel/Seattle

Jesus fucking Christ. On every fucking blog that this has been posed on there has been someone who has jumped in and said that since the prosecutor didn’t go to trial or because this guy took a deal, and we all know how messed up the judicial system is, that they’re skeptical about what happen. You want to know why the prosecutor didn’t take this to trial…because the girl was drunk, because they where friends, because he’s a nice fucking guy. Even when men rape women on FUCKING CAMERA they get off. He left her a note the next day apologizing for pressuring and forcing her and here we have to people jumping right in still skeptical. That fuck should be in jail. Not 18-months of house arrest. Why do we even have rape as a crime anymore? Especially since so many poor innocent men out there are getting accused of it all the time? Really, we should just do away with the pretext of thinking forcing yourself sexually on someone is a crime.
-- A