A woman in Indianapolis, Mandy Boardman, was raped by her husband. She did everything she possibly could to ensure her attacker ended up behind bars. She reported it, she testified against him and he was convicted. Hooray! When she went to the sentencing hearing, she expected to hear that he would be sent to prison for a very long time.
She was wrong.
Instead of getting thrown into the slammer as punishment for his heinous crimes against his wife, David Wise was sentenced to eight years of house arrest with two years of probation for raping Boardman. Let’s let this sink in: For raping his wife, Wise will see no jail time.
“I was flabbergasted and appalled when I heard the sentencing,” Boardman told BuzzFeed in an exclusive interview.
Mandy was shocked. She was horrified. And, as if the sentence wasn’t enough to gut her where she stood, she was given a piece of advice from the Marion County judge who determined the sentencing. He told her to “forgive him and move on.”
Via: wlwt.com
Mandy went on, “I thought I’d never hear someone tell me to forgive him. That’s something I’ll probably never do. And, then to find out he was going home the same time I was? It is unfair, unjust, unbelievable.”
Unfortunately, Mandy isn’t alone. There are many rape victims out there who never receive justice for what they have been through, and many of them are college students.
A recent article by Eliza Gray noted that every 1 in 5 female college students will be the victim of attempted or completed sexual assault while in school. Of that 20% of rape victims, only 30% report the crime to the police. And, of that 30%, only 16% of the crimes result in a prison sentence, according to One in Four.
How is it that we live in a society where this is okay? How is it that people are not rioting in the streets for retribution or starting social media campaigns for the victims in this country who go unnoticed and without justice?
Via: thehandmirror.blogspot.com
There has been a lot of rhetoric out there lately defining rape and, even worse, attempting to justify it. “Were you drinking?” “What were you wearing?” “Well, you were flirting with him earlier that night.” These are just some of the victim-blaming questions that get asked when a woman reports a rape.
Victim-blaming is just one of the symptoms of a larger rape culture we have created in the U.S. As a whole, the country leans more toward tolerance of the crime rather than active prevention.
In another TIME magazine article by Zerlina Maxwell, the author attempts to define rape culture by using a Twitter hashtag, #RapeCultureIsWhen, to get people discussing the growing problem we have when it comes to sweeping notions of rape under the proverbial rug. In it, she points out the song “Blurred Lines” as an example for growing passivity of rape. “Rape culture is when the lyrics of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” mirror the words of actual rapists and still is the number one song in the country.”
Via: thisisthegoldenage.tumblr.com
Many people think that rape culture is a scare tactic used by enraged feminists to once again fight for equality, but rape is not a political tool. Rape is real. Rape is happening right now, and it’s time to educate yourself and take a stand against it.
So many victims will be silenced by a lack of justice. Speak out for them.
Featured photo courtesy of: The Independent
