Rape.

[TimeEntrance]

My friend was recently the victim of a sexual assault. She confided in me the other day that while she was at a party, slightly drunk, she ended up alone with a guy. They eventually got intimate, and he took it too far after she had said no. Admittedly, she is not the most catholic person, as shown above. However, I still care about her and do not like the fact that she was assaulted.

I have had a few mini-confrontations with the guy before. Small ones. I saw him disrespect a girl verbally once, and so I spoke up. And then it happened again. And then this happened. He has no restraint or respect for women.

As a Christian in a public high school, what should I do in this situation? I am afraid that if nothing is done, he will do it again. My friend insists that she wants no action taken though.

I am not looking for vengeance, but simply for a way to protect others from what could be.

Thanks in advance for your advice,
Tyler.

God bless.

In my opinion you should respect her request.

Also bear in mind - and you might find this as you get older - all interactions in life are not always as clear cut as we like to make them out to be in general. Civil courts seem to recognize this dilemma better than criminal courts. And it’s partially why most advanced societies - as well as the internal courts and laws of the Catholic Church - attempt to respect due process.

If you ever find yourself falsely accused or on the wrong side of circumstantial evidence you might know what I mean.

If it is true your friend was raped then respecting her request is still probably the best way to go. In my opinion at least.

 

[TimeEntrance]

Your comment is disgusting and cowardly. I’d tell you what I really think, but I’d end up getting banned.

I don’t think Rainaldo was encouraging him to be a coward. That’s not what I got from his diction and tone anyways.

It’s not that we should just turn a blind eye to all injustices in life but they become so numerous (often going on without us even knowing), the webs can be so tangled at times or lines so blurred, that even the person with the biggest shoulders can be overwhelmed if not demoralized. Prostitution is rampant throughout just about every city I know of and prostitutes are raped at times. It does not make it right. But it happens. And date rape can at times have culpability on both sides. Otherwise the science of biology about males drives for sex are utterly erroneous. Whether prostituting or out at a party tempting a male for sex are not entirely innocent affairs.

Then we are also confronted with the fact people lie in this world. It’s not just rapists that lie. Actually, I’m taking some forensic courses about death investigation and in our lecture we were told police are trained to test (not automatically believe) a person’s story when they come with a complaint. Apparently, it’s happened more than once that a man has drank and gambled all his money, and rather than face the wrath of his wife, he’ll call the police to say that he was robbed.

If I saw a woman beaten up and hysterical I would probably believe her immediately if she said she was raped. And I’m not suggesting date rapes don’t occur but with the absence of a lot of evidence and in the context of two people that consensually “made out,” I can’t so quickly just be sure an accusation is true.

 

[TimeEntrance]

If it’s anything like my experience - they don’t much care about rape cases. I reported eventually (I waited for a long time because I was afraid for my reputation) and got blown off.

I think cops can be overwhelmed by the sheer number of crimes reported to them, Dark, they probably didn’t mean any offense to you. And they probably felt it was not really anything they could do if so much time passed by and there was a lack of physical evidence.

I hope you a full recovery emotionally or otherwise though.

 

[DarkLight]

I think cops can be overwhelmed by the sheer number of crimes reported to them, Dark, they probably didn’t mean any offense to you. And they probably felt it was not really anything they could do if so much time passed by and there was a lack of physical evidence.

I hope you a full recovery emotionally or otherwise though.

Eh, I don’t really blame them, though I wish there was more to be done - I was asking for a no-contact order rather than full prosecution, so the evidence standard is lower. But I was more wanting to point out that there are a lot of reasons to not report. And I’d delayed reporting primarily out of fear of being blamed, so I know how damaging some of the views can be.

I’d also mention that there are a lot of options between full criminal prosecution and letting it go. Schools are allowed to take action at lower standards than the legal system. She can ask that one of them be transferred, or that they not be put in classes together.

 

[Bill_7154]

My friend was recently the victim of a sexual assault. She confided in me the other day that while she was at a party, slightly drunk, she ended up alone with a guy. They eventually got intimate, and he took it too far after she had said no. Admittedly, she is not the most catholic person, as shown above. However, I still care about her and do not like the fact that she was assaulted.

I have had a few mini-confrontations with the guy before. Small ones. I saw him disrespect a girl verbally once, and so I spoke up. And then it happened again. And then this happened. He has no restraint or respect for women.

As a Christian in a public high school, what should I do in this situation? I am afraid that if nothing is done, he will do it again. My friend insists that she wants no action taken though.

I am not looking for vengeance, but simply for a way to protect others from what could be.

Thanks in advance for your advice,
Tyler.

God bless.

This is a great question and I commend you for wanting to figure out a way to help without seeking vengeance and also since it is complicated since your friend wants to keep it private.

I will admit, that prior to my re-discovering my faith in recent months I was proud of the fact that I believed in ‘street justice’ and seeking vengeance on such occasions. I have done things that I am not ashamed of, things I was proud of doing prior to becoming a faithful Catholic.

One thing that comes to mind is seeking out and trying to speak to people who run hot lines related to abuse/rape/etc and explain the situation and ask for guidance.

Another is to seek out at the courts people who work as ‘advocates’, typically advocating to help females that are the victims of domestic violence. I think they are referred to as victims advocates or similar. Although you might not get too far with that one since your not a victim youself, but I think it’s worth considering as a try.

You could also seek to have a meeting with the principal of your school, explain what you know (while respecting the privacy of your friend) to tell the principal what you know- that there is a rapist at the school, he has raped, he has pushed women and done things along the lines of coming close to rape, and asking for his advice.

I do fear that if you are pushed to give the guys name, the cops will be called, and you will be pushed to give the name of your friend. As the police can’t do anything without a complaining victim and they will likely push you to name the victim- with good intentions- but it might not be in your friends best interests to have you betray her by telling what you know- you can’t know here heart and mind and what is best for her.

Before doing the following I would seek into the legality of it- but you could consider putting up a few flyers (make sure you don’t get caught) warning people of the ‘bully’. I would not say rapist or anything like that because the guy will obviously suspect your friend (or possibly another girl if he has raped several girls in the past month or 2- which he probably didn’t- putting your friend at greater risk). If he was known to have raped 40 women in the past 3 months I would see no risk in having your friend being suspected of being behind it.

That last paragraph might be bad advice, I don’t know. But if you could get it out there that this guy was someone to be cautious of, without leading him to suspect your friend as being behind it, it could have the positive effect of having other girls be more cautious of him.

And you might find ways through talking with people on rape/violence hotlines, etc ways to talk to your friend to get her to change her mind and actually report this guy.

Sometimes I still question if giving up vigilintism was the right thing to do exactly because of cases like this one. It is known he is a rapist. It seems like he will get away with it. He will probably do it again. The police hands are tied because there is no complaining victim. The public, everyone’s sister, etc is at risk at the hands of this guy. I pray for the strength to continue to allow God to be the one to keep vengeance as his own, that it is not mine to dispence to/against anyone.

God Bless and I hope you find one or more ways to get this guy contained, to stop, and to get into the criminal justice system as soon as possible with as few as possible or no more victims.

And obviously pray for your friend. I can’t pass judgement on her for not wanting to go public, I remember what it was like in high school and think it is WAY harder for a girl that age to come forward than it is for a woman of say, 30 years old or so. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for all victims of rape to come forward. I pray that that changes over time, sooner rather than later. We have too many victims in this society, of all ages (including children) who are too afraid to come forward and report the horrors that were inflicted upon them.

God Bless,
Bill

 

[Pitcharan]

My friend was recently the victim of a sexual assault. She confided in me the other day that while she was at a party, slightly drunk, she ended up alone with a guy. They eventually got intimate, and he took it too far after she had said no. Admittedly, she is not the most catholic person, as shown above. However, I still care about her and do not like the fact that she was assaulted.

I have had a few mini-confrontations with the guy before. Small ones. I saw him disrespect a girl verbally once, and so I spoke up. And then it happened again. And then this happened. He has no restraint or respect for women.

As a Christian in a public high school, what should I do in this situation? I am afraid that if nothing is done, he will do it again. My friend insists that she wants no action taken though.

I am not looking for vengeance, but simply for a way to protect others from what could be.

Thanks in advance for your advice,
Tyler.

God bless.

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:6-8)

 

[Matilda_Bennett]

This thread has been dormant for a considerable period. With rare exceptions, reviving threads after a protracted period of inactivity is discouraged because:

the issues that spurred them are often no longer "hot" or current topics, explaining why thread activity ceased originally.
posters originally involved in the discussion are sometimes no longer active on the forum and, therefore, unavailable to reply to comments added to the thread.

Our experience suggests that, when a topic merits revival, it is best accomplished by initiating a new thread that draws on recent events and can be posted to contemporaneously. This eliminates the baggage of folks being frustrated by asking and not receiving responses to issues raised in early posts (because the new poster didn’t notice that the post he was responding to was made a long time ago).

Posters are very welcome to open a new thread on the subject or any other topic, as well as to actively participate in the myriad active threads in the fora.

Thank you to all those who have participated in this discussion. This thread is now closed.