"From a Former Prosecutor to a UNC Student Prosecutor: An Open Letter"

by Roger Canaff

Editor's note: 

The student-run Honor Court at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill informed Landen Gambill last week that it’s charging her with violation of the Honor Code under a statute prohibiting “Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another…. so as to adversely affect their academic pursuits, opportunities for university employment, participation in university-sponsored extracurricular activities, or opportunities to benefit from other aspects of University Life.”

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/26/unc-charged-student-honor-code-violation-discussing-her-rape-allegation#ixzz2M2XFjhbF
Inside Higher Ed


Ms. Elizabeth Ireland
Student Attorney General, Graduate and Professional Schools
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dear Ms. Ireland:

First, I commend you on the tough work you do in order to help maintain an atmosphere of integrity, civility and safety at UNC Chapel Hill, my own alma mater in terms of the law degree that has graciously shaped my professional life. Your job is not an easy one, and I’d guess it seems even less so in light of your apparent (now publicized) decision to bring charges against Landen Gambill for a violation of UNC Honor Code IIC, 1.c.

Second, I have no intention of questioning your decision based on the evidence you have before you, simply because I do not have it before me. No prosecutor should be taken to task by an outsider who lacks the same access to information that she has.

I do, however, have your Code before me, the one I presume you are sworn to uphold and from which you form specific charges addressing clearly proscribed conduct. You have charged Ms. Gambill with:

“Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another” regarding that person’s opportunities broadly as a member of the UNC community.

Again, without making assumptions about what you know, this appears to be in response to Ms. Gambill’s public reflections on the abuse she reported against an intimate partner last year; presumably you suspect that Ms. Gambill's actions amount to violative behavior toward another student. Yet a close friend of Ms. Gambill’s claims confidently (I’ve seen nothing to contradict her) that 1) Gambill has never publicly named the man she alleges assaulted her, and 2) the bulk of her protestations involve not what he did but how she was treated by the Honor Court process itself.

I can only assume you either know something I don’t, or that you believe with the appropriate level of certainty that Landen Gambill is yet responsible for the Honor Code violation you’ve drawn up. In any event, I’d ask you to consider two things:

First, prosecutorial decisions shouldn’t be made in a vacuum. Even if you believe Gambill has somehow “abused, disparaged or otherwise interfered” with her former partner to an extent that somehow violates your Code, is she really an appropriate person to target? Admittedly, I have a bias: I believe Gambill told the truth to the Honor Court last year and that she was seriously if unintentionally mishandled. But even if I was less convinced on either issue, I fail to see how your resources and goodwill are well spent with this prosecution. Understanding that you are rightfully independent of the administration in terms of your charging decisions, this one seems only to be drawing more negative attention to a university that, by all appearances, would be well advised to focus less on students struggling to heal and more on those who are harming them.

Second, just as I’d ask you to consider your case against Gambill in the context of other factors, I’d ask you to carefully consider the entire section under which you’ve charged her. The governing language of IIC 1.c is found in IIC:

“It shall be the responsibility of every student...to refrain from conduct that impairs or may impair the right of all members of the University community to learn and thrive in a safe and respectful environment; or the capacity of University and associated personnel to perform their duties, manage resources, protect the safety and welfare of members of the University community, and maintain the integrity of the University.”

Landen Gambill is a credible victim of both devastating abuse and a flawed system of adjudication now rightfully removed from consideration of her type of complaint. The abuse she alleges on your campus is exactly the kind of behavior that impairs rights, threatens safety, mocks respect, and curtails profoundly the capacity of everyone at UNC to learn and grow to her highest potential. By her efforts to seek redress, both personal and in terms of the University response, it is Gambill who is seeking to uphold integrity here, Ms. Ireland. Punishing her on dubious or hyper-technical grounds renders your process absurd, cruel, and feckless."

Roger Canaff

Legal Expert, Child Protection and Special Victims Advocate. Author, Public Speaker.www.rogercanaff.com

On Faith, Risk, And Couchsurfing

by Roger A. Canaff 

Joseph and Mary: The original "couchsurfers."

That's neither a joke nor necessarily Biblically incorrect. Joseph desperately needed shelter when he and his intensely pregnant wife arrived in a chilly and overcrowded desert town for a Roman census call. An inn-keeper had an idea.

As a rabbi, Jesus became a couchsurfer as well, treading through ancient Palestine with his crew, finding comfort, wine, and conversation, bearing witness to sinners and holy people alike. So given the blessings of adequate space, how could a modern Christian's home be anything other than a glowing respite for weary fellow travelers?

Enter Couchsurfing.org, (CS) active in 97,000 cities worldwide. Members create a detailed profile with photos describing themselves and their living space, then offer hospitality to other members passing through. It's at heart a wonderful idea; one that a cynical and aging former prosecutor shouldn't douse with cold water. But after a patient review of their safety tips and policies, I didn't come away with confidence in CS's ability to reasonably predict a safe outcome in any offline meeting.

CS does prominently address safety, and importantly emphasizes risk-minimization and informed choices rather than meaningless and impossible "assurances." Life is risk and there are no guarantees. I'm sure the vast majority of CS made connections are positive. But they simultaneously claim a "close-knit" community where "vouching" helps allay concerns, and roughly 5 million members.

Their safety video focuses on the joyful leap of discovery and innate good in people rather than the serious and still highly fallible business of self-protection when agreeing to lose consciousness in a stranger's home a half a world away. Instead, members discuss how they can communicate with their presumed hosts both online and in person before finally committing to unrolling a sleeping bag. It's stressed that personal interaction can often lead to the comforting conclusion that the host is "nice." You talk to them, and you can tell.

Except you can't. I imagine CS boasts a very short list of reported crimes- either to them or to authorities in whatever part of the globe- against hosts or travelers as evidence of a sound safety record. But a lack of reporting, even to them, hardly means a lack of occurrences, some frightening or worse.

Now enter faith because of how I became familiar with CS. A dear friend is a PhD and Christian missionary. He shared an article by a woman whose family opens their home to couchsurfers and others as "reverse missionaries." They provide warm hospitality and, to willing ears, Jesus' message. Again, it's a wonderful idea.

But I am frightened for her family, sadly, by statements like this: "It really is God who is our booking agent. We know He is guiding the right people to us." This is all she offers for how she measures risk and makes decisions. She relates that early in their experience as hosts, a young Slovenian couple arrived with their toddler and it was then they "knew they had nothing to fear." Much is made of the participation their young children have in the interaction with guests as well. I assume these children appear in her CS profile, probably also in photographs.

I'd love dearly to believe that God is actively protecting them on this gracious adventure. Perhaps He is, or perhaps they are content with His stewardship come what may. But I have seen, tragically, how people of faith and Christians in particular are targeted by predators who are remarkably adept at appearing to be of a similar mind. A belief in providence and forgiveness are great gifts. They are also beacons of opportunity for human things empty of anything but blunt and vicious self-satisfaction.

It's been said that religion provides the right to martyr oneself, but not one's children. I mean no disrespect to this apparently loving and decent couple, and admittedly the article was not intended as a practical "how to" for anyone. But it is solely the choices she and her husband make that seal the fates of their children, one of whom is eight.

That fact haunts me. That, and the dark reality I can't shake of whom the dead-eyed often hunt: Those whose eyes sparkle with faith, hope, and trust.

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert
Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion)
www.rogercanaff.com

Tips for the Prosecution: Jerry Sandusky

By Roger A. Canaff

Editor's note:  Roger Canaff's following post was written on June 7, and since then the prosecutors were able to get their conviction of Jerry Sandusky. Roger's advice is excellent and it's interesting to look back on the trial to see how many of the following points were used. 

 June 7, 2012

The lead prosecutor in the Sandusky case, Senior Deputy AG Joseph E. McGettigan, probably doesn't need my help. He began his career at the Philadelphia DA's office around the time I turned 15, and he's done and seen it all. But if he's as good as his reputation, then he's probably the type who never treats the opinion of a fellow professional as beneath him.  The good ones, like the legendary Dan McCarthy I wrote about a few months ago, are never too egotistical to listen.

My hope is that McGattigan's team stays focused on five basic tasks that often make the difference in child sex cases:

1. Have a theme, and weave it through the entire case. This, they are doing well so far. A theme in a criminal case is a psychological anchor that you want the jury to be repeating- literally- in deliberations. It's a phrase, a quote (often from a victim) that captures in essence the wrongness of what was done. It needs to be woven into every aspect of the trial where it can be uttered; voir dire, opening, direct examinations, and closing argument.

2. Craft direct examinations of the victims to recreate the reality of the crime. Crafting a direct means much more than writing out the questions and prepping based on them. It's taking victims through sensory detail- smells, sounds, physical sensations- that drives home the reality so that jurors won't gloss over it or accept defense arguments that it was concocted.  This works only when victims are treated with dignity, support and compassion. Thankfully, it's also the right thing to do.

3. Appeal to common sense and fight myths.  The defense's strategy is to appeal to oft-cited but baseless myths. They'll suggest Mike McQueary didn't see a child being raped because he didn't intervene. But the idea that even most of us would intervene in a situation like that is preposterous. It's tempting to say "I would have beaten Sandusky and saved the boy," but the fact is none of us know how we'll react until we face a traumatic event. Ask any combat veteran.

They'll suggest the kids McQueary and the custodian before him saw being raped don't exist because they haven't come forward. Nonsense- very few child victims ever report, and if the children in question are aware of the case and haven't come forward, it's for common sense reasons. They'll suggest the victims are lying for a civil payoff, or because they are "troubled." Garbage. "Troubled" is why Sandusky targeted them through Second Mile- they were less likely to report or be believed.  The idea that its typical for individuals to falsify allegations and endure the the process of criminal litigation for money or spite is baseless.  It almost never happens, least of all in male on male cases. Finally, to suggest that three high ranking officials at PSU would never have acted as they did when facing allegations that threaten the football program is laughable.

4. Corroboration.  This is not a "he said-she said" case; indeed, any good sex crimes prosecutor knows there is no such thing. As a mentor Victor Vieth taught me years ago, there is always corroboration if investigators and prosecutors are willing to think creatively and then dig for it. Witness' memories- when the witnesses are handled correctly- are goldmines of information that can be independently verified. In any event, victims are carrying enough of a burden during the litigation process. No case should rest solely on the testimony of a victim; this is unnecessary and the sign of a sloppy, lazy prosecution.

5. Point. While I wish I could say I learned this on the job, I read it in Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent long before I had a law degree. In it, Turow's protagonist describes a whiskey-breathing, grizzled vet of an ADA who suggested it to him. I never failed to implement it. Point at the defendant when you make your opening statement and your closing argument. Point at him, look him in the eye, and approach as far as the judge will allow. "If you don't have the courage to point, you can't expect them to have the courage to convict."

Godspeed, Mr. McGattigan and team.

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion) www.rogercanaff.com

The Fantasy of the Dragon Tattoo

by Roger Canaff

The suffering, revenge and eventual triumph of Rooney Mara’s character in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo over institutionalized rape is something that stands out even as a minor subplot in a fairly complicated film. And what she is able to accomplish against her abuser is nothing short of fantastic in the traditional sense of the word: It is the product of fantasy. Tragically, for untold numbers of victims placed in the situation that Rooney’s character, Lisbeth Salander is, fantasy must suffice.

I use the term “institutionalized rape” because that’s how I view what happened to the character of Salander, a legally incompetent ward of the state deemed mentally unstable. She is subjected to sexual torture by a predatory bureaucrat who controls her finances after her legal guardian suffers a stroke. He withholds money for essentials like food and electricity, releasing funds only when she endures sexual acts. Eventually he demands that she come to his home where he anally rapes her while she is strapped to a bed.

As the predator discovers, however, Salander is not what she appears to be, which is the “typical” helpless victim. Instead she is a computer genius armed with a photographic memory, intense athletic prowess, and an iron will. She has the wherewithal to secretly film herself being raped, and eventually uses that evidence to not only control the predator’s actions toward her, but also to effectively paralyze him from harming other similarly situated women and girls in his sphere of control. But not until brutalizing him justly and branding him a rapist with crude tattoos across his ample mid-section.

In short, she is a rightful, rageful hero to women and children everywhere who have experienced that kind of abuse. And believe me, abuse at the hands of a protected cog in a monolithic institutional wheel is abuse that is grossly under reported and almost never vindicated.

I suspect that what Salander endures at the hands of the all-powerful authority who holds the keys to her very survival is even more impactful in the context of a social democracy like Sweden where the state intrudes further into everyday life than it does in the U.S. Regardless, what she suffers is time-honored and sickeningly resilient despite reforms and efforts to eliminate it. Across the globe and in every possible arrangement of human organization, predators seek, find and feed.

The reason is simple. Predators infiltrate the institutions that provide them power to predate and victimize. It’s true that power corrupts, but more importantly, it attracts. Power attracts predators who will seek it as a catalyst to get the things they want. If what they want is sexual control over others, they’ll infiltrate the institutions society creates that will allow for such abuses. There is no shortage of them.

What’s wonderful and dreamlike about Lisbeth Salander is that she embodies the intoxicating if mostly fanciful notion that resourcefulness, brilliance and brutal determination can turn the tables on a powerful predator and render him limp and lame. Sadly, for most, it is only a dream.

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion) www.rogercanaff.com

 

 

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“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

by Roger Canaff

For decades and maybe longer, gun rights enthusiasts have sought to end the gun control argument with the following statement:   “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

This is technically true.  It is also meaningless.

Of course, guns don’t kill.  And pencils don’t make spelling errors. So what?

Not a single assassin of a United States president has accomplished altering history by being a terrific knife wielder. James Earl Ray did not end the blessed life of Martin Luther King with a slingshot. John Lennon was not felled by a punch. James Brady would not have gone from a dynamic, affable new press secretary to a man still struggling with a disability had his attacker approached the side entrance of the Washington Hilton in 1981 with a baseball bat.

It’s also true that guns don’t have mystical powers over the human mind, seducing to reality their own use. Again, so what?  It is undeniably true- and frankly common sense- that killing is more likely to happen when a loaded gun is within easy reach of a person familiar with its use. Police officers take their lives in greater numbers, it is believed by experts, at least in part because of the ready presence of guns. We in the anti-violence world know well that access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner murder around five fold.

No, this isn’t because guns in these homes suddenly come alive like brooms in a Disney movie, begging to be used.

It’s because the handgun is an object as perfectly designed for killing other humans as a chess board is for chess. The opposable thumb and its meaty base folds securely around the grip. The index finger- the one we control with far greater dexterity than any other- slides against the trigger like a key in a lock. Propelling death at hundreds of feet per second is now a squeeze away. For millennia, killing was by necessity a contact sport. Beating, strangling, stabbing and other forms of inter-personal violence required a victim, in most cases, no further than arm’s length away. Guns changed all of that. Now death could be dealt from a distance, both physically and- inexorably- emotionally.

But handguns reduced it to little more than the dexterity and strength required to snap one’s fingers.

George Zimmerman, the apparent shooter of Trayvon Martin, carried a snub-nose 9mm pistol, very simple in operation and something my Virginia friends growing up would have called a “belly gun.” Five pounds of pressure are required to fire the thing and rip apart human tissue like hamburger. To maim. To paralyze. To kill.  To alter not one life, but dozens and who knows how many more in the web that contains us all. If Trayvon Martin was to cure a disease, build an empire, or simply live happily and productively in the glow of his family’s love, we’ll never know. A compact, death-black device with a five pound trigger wiped that out like sunset does the day.

In Zimmerman’s shooting hand, I have no doubt it rested like a calming infant’s rattle.

Whether Zimmerman was remotely justified in using it is, apparently, still unknown.  Was the child he killed truly an aggressor, or was it just the combination of the hoodie and the young man’s skin that prompted Zimmerman in some hateful, idiotic flash to provoke a confrontation and then create the “need” to kill?  Zimmerman’s own ethnic background seems to be relevant to some, complicated apparently by his being not black but not quite white either. Personally I find the juxtaposition of skin color in this case to be gasoline on an already raging fire. But the reality of how Trayvon’s skin color likely did lead to his death is impossible to ignore. I cannot blame the millions out there who refuse to do so.

But for me, and for now, the misery of this situation comes down mostly to the demonic presence of a handgun in the hands of a pathetic rogue or worse. Zimmerman is by all appearances a character police officers know too well- the community watch vigilante with the itchy trigger finger. Maybe that’s why, for all the gun enthusiasts still defending it, Florida law enforcement officials find the “stand your ground” law pointless bravado waiting to become far, far worse.

Money in the hand of a fool simply disappears. A gun in the same hand changes everything.

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion) www.rogercanaff.com

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Chris, Rihanna, and What We Can Expect Now

by Roger Canaff 

If an adult, even a young one, can be labeled by his actions, Chris Brown is a violent, narcissistic thug. The savage, lengthy beating he inflicted on his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009 earned him a felony conviction, something not particularly common in the world of intimate partner violence. I saw quite a few of those cases as a prosecutor, many of them violent and damaging, but few other than homicides that merited the possibility of a prison sentence. It’s a possibility Brown avoided, but happily so for many adoring fans who still refer to that drawn-out, bludgeoning attack as a “mistake.”

Since that mistake, Brown has shown again and again an explosive, boundary-bereft side and a frightening inability to even fully control himself.

Now, for whatever reasons she has, Rihanna has chosen to request a relaxation of the protective order she was granted against him, and to collaborate with him musically. Collaboration may be all it is. Or, she may be entertaining a friendship or something more with her attacker, a circumstance often encountered if rarely justified. She was a blameless victim in the pummeling she endured, and since I know nothing of her personally I won’t seek to judge whatever reunification she’s navigating with Chris Brown now.

But I will judge the “Birthday Cake” remix she is releasing and on which Brown joins her, because it’s classless and crass, even by the standards of Rihanna who often objectifies herself sexually in her music. But what makes this first collaboration since Brown’s arrest and conviction far worse is the past that underscores it. What Chris Brown adds to the magic of “Birthday Cake” includes the lines “Girl, I wanna f--- you right now. Been a long time, I’ve been missin’ your body.”

Bravo, Chris! This is far more than an expression of what I suspect are your creative limits or your grasp of subtlety and real sexuality (which I rather enjoy, although I find it resonates more when it isn’t reduced to the sputtering of a worked-up child). It’s also a window into how you likely viewed this woman before you viewed her as a punching bag. She’s a toy as far as you’re concerned, and that’s how you want to treat her. First sexually. Then violently. Then sexually again.

Take a wild guess, dear reader, as to whether a pattern is forming here. 

Lewdness in pop music is a fact of modern life. Many would criticize Rihanna for the overt sexuality she injects into her music and speculate darkly from it on how she views herself. I won’t. Frankly, she has the right to engage her sexuality in any way she sees fit and I won’t impose my model or that of anyone else in an effort to judge her. What she does artistically and how it might affect the millions of girls who look up to her is best discussed elsewhere.

For now, what’s clear is that Rihanna, a beautiful and talented young woman, was beaten- breathtakingly- by a man who now joins her in a song in which he celebrates the idea using her like a plastic doll. That’s wrong on more than one level. Unfortunately, I doubt either of them have a clue.

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion) www.rogercanaff.com

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Vulnerabilty, Danger, and Blame

By Roger Canaff

“There is no vulnerability without danger.” Veronique Nicole Valliere, Psy.D.

It’s a simple and brilliant truth, introduced to me at a sex assault prosecution training in 2009. The doc was discussing how we blame women (and men) who are sexually assaulted, particularly when their choices leading up to the attack make them, in most minds, “more vulnerable.” Like when they drink too much, or when they go home with a man they don’t know well. And so on.

When I heard it, I nodded sagely. Sure, I believed in what I called “rape prevention,” and felt that everyone needed to take some responsibility for their own personal safety. But that’s all. I wasn’t anywhere near victim blaming. Because I was too smart for that. Too enlightened. Too smugly ensconced as one of the more influential sex assault prosecution experts nationwide. So naturally, I understood her perfectly.

Except that I didn’t. Because I was victim blaming, even though I told myself I wasn’t. And in buying into the kind of “rape prevention” I believed in, I was a part of the problem. Many of us, most with the best of intentions, still are.

The ad above from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (now pulled) sparked a debate in feminist circles. The ad itself wasn’t the issue; most agreed it was offensive. Visually it sexualized violence, right down to the blue underwear around the seductively placed ankles matching the tile on the floor. That’s not a representation of the aftermath of a felony. It’s wanna-be pornography. And of course, it callously blamed both the curled up, naughty-girl and her irresponsible friends for not preventing the rape she apparently endured. No mention of the rapist.

But while the attempt was botched, the underlying message begged a question: Shouldn’t we warn girls and women about the dangers of losing control, and thus “becoming vulnerable?” Isn’t it simply a dangerous world, like it or not? Of course it is and of course we should, went the argument. It was a bold one apparently, expectant of a backlash from uber-feminist PC police who would label it victim blaming even though the goal was simply to “reduce vulnerability.” When the backlash came, I initially sided against it. I had seen a career’s worth of victimization- how could I not encourage safe behavior myself, in the name of reducing vulnerability? Because vulnerability invites danger. Right?

Wrong.

Go back to the statement at the top of the page. Vulnerability does not exist unless danger is present. Choices, however reckless they appear, do not create danger anymore than liquor creates rape in a man who is not a rapist. Danger exists because of the choices dangerous people- rapists, in this case- make. From this reality, two others flow: First, encouraging young people (the most at-risk population, male or female) to avoid victimization through more responsible behavior will not prevent a single rape, as author Jaclyn Friedman points out in her piece on the subject. Rape is never an accident, and it’s almost always a planned attack. The rapist who cannot target the “better-behaved” woman will find one who isn’t. So there won’t be less rape, just rape of perhaps different people. Of course, the predictable rejoinder is “well my daughter won’t be the targeted person, then.” Game, set, match. Admonish away.

Except that she might be regardless, which is the second reality that results from Dr. Valliere’s observation. The woman who believes she is safer because she’s avoiding something like heavy drinking might well be safer to a particular kind of attack. But there are many others, and being lulled into a false sense of security because of the avoidance of one behavior will likely blind her to the danger that can exist under the most responsible appearing of circumstances. Women are raped by trusted friends. They’re raped during the daytime while studying or just listening to music with known, clean-cut, well-regarded men in their communities, on their campuses, from their churches. Alcohol is extremely helpful to acquaintance rapists. But it is hardly their only tool.

Youth involves blind spots, but regardless of age, risk-taking is at bottom the essence of life. There is no elimination of it short of solitary confinement. What we must do is grasp that vulnerability exists only when danger is present, and turn the focus rightly on the dangerous and away from the endangered.

Because when we create rules, particularly ones laced with moral superiority in order to somehow deliver us from evil, we then distance ourselves from those who break them. When those people are victimized, we rest easy, believing that our wisdom and temperance saved us. But there are always more rules, both to make and to break. In the end, all that rule making accomplishes is the encouragement of an insidious urge to will to life something other than luck separating us from the unlucky. So we’ll draw attention to the choices the rule breakers made that we wouldn’t make. And we’ll blame them for theirs.

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion) www.rogercanaff.com

At the University of Vermont: A Brother With a Problem

Roger A. Canaff 

It’s really not a secret: I have a pretty strong 'anima' or feminine side. 

I don’t resent it. I think it’s made me a much more effective special victims prosecutor over the years. And in any event it’s who I am. My closest circle of male friends will readily confirm that I navigate those friendships more as if I were a spouse or partner than any sort of a “guy’s guy.” That can be frustrating for everyone involved. And of course, I have my professionally inspired inferences, which should and do make me more sensitive to things like rape culture, male privilege, and other issues faced by women and girls in ways that most men really can’t imagine. So yeah- I’m something of a woman trapped in man's body if you’re going to buy into a lot of generalizations about how women think and react, and what it means to be emotionally “feminine.”

So be it. Nevertheless, I’m a straight guy and generally typical where sexual fantasizing is concerned. So shameful or not, tasteless or not, over the years and at every social stage of my life, I'll readily admit that I’ve taken some part in the game of “Hey man, who would you sleep with in [insert environment here]?”

And believe me, it can be any environment. And it is every environment, at least where members of the opposite sex are even remotely observable. A high school Spanish class. A summer camp. A basic training unit, an introductory psychology course, the 5th floor of a dorm, an office mail room, the accounting department, the DNA lab, etc, etc, etc. 

Yes, it’s tawdry. And utterly pointless. Regardless, it’s what men do. Gay men do it as well, and sometimes in mixed groups we’ll all play the game, with the gay guys making their own considered judgments about men, and often commenting with high degrees of validity on women as well.

For most of us, this stupid tradition begins innocently, scattered across that late elementary to middle or junior high school period where girls become suddenly and then perpetually interesting (and of course, for homosexual boys it really can’t begin until they find themselves in much more progressive environments then the kind I came up in). So it might start in 5th grade or thereabouts with “who would you want to see without her clothes on?” But it quickly progresses to more imaginative and specific scenarios, and it never really stops. It’s far from angelic, often inaccurate, and always objectifying. It’s wrong and I won’t make excuses for it. 

I’ll also note that, regardless of what I do and who I am or profess to be, I’ve played the game in places that are hardly feminist enclaves. I’ve played it in warehouses, on airport tarmacs and construction sites where I worked for years before entering professional life. I’ve played it in countless police cars, detective squad rooms, bars, diners and alleyways, passing the time for various reasons and waiting for something to happen. I’ve played it with men educated and not, supposedly enlightened and not, gentle and not.

What I’ve never, ever heard in roughly 35 years is any man, anywhere, ask “so if you could rape someone, who would it be?” 

It’s true: That cyber-blessed term “WTF” was honestly coined for such an abomination.

There are variations of this game I will remove myself from or avoid if I detect cruelty or a line I just don’t feel comfortable crossing. But no guy in my experience has ever even approached the idea of rape. Ever. If I could rape someone, who would it be? Even writing that out makes me cringe.

So “WTF” the fraternity brother at the University of Vermont was thinking when he added that to the lets-get-know-each-other ‘new brother questionnaire’ is worth exploring. And I mean between him and a good mental health provider. Because it’s more than just tasteless; it’s downright scary. Perhaps the guy who wrote this and anyone else at this chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon who deemed it acceptable is just remarkably awkward and clumsy with word choice. But I’ll vote for disordered. The word “rape” is one of the ugliest in our language. It’s mono-syllabic, blunt, and shocking. It’s supposed to be. While it usually doesn’t involve these things, it conjures in most minds gratuitous violence, torn clothing, screaming, and injury. It at least evokes- as it should- terror and a life-altering, shattering experience of trauma on the part of the victim. So how it could be in any way confused with the desire to engage with someone sexually is beyond me. There are psychological and legal terms for men who only or primarily respond to non-consensual sexual situations. If that’s the case with the questionnaire author or authors, then those who share their environment should know about it.

I'm glad that (at least) there's been a tremendous backlash at UVM and an appropriate student response to the leaked document. I hope this gratifying response lingers after the dust settles, and that male and female students in this well-loved college environment continue to reject the idea of anything like this in their midst. Because it’s more than just disgusting. It’s dangerous. 

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion) www.rogercanaff.com

Tough Job, Tougher Women

photo courtesy of Holy Cross Hospital, Taos, NM

By Roger A. Canaff 

Sue Rotolo’s eyes are the first thing you’ll notice about her; they are almost impossibly blue, and glow lightly beneath red hair. Her smile is easy and warm, and she has an enviable air of serenity, whether in the presence of an eight year-old rape victim about to be forensically examined or an aggressive attorney attempting to lock her down on cross examination.

It’s a good thing. That Zen-like calmness serves her well. In the clinic, her job as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (with the odd acronym SANE) is to treat patients who are victims of sexual violence. In the courtroom, she testifies as an expert to what she observed and what it might mean legally. Ask her which job is more difficult and she’ll likely tell you the courtroom; it’s less predictable and more brutal. It’s at times a tongue in cheek response, but it’s no less true even if a little bit funny.

Rape, after all, doesn’t usually happen between 9 and 5 weekdays. SANEs are torn from their beds, their loved ones and their lives to provide hands-on care to people suffering some of the worst trauma imaginable. It happens in every combination of off hours, holidays, weather and traffic. In the crush and tangle of Northern Virginia where I learned from Sue the business of forensic nursing, a trip to Inova Fairfax Hospital can take hours from two towns over in the wrong circumstances. The patients are at times tragically young or old (Sue’s youngest was about three months). Some are combative, some intoxicated. Some giggle. Some beg for relief from any number of things that haunt them, real and imagined. Sue, and the nurses who work for her, see them all.

And nevertheless, it’s us, the lawyers, who create the ultimate crucible for a woman in Sue’s crew who wants to be a SANE. It’s the contact sport of criminal litigation- often at its most bitter and belligerent in cases of sexual assault- that drives many hopeful forensic nurses out of the business. Attorneys often treat them, because they’re “just nurses,” with far less than the respect they merit (most doctors, unless they specialize in forensics, are much less valuable on the stand in a rape case than an experienced SANE). They’re attacked mercilessly for being everything from sorority-like “little sisters” of the police and prosecution to man-hating zealots or glorified candy-stripers. Every cruel and gender-based stereotype that can be slung at them from the male dominated world of trial law is done so. The successful ones realize early on that testifying is yet another skill- completely discrete from anything else one does as a nurse- that must be mastered in order to survive. Sue has one iron rule- no crying on the witness stand. I worked directly with her nurses for years and never saw it broken, even when I knew I’d have been reduced to sobs had I been where they were.

The ones who do survive the process make healing differences in the lives of their patients few will ever match. Rape has always been difficult to report, but prior to SANE programs (an adjunct of the woman’s and victims movements of a generation ago) it was at times tantamount to a re-victimization. Victims waited for hours, triaged behind whatever nightmares took precedence in the ER they found their way to. Many physicians were unable or barely willing to conduct the examinations both for treatment and possible evidence collection, and they wanted no part of the legal process. Victims were judged, ignored or even threatened with arrest depending on how they presented. It was more than wrong, more than something that worsened experiences and deepened the pain. It also killed cases and drove victims underground. That allowed attackers to escape justice and rape again; most rapists don’t stop at one.

The idea of SANE programs is to specially train nurses to treat and examine patients whose chief complaint is sexual assault, and to evaluate the body as a crime scene, collecting potential evidence for investigation and trial. As an invaluable plus, the exams are conducted in a safe, private and dignified setting where the person at the center of the case can begin to heal, and regroup. With the help of victim advocates who provide the emotional support and ties to other services they need, the process, when it’s done right, produces a better, stronger witness for us and a sex assault survivor with a fighting chance at looking at life at least similarly to how she did before.

It’s still an evolving process, and I’ve been blessed to work with some of the finest women I’ve ever known in the building and sustaining of the programs and their interaction with the legal system. From Jen Markowitz in Ohio, Eileen Allen in New Jersey, Tara Henry in Alaska, Pat Speck in Tennessee, Jen Pierce-Weeks in New Hampshire, Jacqui Calliari in Wisconsin, Diana Faugno in California, Elise Turner in Mississippi, Linda Ledray in Minnesota, Karen Carroll in New York and dozens of others, I’ve learned more about the relevant anatomy and reproductive health then I ever thought possible, and we’ve broken bread and self-medicated together in more places than I can remember.

But it was Sue, with her bright eyes, warm smile and unflappable mien who taught me with plain speech how to drop my blushes, learn the anatomy, pronounce the terms, protect the truth through her testimony, and do my job.

What Sue has done literally thousands of times is probably best exemplified by a story she sometimes relates in training regarding an eight year-old girl who had been sexually abused by a family member. After being examined by Sue in an invasive but tender and careful manner, the child asked her how bad she looked inside now that she had been made bad by what had happened to her.

“Honey,” Sue said, “you are perfect inside. And you’re perfect outside.”

That child may forget the lawyers, the judges, the police officers and the numbing, contentious process that played out above her. She will never forget the abuse. But God willing, she also won’t forget the blue-eyed lady with the stethoscope; the one who reminded her of the most important thing of all.

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.

Roger Canaff: Anti-Violence Advocate, Child Protection Specialist, Legal Expert
Blog: WCSV (Women, Children, Sex, Violence: Outcry, Analysis, Discussion)
www.rogercanaff.com

Judge William Adams, A Camera, and the Power of Light

By Roger A. Canaff, JD 

Roughly 2000 years ago an itinerant rabbi gave a sermon about light. The right thing to do with a lamp, said the rabbi, was to let it shine, not put it under a basket. That made sense in a time where light after sunset was a luxury; hence the parable. And of course, in the spirit of parables, there are other forms of light, and other functions for what we know as light. Light illuminates, and in so doing exposes.

In 2004, a remarkable young woman with a disability shined a light in the form of a video camera on the pathology, hatefulness and pure evil of a man who, until recently, had been a sitting judge in Texas. The video shows him, her father, beating her with a belt in a breathtakingly brutal way, over seven interminable minutes.

I am using words like “pathology” and “evil” distinctly, although as the study of psychology evolves, the difference between what we might call mental illness and what we have historically called evil are blurring in ways that make people like me- prosecutors, and arbiters of legal blame- uncomfortable. But for now, I’m comfortable, perhaps recklessly so, with discussing the two separately. I believe the man is probably sick. I also believe he’s evil.

Millions have seen the video. Millions more, thanks in part to the appropriate “trigger” warnings that have been associated with it, have demurred. I watched every second of it, and more than once. The video’s subject is my job, after all; I have seen things far worse, but in many ways I haven’t seen anything quite as naked and telling as this. Because sometimes it takes a camera in the right place at the right time to truly expose what lies beneath far more facades of normalcy than most of us understand. A camera won’t flinch. It won’t turn away. It will simply record with passive silence, and in situations like this one perhaps its growing ubiquity in our lives is a positive thing. After all, it allowed a 16 year-old Hillary Adams to preserve something that is simply unbelievable to many- that a respected member of the judicial bench, a smiling, reasonable looking man, would nevertheless be capable of a vicious beating laced with profanity against a young girl with cerebral palsy.

You see, I have prosecuted and assisted with hundreds of cases where I knew the truth, but also feared I’d never be able to infuse a jury with the courage to convict. I never had proof like the kind Hillary possessed; the kind she had the wherewithal and technology to create. And so doubt would creep in at the edges, doubt fueled by myths that protect men like William Adams and his now estranged wife. Myths that whisper that couples like the Adams’ aren’t the types who could hurt a disabled child that way. Myths that education, privilege, community stature, the genetic accident of white skin, and other niceties can’t co-exist with methodological torture and wanton cruelty. Myths like the one William Adams is selling right now, that the issue was really “discipline” and that what the video shows “looks worse than it is.”

Ah, but then sometimes, in blessed fashion, a camera shatters the myths; a camera placed by an intelligent and desperate child who has learned, as many family violence survivors do, to predict the escalation of hostilities that leads to violence.

So the video depicts exactly what occurred; it was Judge William Adams, community leader, outwardly decent parent, arbiter of justice, ripping into his child’s body with a lustful but eerily calm exuberance, armed with a leather strap. It was this man, uttering the word “f—king,” 14 times as he did so.

It was also Hillary’s mother, Hallie, whose participation was less violent but no less sickening. I’m glad that she has repaired her relationship with her daughter, and that Hillary has forgiven her. She’ll get nothing from me. I understand that I am running afoul of many domestic violence experts who maintain that a battered woman can be rendered powerless over years of brainwashing and abuse to where her own violence or failure to protect her children cannot be attributed to her in terms of blame. I am sympathetic to the dynamics that exist, and attribute the lion’s share of the blame to William Adams, where it belongs. But I draw the line on anyone who fails to protect their own children, regardless of what they are facing in another relationship. Hallie Adams’ explanation on Today was, to me, less than impressive. She calmly deflected blame by claiming victimhood herself and assigning an addiction to William. I’m sure this is accurate, but it doesn’t give her a pass where I’m concerned. She’s clearly not the primary abuser in the nightmare world Hillary navigated for so long. But she made choices that I cannot abide, and one of them was graphically showcased on this video with its own dose of profanity.

A five-year statute of limitations will likely protect both from criminal prosecution. Adams’ judicial career might be over, which would perhaps be the most just event he’s been witness to since that career began. There are many other ways to look at this case, Hillary’s courage and healing, and also the response to the video as Hillary is launched into a temporary but bright public spotlight. I wish nothing more than for her to live a full and happy life unencumbered by the evil visited upon her.

For me, though, the deepest value of what Hillary did by placing a running camera on her dresser and a scarf over the tell-tale blinking red light, was to allow a robotic, impassive eye to simply witness what far too many believe to be impossible. My friend and colleague Anne Munch once told me the story of a police chief in a small, idyllic Colorado town who was asked a typical ‘softball’ question by a reporter: “So, is this town a safe place to live?”

Rather than giving the pat and expected answer, the wise chief apparently looked at the reporter evenly and said what I believe might be the most plainly accurate thing that can be said about literally any locality on the globe.

“It depends on who you live with.”

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.  Visit Roger's website:  www.rogercanaff.com

The Seebergs Gain Ground: Thank God

By Roger A. Canaff, JD

Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg passed to the next life on September 10, 2010, a little more than a year ago. I did not know her. Readers of this space, however, know that I was profoundly touched by her life, her death, her courage, and finally the courage of her parents as 9/10/10, for them, bled brutally into the following fall and winter.

For the Seebergs, last fall was not a typical one for a Roman Catholic, Chicagoland family with multi-generational ties to Notre Dame du Lac and St. Mary’s. There was no warm delight in the football schedule, the changing of the seasons, or the approach of the holidays.  Instead it was a dark struggle in the wake of a nightmare with a suddenly impenetrable bureaucracy that was the Notre Dame administration. Since I and others have described them before, I won’t recount here the missteps I believe Notre Dame took, both with the investigation of Lizzy’s attack and with its interpretation of federal privacy laws. Suffice to say the Seebergs, already dealing with the worst nightmare any parent could face, were met largely with incompetence and then obstruction where her attack and death were concerned.

However, their resolve yielded some progress earlier this year when Notre Dame agreed to significant reforms in its response to sexual violence after an investigation by the Department of Education (DoE) in the wake of Lizzy’s death.

And beyond Notre Dame, hope also sprung forth in the form of DoE policy with the publication of an April, 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter from Russlyn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education.  The bottom line is that just about every U.S. public or private institute of higher learning relies on federal funding for various parts of its mission. The DoE Office of Civil Rights is empowered to condition receipt of federal dollars on meeting certain standards of protection for students at risk for discrimination. The office considers sexual harassment and assault to fall under that category.  The letter outlines several things colleges need to do in order to be in compliance with best practices where the response to sexual violence is concerned. Examples are things like preventing offenders from personally cross-examining victims in non-legal disciplinary hearings, and requiring a preponderance standard in determining the outcome. These things are hardly revolutionary or anti-due process.

Nevertheless, a backlash has arisen from various pundits who see these measures as some sort of perverse manifestation of political correctness that threatens to derail some precious and flowering aspect of adolescent college life.

One commentator, Sandy Hingston, unsurprisingly a romance novelist, tragically conflates the sexual exploration of adolescence with rape. She harkens back to what were apparently her and her counterparts’ own experiences of awkwardly waking up with boys in compromising situations and just not making a big deal of it. To the extent that such consensual liaisons happen, she’s correct- a big deal shouldn’t be made of it.

But here’s the rub: It isn’t.

Those awkward, fuzzy situations continue to occur every night in college life- more so now than then.  But they almost never produce complaints of rape, and nothing in the DoE’s guidance will change that. The fact is, most women and men who are clearly sexually violated in liquor-fueled, late-night encounters do not wake up and cry rape, let alone what victims of murkier situations do. The over-riding response to being violated sexually is to blame oneself and say nothing, and that will not quickly change. The DoE guidelines are simply helping to level the playing field in cases where the violation is clear enough, as in the case of Lizzy Seeberg, where an outcry is not only just, but necessary to the security of the campus and all of the students on it.

But this is lost on commentators who type with panicked fingers about how these changes will surely quell romance, stunt the college experience, and lead to the rounding up of men and permanent victim-hood of women.

Nonsense. This is argument in a bubble, utterly unschooled or unaware of how sexual violence actually occurs between people in the real world. Another commentator, Peter Berkowtiz, wonders aloud in the Wall Street Journal which campus leaders will come forward to challenge this new, frightening world order. Among others, he entreats literature professors to instruct that “particularly where erotic desire is involved, intentions can be obscure, passions conflicting, the heart murky and the soul divided.”

Really? So when a woman (or a man) is trembling in a strange bed, or stumbling, half-dressed from a backseat or a back room with the dawning horror of having been sexually assaulted, what she must first do is consider the divided and murky nature of her passionate soul?

Both commentators can be forgiven for naiveté, but neither have a clue what sexual violence really looks like.  The reality is, when complaints are made- or even contemplated- it’s almost never a close call.  It’s almost never a gray area.  Despite the musings of Mr. Berkowitz and others, sexual violence isn’t simply an unfair moniker for the complicated, erotic interplay of Rhett, Scarlett and a swollen, harvest moon in a sultry, starlit sky. It’s really much more banal, blunt, and evil than that. When it happens, and it does, it needs to be dealt with competently and fairly.

Competence and fairness. That’s what Lizzy Seeberg needed, and in large part what she was denied. That’s why her parents fight on, not for Lizzy now, but lovingly in her memory and valiantly for the millions of women they know will face what she faced. They could have been easily forgiven for shutting down and tuning out after the loss of the light in their lives, yet they are doing neither. Their angel is gone from this life, but they are not content with waiting to see her in the next. They are fighting to protect the angels of others who will wander onto campuses and into situations unmistakable in their criminality and deserving of a realistic, healing, and just response. The DoE’s efforts and its hard look at Notre Dame are a product of that fight. Both are welcome steps toward a better world.


A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.  Visit Roger's website:  www.rogercanaff.com