Gang Rape and Politics

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

A young black woman referred to in court documents as "Jane Doe" filed a report in November of 2024 with the campus police at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, stating that she had been drugged and gang raped by seven young white men at a fraternity party on campus three weeks earlier.  Police investigated and the county prosecuting attorney, after reading a police summary of the case, made a decision not to pursue it.  

The prosecutor made his decision based on a caveat that New York and several other states have in their rape laws which can make it difficult for rape victims to seek justice if they had been voluntarily taking drugs or drinking before the assault occurred - which had reportedly happened in Jane Doe's case.  In rejecting the case, and also declining to present it to a grand jury, the country prosecutor was critical of the actions of the frat bros without calling their actions "criminal."

He said, in an interview:

"The young men who engaged in that conduct were morally wrong.  It was disgusting, and she reported that to the police, and the police investigated it.  That does not mean - if it's morally wrong or disgusting or offensive, all those things - it does not mean that the penal law was violated."

To the university's credit, Cornell took a more serious and proactive view on the matter and instituted a Title IX investigation that resulted in student expulsions and the permanent banning of that fraternity chapter on the university campus.

But the victim did not sit by quietly and let the men who raped her get away with their crime.  She filed a civil suit against her attackers, and campus protests under the banner "I Am Jane Doe" sprang up and spread to other campuses.  

Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governor of New York, was displeased at the prosecutor's inaction on the matter, and she appointed New York's Democratic Attorney General, Letitia James, to review the case.  The visibility and the stakes of the crimes were increasing, and the heat was rising.

(One of the "Cornell 7" has reportedly moved overseas to Dubai where he has family.)

The appointment of Letitia James to oversee a review of the case triggered Donald Trump - and Trump, who has no brakes or filters, charged right in.

(Letitia James had publicly referred to Trump as a "con man" and a  "carnival barker" during her campaign for attorney general of New York in 2018.  After being elected to that office, Letitia James sued the Trump administration 66 times during the final two years of his first term in office, and she sued and and oversaw the dissolution of the Trump Foundation over allegations of misusing charitable funds.)

Not only was James a very capable attorney who had interfered with Trump's political administration and his personal business (strike one), she was also female (strike two), and black (strike three) - and there was no way Donald Trump was going to stand idly by while a group of fine young men from good families were being persecuted by somebody like her.

Trump quickly went on the record saying that he "feels bad for the Cornell 7"  because they "won't get a fair shake."  At three points during his remarks on the topic he used the word "corrupt" to describe the highly popular and effective attorney general of New York.

To add some context to Trump's quick defense of the "Cornell 7," in 1989 Donald Trump went in the exact opposite direction regarding another accusation of a gang rape.  He took out full page newspaper ads in four New York City newspapers to condemn the "Central Park Five," a group of five young black and Latino men who were accused of raping a young, white female jogger in New York City's Central Park.  Trump's ads called for New York to return to using the death penalty.

(The Central Park Five were convicted in 1990, served twelve years in prison, and finally exonerated in 2002 when another man confessed to the crime.  If Donald Trump had his way, they would have been fried like bacon at Sing Sing years before that  exculpatory confession emerged.)

Again, there were those very troubling elements of race and privilege, things which seem to shape Donald Trump's view of the world.

Kudos to Governor Kathy Hochul and the state of New York for keeping the case of Jane Doe alive.  True justice will not be achieved in America until race and privilege no longer impact our lives.  That's not going to happen under Trump, but someday . . .