An 18-year old girl from Auckland has accused four players of the England rugby union team of raping her, and the team has gone into victim-blaming overdrive.
But what has since followed that night at the Hilton is a mountain of suspicion about the woman's intent and an insane thought from the football union's chief, Francis Baron, that this has all been a "sting". Yes, a plot by the "bitter" All Blacks to bring down English rugby....The British paper The Independent said those insiders believed the allegations of rape after the first Test in Auckland were "designed to destabilise" England. "If there had been any substance in the case it should have been dealt with," a Twickenham official said. "The whole episode has been unsatisfactory, but you have to remember that New Zealand are still bitter with us over their exit from the World Cup." (Emphasis mine)
Ri-ight. It's amazing how this young woman has been completely erased and dehumanized - she's just part of a larger plan to bring down a team, she was a willing participant, a groupie, a liar. I'm just so sick of it.
Jessica Halloran, who penned the above article about the case, notes that in the past decade, all English soccer players who have had sexual assault allegations made against them have had the charges dropped. And for the past 28 years, "not one professional footballer from any major Australian football code has been convicted of sexual assault." And something tells me it's not because they're all innocent.
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"not one professional footballer from any major Australian football code has been convicted of sexual assault."
Eww that is just plain creepy. There is no way that is just a coincidence.
On a completely different note, will the new website be re-launching soon?
"not one professional footballer from any major Australian football code has been convicted of sexual assault."
I bet this is because most plaintiffs/victims know they'll never win the case because professional footballers/rugby players have money and the court will naturally assume that the victim is lying (because of the money involved?)
Which may be the case sometimes, but still. I'm not speaking on the case or the victime but seriously? An attack by the All-Blacks? English rugby should be ashamed of themselves.
Manly-man men who play manly-man men sport like football (of whatever code) can't possibly rape women. They're manly-man men! Women can't but help swoon in their presence, and wantonly offer any and all sexual favours.
Any woman who claims she was raped must obviously be an evil feminist who hates manly-man men. But even feminists can't help themselves, and begin to swoon in manly-man men's presence. And that's how the All Blacks were able get an evil feminist to cry rape. It's pheromones, you see. Can't deny science.
/idiocy
Sexual-assault and rape by football 'stars' is an issue that occasionally gets some media coverage, but most of what happens I have no doubt is covered up. If a football team has had a bad run in the media with such reports, they'll dutifully bring in someone to give a talk to the players about respecting women, and everything is fine again.
Except it's not.
Because manly-man men will be manly-man men after all. And that's what public relations officers are for.
I don't know if you have this in the US, but here in the UK we have a whole new word for gangrape by footballers: roasting!
Not only is it impossible for sports stars to commit rape, there's not even a possibility - it's just a roasting...
I read a magazine story about a young girl who was gang raped at knife point by a footballer and his friends. He was convicted for it (he wasn't quite a professional footballer as he was on the U18s squad, hence not fitting in to the statistics). The headline? "I was roasted by a football star!"
Sorry to be a pedant, but do you know that int he UK Soccer and Rugby are two different sports? It wasn't clear from the article, to me at least. But then again I've ahd a really long day.
The two sports have different reputations in the UK, and on gut instinct, I'd trust rugby players less. I have no doubt that these players did it and I have no doubt they'll get off scot free. Bastards.
This seems especially disturbing considering that only about %5 of rape cases in the UK end in a conviction. According to some survey data I looked at, a lot of the British population (more than in the US at least) believe that a woman is at least partially at fault if she is raped. Apparently the media aren't doing a whole lot to combat that attitude. This is absolutley ridiculous and I hope that someone can bring these men to justice.
I read the whole article to see if the comments were meant to be funny (they weren't, and even if they were, it's still not funny to joke about it), since I've heard that the All Blacks are choke artists. At least the Halloran criticized the idiocy of this whole thing. The world hasn't gone completely insane.
And for the past 28 years, "not one professional footballer from any major Australian football code has been convicted of sexual assault." And something tells me it's not because they're all innocent.
As a NZer, I'm a little confused by why this is relevant to New Zealand rugby players. I understand that Australia is sometimes used in the US in place of Australasia or Oceania, to refer to the continent. I think that's what is happening here, when the statistic itself refers to Australia the country - I think several NZ rugby league players (different game from rugby union) have been charged with sexual assault in recent years.
None of that is to make excuses for the situation reported here. It's not only the England rugby team who've minimised the alleged assault. The media in NZ have called the woman a "rugby groupie", accused her of performing lap dances at a bar earlier in the evening and generally ripped her reputation to pieces. It's utterly disgusting, and absolutely no wonder that she has decided not to lay charges with the police. It's almost certain she'd lose her case, given the rates of successful prosecution in sex assault cases here, but only after she'd been dragged through the media wringer and generally castigated thoroughly.
This makes me sad. I can't believe how prevalent victim blaming and rape is. In fact today I had the idea to type "rape" into Facebook's Pieces of Flair search box... there were so many pages, almost all of them rape jokes and victim blaming (things such as "it's not rape. you like it" and "avoid rape: say yes"). I reported all of them. I hope you guys do too.
In addition to being despicable, what the RFU is claiming is also flat-out insane. England didn't eliminate New Zealand from the World Cup; France did.
Moreover, if New Zealand were nursing some grudge against England, is their likeliest means of exacting vengeance some elaborate scheme to entrap English players on rape charges? Or is a more likely revenge, I dunno, thrashing England 37-20 and 44-12 in a two-Test series in which, if anything, the final scorelines don't do justice to how thoroughly the All Blacks out-classed England.
So I mean, misogyny isn't the only pathology at work in the RFU's gambit. More about that here.