Soooo.... the difficult topic floating around the Canadian political world today is about the Rehtaeh Parsons case. (Longish)
|
Refresher:
Two years ago, then 15-year old Parsons was possibly gang-raped by four boys at a drinking party. One took a picture that made the rounds at school, much mocking and bullying took place, poor girl suffers. She tried to hang herself earlier this month, failed, but had so much brain damage that when taken off of life support, she quickly died. Police had investigated, but never made charges, which infuriated people at the time of Parsons' death, to the point where Anonymous got involved and threatened to out the boys if the RCMP didn't get involved again. Anonymous backed off the threat, but the case was also re-opened, though the hunch was always that it was only done so for political reasons.
New Information:
A story today came out, citing anonymous police sources, that the evidence was never conclusive that there was a rape (ie, non-consensual) and there was a friend of Parsons' who said that she was drunk, but a willing participant at a number of instances where the witness saw - and the witness had even tried to get her to leave the party to no avail. The picture turned out to be one where there was no faces and maybe not even sex - it was of the male waist pressed up against the naked buttocks of someone with his or her head out the window, assumed to be Parsons, even by Parsons herself, though the photo doesn't show that. Finally, comments made by Parsons to friends immediately afterward seemed to suggest remorse at her actions, but made no immediate suggestion that it was non-consensual.
The police had run the evidence collected by the Crown Attorneys and everyone decided there was a really low chance of conviction, which is why it appeared that justice went unserved.
The Debate:
1) Does the new info constitute as tearing into the victim, one who cannot respond to the accusations?
2) Does the "He said, she said" situation essentially wash out as a case of "nothing can be proven so nothing can ever possibly be done"?
3) If we still believe that a drunk person cannot give consent for sex once drinking has been established, why the expectation that drunk drivers should "know better" when they've had too much?
Been thinking about these this morning and I am no closer to deciding what I think on all these. Especially as a father of a daughter who will likely end up drunk at parties one day with boys I wouldn't trust to mow my lawn, least of all, look after her.
Thoughts?
|
Responses:
|
Replies are disabled on threads older than 7 days.
|
|
