A Bittersweet Victory

On March 6, 1983, a woman customer at Big Dan's tavern in New Bedford, Massachusetts, was sexually assaulted and raped by four men. The bartender was prevented from calling for help and made to lock the front doors. Two other male patrons watched and cheered, while another made one unsuccessful attempt to call the police. A ninth man, sleeping in a drunken stupor, awoke once to see what was happening and, too drunk to move, fell back to sleep. The police arrived at the bar with the victim a few hours later to find most of the men still there, seemingly unaware that any crime had been committed.

The incident and the two trials, which led to the conviction of four of the six defendants on March 17 and 22 of this year on charges of aggravated rape, became the focus of national attention. Media coverage, the response of some of the surrounding community, and the tone of the trials themselves made the convictions a bittersweet victory in the struggle to declare rape a violent and criminal act. To those who long for change in public attitudes and judicial policy regarding rape, the New Bedford trials felt something like two strides forward and many small steps backward.

The news story that broke the day after the incident reported that crowds of onlookers cheered while as many as 12 men raped a woman who had come into the bar to buy cigarettes. Apparently that was the police department's first assessment based on the traumatized victim's story. The news received national attention because of the sensational misinformation, and the press has made little effort since then to erase the image of the cheering mob from the public mind.

Superior Court Judge William Young granted television coverage for the trials, and, in areas where they were telecast daily, they competed with soap operas for daytime viewers. Because the trials were telecast live, the woman's name was not deleted from the broadcasts. Two Massachusetts newspapers then began to print her name because, they reasoned, it was already public knowledge. And before millions of viewers on NBC's Today Show, one of the prosecuting attorneys included her name during an interview.

The media that began by decrying the violence ultimately violated the victim by disclosing her identity to the nation. Women's groups in Massachusetts have reported an increased reluctance among rape victims to press charges for fear of becoming nationally known.

The population of New Bedford is 60 percent Portuguese. The six men brought to trial were all Portuguese immigrants. The woman herself, the prosecuting attorney, and a number of the jurors were also Portuguese—as was the bartender, who testified against the defendants in Portuguese because he knew so little English. Many in New Bedford think that the trials and subsequent convictions reflect an anti-Portuguese, anti-immigrant bias. The outcry has caused demonstrations of up to 10,000 people protesting what they consider to be ethnic discrimination and a breach of justice.

While it is difficult to fully understand this response, the issue of rape in this country has always been marked by the fact that ethnic minority men are prosecuted, convicted, and, in the past, executed for rape in numbers out of all proportion to the number of white men who face criminal proceedings for the same crime.

In this particular case, the four convicted men were given sentences ranging from six to 12 years. These are light sentences compared to the life sentences they could have received, but for those of us who have serious questions about the reforming effect of our country's prison system, it is difficult to see anybody sent to jail. The likelihood that these men will come out of prison with an increased propensity toward violence is a sobering thought.

At times during the trials, the defense, the media, and the public acted as though the woman was on trial rather than the six men being prosecuted. The defense lawyers, one of them a woman, did everything they could to bring the victim's virtue into question for the jurors. Despite the scratches on her body and a handprint bruise on her thigh, the lawyers presented a line of defense claiming that the victim consented to the men.

Judge Young, however, representing the clearest step forward in the proceedings, resolutely defeated the argument that "she asked for it." In accordance with state laws, he refused throughout the trial to allow any evidence about the victim's moral character. He also refused, when it came to sentencing, to consider the woman's condition or conduct in the bar to be an excuse for what the four men did. We can take great hope in the fact that in at least some legal minds, the point is clear: if a woman says no and a man persists, she has been raped. The fact that the jurors involved, 19 men and 13 women, after brief deliberation brought verdicts of guilty against four of the defendants indicates that what constitutes rape is clear in the minds of some of the people as well. When telephoned with the news of the final sentencing, the woman who was raped said she felt satisfied, that justice had been done.

While some form of justice has won out, it seems to be within the narrowest possible definition and application of that word. The year-long ordeal of the trials and all that surrounded them, and the continuing upheaval in the victim's life, have been a high price to pay. We can only be grateful to her, and to other rape victims who have vulnerably entered the legal process of prosecution, for paying so dearly for each precious step forward.

Ginny Soley was a member of Sojourners Community and a Sojourners staff coordinator when this article appeared.