Barack Obama may have deemed it a part of “phony culture wars” ginned up by right-wing conspiracy theorists, but the criminal justice system has determined that the alleged rape in a Loudoun County public school restroom was very, very real. The “gender-fluid” boy charged with raping a teenage girl in a Stone Bridge High School girls’ restroom has been convicted on two felony counts — forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio.
Between the county school board’s pathological dishonesty and ineptitude regarding the rape and the prosecutor’s crusade against the victim’s father, the media have every obligation to continue to unpack the scandals still unsurfaced.
So naturally, Justin Jouvenal of the Washington Post found the real story: the sexual history of the 15-year-old victim.
A teen testified she met a classmate for consensual sex in the girls’ bathroom of a Loudoun County high school before, but in a May encounter she was sexually assaulted. New details in the case at the center of a firestorm https://t.co/wON6Y7EpRD
— justin jouvenal (@jjouvenal) October 26, 2021
Despite the clear-cut conviction of the rapist in question, the paper’s so-called “justice reporter” disclosed the victim’s prior sexual history.
Although journalists are not legally held to the same rape shield laws as defense attorneys in a courtroom, it is industry practice not to publicize an alleged rape victim’s sexual history independent of the incident in question, especially when doing so has no meaningful effect on the story in question.
Consent is not like a monthly parking pass. It can be given or withdrawn at any time, and consenting to one form of sexual contact does not provide a blanket pass for any other form of contact or intercourse. This is not a novel concept — it’s the very notion that undergirded the widespread criminalization of spousal rape half a century ago.
Yet the “justice reporter” at one of the most influential newspapers on the planet parroted the sexist and failed strategy of the defense, arguing that one sexual encounter was consensual because the girl, portrayed as a slut, had consented other times before. This evinces zero regard for the harm done to the victim (and future victims) versus the public value that such marginal details provide.
Just to help Jouvenal understand: that the Loudoun County school board allowed a boy awaiting his rape trial to go to another school and allegedly sexually assault another girl is of actual informational value to the public. That the country prosecutor tried to jail the first victim’s father for making a scene over the incident and the subsequent cover-up at a school board meeting is of informational value to the public. That the Biden Justice Department agreed to a letter by the National School Boards Association asking that parents like the victim’s father be treated like domestic terrorists is of informational value to the public.
But this underage victim’s prior sexual history is not of informational value to the public.
