Readers here know that I have written extensively about childhood sexual abuse, including how it enters language, both in child interviews and in adult interviews, as well as its life long impact and how language can change over time. I have covered PTSD and sexual abuse for years, showing how the language can reveal, after many years, the ongoing trauma in the life of the victim.
We have even been able to see what a truthful statement looks like 20 years after the rape, in the case of one of Bill Cosby's victims who told the truth about being drugged and raped by Cosby.
Here is a strange and sad account:
A 12 year old female was raped. The rape would prove to do what rape often does: destruction of life.
Back in the 70's, the case was set to go to trial.
The rapist sought out a female attorney, specifically, as he stated that a female attorney would help him in the trial.
The female attorney took the case willingly, as a favor to a friend, who asked her to do so.
The attorney smeared the 12 year old as a seductress and 'won' the case on a technicality of throwing out evidence, forcing a plea and short sentence. It was a victory for the lawyer, who was unafraid of targeting the child victim, herself.
The attorney laughed about her victory, which was captured on tape.
Years went by, and the attorney became a public figure, even running for office, particularly championing "women's rights" in her speeches.
The trial, however, stood out as something that would outrage her supporters. She wrote, about the trial, that she was assigned the case by her boss, and only took it reluctantly, being forced to do so.
The 12 year old victim has suffered for 40 years from the trauma. Upon learning that the attorney that devastated her (and justice) laughed at her, she was asked, "What would you like to say to her?"
This is her statement:
“I would say her, ‘You took a case of mine in ’75, you lied on me. I realize the truth now, the heart of what you’ve done to me. And you are supposed to be for women? You call that for women, what you done to me? And I hear you on tape laughing.”
Dr. Martha Stout, of Harvard, estimates that 4 in 100 people are sociopaths, who can be educated at elite levels, have power and control, yet be incapable of feeling empathy for others. Sociopaths lie. They do not lie as you and I might, politely, regrettable, and then with repentance and change.
They lie.
They fabricate reality to fit their own needs, which exist above the needs of all others, including children, businesses, or anything and anyone else.
The 12 year old victim, now 52 years old, had the pain rekindled when recently discovered tapes were unearthed by media in which the lawyer that smeared her is heard laughing about the case. The victim says that the lawyer lied about her, and "took me through hell."
Here is what the attorney wrote in her affidavit. Note the passivity in language. Passivity can be used to conceal identity or responsibility.
“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing. I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”
She wrote that a psychologist told her, in general terms: "tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences, especially when they come from “disorganized families, such as the complainant.”
The victim said that she had never accused anyone of anything, and that the lawyer did this, and was not required to give any proof of anything. It was used simply to create doubt about a 12 year old child.
The disclosing of the audio tapes revisited pain, re-victimizing the victim as she listened to the female attorney admit that her client "probably did it" and how she bragged about getting the physical evidence that would have convicted him thrown out of court. She is heard laughing about giving her client a polygraph, which he passed, to which she said she forever lost confidence in polygraphy. She is heard saying, "“Oh, he plea bargained. Got him off with time served in the county jail, he’d been in the county jail about two months,”
with the lawyer's affidavit showing that the 12 year old victim, herself, had some culpability in being raped by her client.
The 12 year old did what some very young rape victims do: turned to self destruction, via substance abuse.
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