Something incredible could have happened in the Kobe Bryant Trial if the trial had been allowed to continue. Sadly, preconceived societal prejudices and male driven stereotypes prevented the Kobe Bryant trial from continuing.
The allegation made was that Kobe's accuser/victim had sex soon after her encounter with Kobe. I'm not sure how soon after, but once this information leaked out, all felt it was a matter of time before the trial would be dismissed even before it had officially began.
So I ask, why would it matter if the young women had sex within hours or a day or two of having been raped?
Movie roles depicting rape victims have probably influenced all of us on how we think a rape victim is supposed to act. The women is usually bruised, angry, and usually takes it out on the men in her life as she feels guilty she couldn't fend off the rapist, or angry at her own husband because he's also a man. The end result is the rapist wins a pyrrhic victory over the rape victims life, which will never go back to the way it was before the rape occured.
But in this new day and age, if a women really wanted take back control of her life after being raped, what is the one thing she could legally do to empower herself?
She could have sex...
...and she could have sex as soon as she felt physically and emotionally comfortable doing so. The act of having sex after a rape would not be just to have sex, but for the rape victim to go on with her life completely unintimidated by the previous actions of a rapist.
The sad truth is that men still dominate and instill their opinions and views in the legal arena far too often. Sadder still it took the lead female defense attorney for the defense to send us down the road to a dismissal of the rape charges.
When a women is raped the prevailing societal opinion is that the victim would never quickly bound back into another sexual encounter, but this is merely a bullheaded male dominated viewpoint. The best way to defeat the violent actions from another is to go on with one's life the same as before, unaltered in anyway, acknowledging what happened but not allowing what happened to change one's demeanor in any way.
Society's views on how a rape victim is "supposed" to act could have been challenged and modified if the Kobe Bryant trial had not been dismissed.
Book bound Lawyers and thin skinned Prosecutors couldn't see the brilliance in simply taking the position that this brave women wanted her life back to the way it was, and she wanted it back as soon as possible. Consensual sex helped her get her life back to where it was before the alleged rape, using this reality as a reason to dismiss the case was just plain wrong and anti woman.
Perhaps if just one prosecuting attorney had simply understood the plausibility that a women could be raped and will herself to not let the rape change her demeanor even one iota, we might be having a trial right now.
