Reflecting on the sexual misconduct allegations against Charlie Rose Tuesday morning on CBS, Gayle King voiced some thoughts that may be floating through many people’s minds these days: “I’m really struggling because how do you . . . what do you say when someone that you deeply care about has done something that is so horrible?” she asked. “How do you wrap your brain around that? I’m really grappling with that.”
Kaba, who’s spent decades working with survivors and perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence, opened the talk by explaining that the event had been planned months ago. It wasn’t meant as a response to current revelations or the #MeToo campaign. The violence now being spotlighted by the media has permeated women’s lives forever; Kaba works with women whose stories aren’t deemed important enough to touch off a nationwide “reckoning”—some of whom are punished for taking action to protect themselves against sexual violence.
In 1977, Santa Cruz Women Against Rape penned an “open letter to the anti-rape movement,” warning that while growing awareness of sexual assault was good, it was also accompanied by an increased drive to involve the criminal justice system in solving the problem. This drive was spearheaded by social service organizations that relied on government funding to operate (unlike the early rape crisis centers that were sustained by radical feminist groups), and therefore either eschewed criticism of law enforcement authorities or were actively seeking greater collaboration with them.
Part of what perpetuates rape culture, Kaba also noted, is that we currently offer no incentive to people to own their harmful actions. Sure, some people still do, but as we’ve seen in the cascade of scandals in the upper echelons of power, most of the accused will deny wrongdoing, presumably for fear of litigation, criminal prosecution, or further disgrace. We don’t work very hard to promote notions of justice that don’t revolve around punishment, so is it any wonder that the people who hurt others rarely own it? We’re not taught how to empathize with the mental reckoning of the people we deem to be villains, and so we don’t know much about how it might work or what we might do to prompt it.
She concluded the talk with a quote from Rebecca Farr of Communities Against Rape and Abuse, which has also published a guide to community accountability:
