In late March, the Minnesota Supreme Court overturned a felony rape conviction because the victim was intoxicated by her own will during the assault.
The thinking behind it is that if someone willfully becomes intoxicated, then they are at least partly to blame for anything bad that might happen while they’re in an inebriated state. However, if the victim has had her drink spiked and becomes incapacitated without her knowledge, then there is no question that she didn’t consent to anything, regardless of what she may or may not have said.
I agree with that.
Now, before you get all crazy and start yelling at me, let me also say that I think rape is the second most serious crime there is, with murder being the first. I also don’t drink. Never have. So I’m not a big fan of drunks in general.
So, it’s not like I’m “for” rapists or “for” intoxication of any kind. That’s not it at all.
What I am for is personal accountability.
As vile as the crime was, it’s still true that if the woman hadn’t been drinking to excess, then she probably wouldn’t have found herself in that situation. You might not like it, and it might sound like blaming the victim, but it’s true.
In the Minnesota case, as I understand it, the victim awoke in the middle of the assault and found her attacker on top of her.
At some point in the evening, both the victim and the attacker became too inebriated to make good decisions. But, before that happened, each of them, while totally sober, chose to take that first drink. That first drink led to a second, and a third, and more.
And, after enough drinks, the woman decided to keep drinking until she was at the mercy of…well…everyone. And the man decided to keep drinking until it seemed like a good idea to have his way with her.
Currently, in Minnesota, “mentally incapacitated” does not include someone who is voluntarily intoxicated by alcohol. Now people are demanding the alcohol-related rape laws be rewritten.
Let’s stop and think about that. Say the law is rewritten so that someone who is wasted (on whatever drug) is not legally capable of giving consent. Doesn’t that also mean that someone else who is equally as wasted might not be capable of recognizing that consent wasn’t given?
If a woman drinks until she passes out, wouldn’t it be possible that the man could be too drunk to notice that she’s unconscious? How drunk would she need to be before she is considered unable to legally give consent?
And how is an also-drunk man supposed to tell when she’s reached that particular level of drunkenness? Is there a particular blood alcohol concentration (BAC) that’s the line you don’t cross? Expecting an inebriated man to be able to tell when an also-inebriated woman is too drunk to legally give consent is ridiculous. Does “yes mean yes” unless the woman has a BAC of greater than .08?
Taking it a step further, if you forgive one bad decision simply because someone had too much to drink, then shouldn’t all bad decisions made while intoxicated be forgiven as well?
Allowing alcohol to be blamed for someone’s bad decisions is a very slippery slope. We could easily find ourselves in a place where the victim was too drunk to give consent, and the attacker was too drunk to see that she was no longer participating. And neither one of them is at fault.
That would be absurd, but not outside the realm of possibility.
So, yes. I believe in personal accountability. At some point early in the evening, while they were both supposedly at their sharpest, they each decided to take that first drink and things went downhill from there.
Is it unfortunate that the woman in Minnesota was sexually assaulted? Yes, it was. But it was also very likely 100% preventable…by her. All she had to do was not have that first drink. Like I said, some might call it victim blaming. I just call it the truth.
As much as I want to disagree with it, changing the law in Minnesota is not a good idea. Because doing so is likely only going to make things worse.
