Preventable Rape

A woman was beaten and nearly sexually assaulted Wednesday morning in Central Park. She was walking her dog near 102nd Street when she was attacked. Fortunately, her 60-pound dog fended off the assailant. Last week, a 78-year-old woman was raped and beaten in a Queens nursing home. In January, thieves burglarized a home and raped the home-owner. While most types of crime have steadily decreased, rape is on the increase. Sexual assaults like the ones I've just described leave all women vulnerable because they are acts of violence and have nothing to do with sexuality. Victims are attacked because their rapists feel the need to overpower and exert their will over them. Very seldom do these incidents generate the kind of publicity that comes when a celebrity is involved. Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, who represents my old neighborhood East Harlem, was accused this past week of rape by a 19-year-old intern. What was not released in the early reports is that the woman recanted her claim shortly after and admitted she had consensual sex with the grandson of Harlem legend Adam Clayton Powell Jr. The assemblyman appears to have dodged the bullet for the rape charge, but police say they are not ruling out sexual assault because alcohol may have weakened the young woman's ability to consent. Meanwhile, Kobe Bryant, the L.A. Lakers superstar, is preparing for trial for the rape of a 19-year-old woman in Colorado. The debate that is still raging about his case is how much of the victim's sexual history should be disclosed during the trial. The victim's identity has been uncovered in some of the tabloid press, and allegedly she has received death threats. Acquaintance rape is the name given to this type of sexual assault by person or persons known to the victim. I'd like to give it another name. Let's call it preventable rape. We're not supposed to focus any blame on the victim and I certainly do not intend to do this. But as a mother of three young women, I think it's foolish not to warn our daughters of the dangers of entering the hotel rooms of anyone, celebrity or not, without considering what may occur. Complainants in celebrity rape cases (involving the likes of Mike Tyson and William Kennedy Smith) have the system stacked against them. In the eyes of the public, she has little credibility and her motives will always be questioned. She receives less sympathy than other victims do and her private life will be investigated for all sordid incidents by private investigators hired by the wealthy defendant. But it must still be said that all these cases could have been avoided if the victim had not placed herself in a situation unprepared to ward off unwanted attention. Women's groups will probably hammer me but my concern is for the young women who are not receiving the guidance necessary to survive our modern culture. The sad fact is this society is no longer breeding gentlemen. We are raising our male generation to be rapacious animals. The sexual revolution, which supposedly liberated and knocked us women off that dreaded pedestal, also unleashed the inner caveman in the men. When feminist pioneers dared to suggest that women's libidos are every bit as hot and heavy as men's, wasn't it predictable that men would actually believe them? Listen to the music that young men listen to. Women are whores and b*****s and, according to the movies and videos, love men who treat them that way. I don't want to make excuses for idiots like Messrs. Bryant and Powell IV, who seek quick sexual pleasure with young women under the influence of liquor, but dare we also question the responsibility we women have to avoid such situations? Here's another question I'd like answered: What is the responsibility of parents who neglect the care of their minor children? R &B singer R. Kelly was arrested in 2002 for having sex with a 14-year-old girl and evidence of his crime is on a widely distributed videotape showing him performing deviant acts on a nonprotesting victim. He's a pig, but I'd like to know why her parents weren't monitoring her whereabouts. The truth is that many inner-city preteens and teenagers dress like prostitutes. Venture into any department store catering to young women during the spring sales and you won't be able to find enough material on all the racks to clothe one body. It's parents who are buying these clothes for their young daughters and permitting them to stay out unchaperoned all hours of the night. This is a society that is saturated in self-gratification 24/7. I get tons of emails promising me all kinds of products to enlarge a private part I don't even possess. They also offer me cheap Viagra so I can pleasure my partner for hours and hours. Look at the billboards around town. They leave little to the imagination, as do many of the television commercials now offering enhanced sexual performance. Into this predatory world we have to send out our daughters. The least we can do is arm them with common sense.