Kobe's Rights

Rape, justice, and double standards

Cathy Young from the January 2004 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Ironically, as Estrich noted in 1991, the greater willingness of prosecutors to pursue sexual assault cases in which the use of force is minimal and there is little corroborating evidence of injury makes the issue of the woman's credibility much more important, and thus gives the defense a greater incentive for attacks on her character. The courts have to walk a fine line between allowing complainants to be smeared and preventing defendants from fully confronting the witnesses against them.

For some feminists, of course, there is only one side to this issue. After the 1997 trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, defending the judge's decision to admit compromising information about Albert's sexual past but not about his accuser's, feminist attorney Gloria Allred decried "the notion that there's some sort of moral equivalency between the defendant and the victim."

Yet as long as the defendant hasn't been convicted, he and the alleged victim are indeed moral equals in the eyes of the law.