Women’s eNews commentator Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor, is branding as “nonsense” an argument used by Vice President Joe Biden in criticizing opponents of the president’s jobs bill on the grounds that rapes “will continue to rise” if the bill isn’t passed. Biden says the bill would pay for more police officers who could get to the scene of the crime and prevent a rape. Murphy says rape victims almost never call 911 because they rarely report the crime right away.
Even when then they do, the cop almost never shows up in time to prevent the crime; not because there aren’t enough officers on duty, but because by the time the victim is free enough to call 911, the perpetrator is long gone. Biden further complicated the public perception of rape by describing the crime, from a victim’s point of view, as having a “200 pound man standing over you telling you to submit.” That’s not how it happens, Murphy says. Ask most any victim. Eighty five percent of the time, the offender is someone the victim knows and the victim isn’t thinking about the emergency room so much as how harshly people will judge her for his actions. More cops won’t change this. Murphy says “a far more effective option would cost taxpayers nothing: The definition of rape could be modified in every state to eliminate force as an element of the crime.”