PERSPECTIVE ON THE TYSON TRIAL : Maybe People Just Had Enough : Did women’s anger over two earlier “escapes” make the powers-that-be sit nervously on their hands in the Tyson case?

In the weeks before Mike Tyson’s rape trial began in Indiana, I’d been casually canvassing friends and colleagues. “What do you think,” I asked, “will they nail him or not?” The common response was a disbelieving stare and a shrug. “Men always get away with it,” sighed one female friend, “especially if they’re celebrities.”

One male friend asked, “Do you know how much money is involved in boxing?” His tone was benevolently patronizing. “They’ll never convict. And anyway, most of the other athletes in his same position have walked.”

Which is precisely why I was betting Tyson wouldn’t. It has been a bad few months for women. Clarence Thomas ascended to one of the highest judicial seats in the country, even though many women (and men) were firmly convinced that he did it by stepping on the back of a woman he had sexually harassed. Uncomfortable with the whole notion of sex and race being examined minutely in public, an all-male, all-white Senate panel let him walk.

William Kennedy Smith walked, too. His jury apparently decided that the testimony of Patricia Bowman, the alleged victim, just wasn’t credible enough. After all, they pointed out, she had driven him home and taken that ill-fated walk on the beach. The lesson women were supposed to glean from that trial: “If you go with him, you deserve what you get.”

So the escape, if you will, of two high-profile defendants in the space of a few months, put many of America’s women in a frenzy of righteous anger. Perhaps that made the powers-that-be in the boxing world, the ones who were supposed to save Tyson from his fate, nervous enough to sit on their collective hands. Perhaps Tyson’s behavior, with its well-chronicled, cumulative transgressions over the past few years, made them feel that they would have a slim chance of saving him anyway. Perhaps people had just had enough of letting anybody walk, period, when everybody should be held responsible for their actions.

Granted, Mike Tyson’s childhood was a cross between one of Charles Dickens’ grimmest stories and Martin Scorsese’s “mean streets”: Abandoned, abused, shuttled from foster home to foster home, Tyson was considered incorrigible by his early adolescence and relegated to jail.

His salvation came in the form of Cus D’Amato, a boxing trainer who took him in--Tyson even lived with his family--and channeled his rage into a skill that might support him even after his ability to perform it was gone. Most of the sports world agrees that when D’Amato died, Tyson lost his last, best hope. Lacking the moral gyroscope that D’Amato had provided, Tyson careened between personal disaster and public humiliation ever since. But none of this excuses rape.

Stories abound of his aggressive approach to women. Complaints of fondling, of strong-arming, of his fury when someone had the temerity to reject him are legion. Tyson was an accident waiting to happen, a psychological time bomb with a very short fuse. So when the latest accusation became public knowledge, no one who had watched him for any length of time was surprised.

Tyson, of course, bears primary responsibility for the rape of the Miss Black America contestant. It was, after all, he who decided that no meant maybe or yes. But there’s enough blame to go around.

Tyson’s tawdry coterie of hangers-on should certainly share some of it. Since D’Amato’s death, Tyson has surrounded himself with people who have no interest in protecting his moral well-being, because it might damage their profit margin.

The pageant’s promoters and organizers share some of the blame, too. Knowing Tyson’s well-documented behavior with women, who in her right mind would invite someone of the grab-and-fondle school into the midst of 50 attractive, poorly chaperoned, possibly star-struck young women? It was a prescription for disaster.

The contestant (and this is tricky; I realize that I’m being politically incorrect) also must share some responsibility. No matter how naive, no matter how star-struck, she had to be aware of Tyson’s reputation and behavior. Given that, some ask, why go--alone--to his room? Her accompanying Tyson to his room did not give him license to rape her, but it did make it harder to explain her innocence to the jury. Like it or not, in cases of rape (especially involving celebrities), it is always the woman who is on trial.

So Tyson’s conviction has been handed down, and he awaits sentencing. Justice, after a fashion, has been done. But who won? Not the victim, who, although vindicated, will have nightmares about this and problems with intimacy for years. Not Tyson, who will lose his license and perhaps never box again. Not boxing, which lost a master of the sport.

And not the African-American community, which (thanks to the mainstream media, including this paper) has examples of black male pathology constantly thrown in its face. Tyson’s just the latest to be thrown on the heap.

With proper care and support and enough people to just say no to his personal excesses, Mike Tyson could not only have been famous and wealthy; he could, like Muhammad Ali and both Sugar Rays, have been well-regarded, too. If, as his colleague George Foreman asserts, “America is the country of the second--and third--chance,” somebody other than Don King had better help him grab it.