NONFICTION - May 5, 1996

A WOMAN SCORNED: Acquaintance Rape on Trial by Peggy Reeves Sanday (Doubleday: $32.95; 338 pp.). On March 1, 1990, a young black woman was sexually assaulted by a group of white men. Everyone involved was a student at St. John’s University in New York. The case generated enormous publicity, partly because the trial coincided with both the William Kennedy Smith rape case and the Central Park “wilding” rape and partly because of the racial differences between the accuser and defendants. Using the St. John’s case as a jumping-off point, anthropologist and author Peggy Reeves Sanday gives a guided tour through the long, sordid history of acquaintance rape in America, a crime in which too often the woman is again victimized by the judicial system.

“A Woman Scorned” is conceived and written quite well, yet Sanday’s political views often color her descriptions to the point where one may question accuracy. In a short passage concerning the Salem witch trials of 1692-’93, Sanday chooses to emphasize certain facts while leaving out others, which creates a skewed portrait of what happened. This makes it easy to distrust her depiction of events about which one is not equipped with prior knowledge.