If Only Attitudes on Rape Matched the Laws

Karen Pomer sits on her porch near the beach, a gentle breeze ruffling the trees in her yard, and sadly proclaims her victory.

The man who abducted and raped her for six hours last fall has not been caught. He has not even been identified.

But she has won.

By refusing to be victimized twice, by opting for confrontation over silence, by allowing herself to be publicly identified and publicly vilified, Pomer, a soft-spoken 41-year-old filmmaker, got a whole police department to rethink its treatment of rape victims.

At least on paper.

As early as the hospital exam after her Oct. 4 assault, and for months afterward, Pomer felt dismissed, belittled and patronized by some of the Santa Monica police officers assigned to her case. Unlike many women, however, she was not shy about saying so. Joined by the victim of another Santa Monica rapist, Pomer took her complaints to the police chief, to the city council, to community meetings, to newspapers. And she was characterized--in letters to editors and by public officials--as a nuisance, a whiner. Some said she was hysterical, disgruntled.

When all she wanted, in point of fact, was to be treated as if she mattered.

And maybe because the powers that be believed she had a point, or maybe because they wanted her to shut up and go away, Santa Monica police rewrote their guidelines on how sexual assault victims should be treated during investigations.

The old SMPD policy was two paragraphs long.

The new one runs eight pages. It urges that officers recognize the “extremely sensitive nature and traumatic nature of sexual assaults,” that they treat victims “with respect and professionalism,” that no matter how calm or seemingly unbruised, “a victim is likely to feel traumatized, fearful and vulnerable.”

Karen Pomer and the second victim, in the words of one informed observer, shook the SMPD “to the core.”

And they made a difference.

On paper, anyway.

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This has been a good couple of years for many people whose lives have been touched by rape--survivors, prosecutors, victims’ advocates. On paper, anyway.

California law has been amended in two significant ways. As of last year, the act of sexual intercourse with someone who is prevented from resisting because of intoxication can be considered rape. (The intoxication of the rapist is irrelevant. On paper, anyway.) As of next year, a victim has the legal right, regardless of police department policy, to have two people--a friend or relative and a rape counselor--present during hospital exams and police interviews.

All the laws in the world won’t make a difference if attitudes don’t change.

There was, for instance, the case of the 19-year-old UCLA student who turned up at a hospital in Palm Springs last June after an encounter with three UCLA Zeta Beta Tau fraternity brothers.

According to a prosecutor, the encounter involved drinking, pot and a sexually suggestive game that had deteriorated, from the young woman’s perspective--that is, from the perspective of someone who sought medical attention for vaginal bleeding after a sexual encounter with three men--into unwanted sex.

The men were arrested, but the Riverside County district attorney’s office opted not to file charges in the case for several reasons, including the nature of the game, the use of intoxicants and an inability to pinpoint when the young woman said no.

“Did I think what the gentlemen did was wrong? Yes,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick Erwood. “Did it constitute forcible rape? I don’t know. Did we have sufficient evidence to prove a crime was committed? No.”

Also, the young woman indicated an unwillingness to testify against the alleged offenders. When her reluctance was made public, it was taken by many as an admission that she’d willingly had sex with three guys, woke up remorseful and marched straight to police.

In fact, the police became involved only because they happened to be at the hospital on another case and a nurse asked them to speak to the UCLA student. She was reluctant to pursue the prosecution for the same reason any woman who alleges she has been raped by acquaintances might be: embarrassment, the specter of public humiliation and the paralyzing glare of the media spotlight.

The Palm Springs case presents some of the more twisted and seemingly insoluble aspects of rape prosecution: If a woman is drunk and unable to resist an unwanted advance, intercourse is by definition rape. This is the law. But if she becomes intoxicated and allows a man (or three) to remove some of her clothes and massage her, she seemingly “loses” the right to allege rape if the activity progresses to unwanted sex.

The law, in other words, can be nullified by the pragmatism of a prosecutor who doesn’t believe a jury can be swayed.

Until attitudes toward rape really change--until victims are treated with respect, until we make it OK to risk acquittals by bringing tough cases to trial--nothing will change.

No matter what it says on paper.

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.