Remarkable providence! A jury in Denver has decided that an unconscious woman actually got herself pregnant:
The woman became pregnant and Cox’s DNA was found in the fetal tissue. A test determined the woman became pregnant at about the time of the alleged attack.
Beyond the DNA, prosecutors had little direct evidence linking Cox to the alleged sexual assault.
There were no witnesses to the alleged attack. The alleged victim did not have a rape kit done at a hospital. There were no tests performed to confirm her suspicions that she might have been drugged that night as she has no recollection of what happened.
During closing statements Thursday, Steinberg criticized the investigation by Lone Tree police and called the alleged victim a “party girl” who drinks a lot.
He pointed to testimony by Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, who was kissing and touching the woman that night but said he left either after she passed out or fell asleep. Thomas testified that Cox’s then-roommate, Broncos defensive back Cassius Vaughn, told him that Thomas missed some “girl-on-girl” action that night between the alleged victim and her friend, whom Cox was dating.
Remember the rules, laydeez: only your behavior will be scrutinized when someone else is on trial for the crime of rape. Only your drinking and allegations of promiscuity will be used against you in court. You alone have all of the responsibility for preventing rape, and if you fail to prevent rape, only you will be expected to follow an elaborate series of steps to prove that you were raped. You must subject yourself to a physical examination and medical testing at the correct time. You must make your complaint in a timely fashion. And you must at all times behave in the precise way that a jury will unanimously agree is the correct fashion for a genuine rape victim to behave.
Failure to follow these rules and procedures will result in your retroactive consent to any and all previous sexual activity.
Historiann 
You left off the gold digger clause. If you fail to prevent your rape by a rich or famous man, you will also have to confess to your ulterior motives in getting yourself raped.
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My bad!
How could I forget?
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“Beyond the DNA, prosecutors had little direct evidence linking Cox to the alleged sexual assault.”
Seriously? DNA in fetal tissue wasn’t sufficient evidence that sex had occurred? What more do you need?
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You need the testimony of someone other than the victim that she did not consent to having semen put into her body. Because of course, why would we ever trust women and girls to remember whether or not they had ever consented to sex?
I was thinking that a videotape of the rape might have helped, but of course consent can still be manufactured for that, too. “Party girls” who drink a lot like rough sex, too, don’tchaknow.
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You aren’t cynical enough: if there were video evidence, the defendant would have leaked it as a sex tape, supposedly used by the victim in the threat to blackmail him — but he honorably and manfully declined to make the payoff, choosing instead to go to trial…
*sigh*
It’s not enough that it’s easy to think about what they make up, in damaging one victim’s good name; it’s thinking what new job he’ll get out of this, because he’s joined the club of the Wrongfully Accused (yet still virile) Patriarchate.
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Immaculate conception by a football player! Wow!
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And ya think that she also got punished for aborting his child of love — and would have been dismissed, outright, had she kept it?
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cgeye: you are right. I’m not cynical enough! When will I learn?
I think you also have the pick on the abortion issue. Heads he wins, tails she loses.
At least she had family and friends holding her up today when the verdict was read. It’s awful to think of going through all of that without substantial support.
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Several points interest me:
– A women and a rich football play: of course her chance diminish right away. Facts are of importance in our society. We still side with men on sexual attitudes. Ask Rush: women are slots men are men.
– Talkleft is a blog run by the Denver defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt. She didn’t explicitly take sides, but congratulated the defense attorney for the win. I respect her contributions.
– The Cox case is unnerving, but the rich get more justice than the poor, celebraties get about the same and disadvantaged group get just minimal or less justice.
– We should be upset at more cases than this one.
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Just when I think I can’t be amazed any further, something like this happens.
One book about medieval women has a chapter on rape, in which one law code has as an index of proof that a woman has been raped that she has raked gashes in her own face with her fingernails. Because absent self-mutilation, can we really believe that it bothered her so much?
La plus ça change..
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This shitte is so fucken disgusting. I served on a jury in a forgery case in which we convicted the dude on the basis of circumstantial evidence (and rightfully so, in my opinion): no one actually saw him create the forgery. In this case there is a fuckeloade more direct evidence of the crime, with the fucken dude’s DNA in the fetus and eyewitness testimony that the woman was passed out.
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I was having dinner with friends last night, and I floated the notion of a series of comedy skits for young performers to post on YouTube: What if All Crimes Were Prosecuted Like Rape? I don’t have the chops to produce something like this, but I freely offer the idea to any intrepid funny feminists to rip and use. I’ll even help write the skits if necessary:
1. Cross-examination of a theft victim: Your neighbors have testified that you rarely close your shades when you’re watching television in the evenings. You frequently left your shades wide open, flaunting your large TV and expensive stereo, so what did you expect when you brought home such expensive equipment and didn’t put them in a sealed basement room without windows? Were you out at a bar drinking at the time of the theft? How can we trust your recollection that that’s when your home was burglerized?
2. Cross-ex of a mugging victim: The defendent says that you gave him your wallet. He was just looking for carfare, and you offered him your wallet. You were walking suggestively around his neighborhood with a large bulge in your back pocket: what did you expect?
3. Embezzeling: (the mind reels with this one, because embezzelment is always an inside job done by people who have won the trust of the owners of the embezzeled property.)
Add your own ideas to the list! It’s kind of fun, in a LOLSOB kind of way.
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Historiann, that’s brilliant. Hmmm…
Kidnapping: So, you voluntarily got in the car with him when he said your mommy was sick and he was taking you to her?
And when you saw the car was going the wrong way, why didn’t you do anything? You could have bitten him, jumped out of the moving vehicle, and run, right?
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Srsly.
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Very good skit ideas H’Ann.
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Hey. My blog’s mostly defunct but I did indeed write up this skit for one of them:
On the Devaluing of Women
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