Rape and Culture

Two judges raise the question of the victim's responsibility "I 'm trying to say to women stop teasing. There should be a restoration of modesty in dress and elimination from the community of sexual-gratification businesses," declared Dane County Judge Archie Simonson, 52. "Whether women like it or not they are sex objects. Are we supposed to take an impressionable person 15 or 16 years of age and punish that person severely because they react to it normally?" Voicing such sentiments, Judge Simonson let a convicted 15-year-old Madison, Wis., defendant off last May with a wrist-tapping probated sentence in the rape of a 16-year-old coed in a high z school stairwell. As a result, Simonson this week is running against five other candidates in the first judicial-recall election in the U.S. in three decades.

To his supporters, Simonson's remarks reflected a troubled quest for proper justice in an era notable both for its sexual liberation and the use of sex as a sales device. But feminists were outraged. Women picketed the courthouse and circulated petitions, signed by over 35,000 voters, demanding Simonson's removal. Paul Soglin, the liberal mayor of Madison, was also critical. Said he: "Regardless of community standards, under no conditions can a sexual assault or rape be considered normal."

The Simonson case illustrates some changes and ambiguities in prevalent legal attitudes toward rape. Since 1974, in response to women's rights advocates, at least 20 states have modified rules of evidence in rape cases, restricting, for example, inquiry into the victim's sexual history. But at the same time the law is softening and refining the punishment for rape too. The U.S. Supreme Court in June banned the death penalty for rape. When sentencing rapists, judges now tend to distinguish more and more sharply between varying degrees of brutality and other mitigating circumstances.

In July a California Court of Appeal unanimously overturned the conviction of a 32-year-old Los Angeles salesman in the rape of a 23-year-old waitress-hitchhiker. To help explain the decision, Justice Lynn Compton wrote that a woman who enters a stranger's car "advertises that she has less concern for the consequences than the average female." In response, Attorney Gloria Allred, a National Organization for Women coordinator, claimed the judge was ignoring "the fact that rape is an act of violence, not of sex." University of Southern California Law Professor Stephen Morse called Compton's remarks "victim-blaming, the excusing of an appalling lack of self-control in what is seen as sexually provocative situations."

In Madison Judge Simonson, once considered a certain loser, has mounted an effective low-key campaign, avoiding further controversial comment and emphasizing his otherwise liberal judicial record. Ironically, conservative rural areas of Dane County are thought to be in tune with Simonson's concern over the decline in morality in Madison and elsewhere. Simonson's critics, too, have been stung by suggestions of racism in their attack on his verdict (the victim in the controversial case was white, her attacker black). And because there are so many candidates, a relatively small vote for the embattled jurist may still provide the bare plurality necessary to win. But even if Simonson should retain his judgeship, women's rights advocates can count the incident a victory. Says the A.C.L.U.'s Susan Ross: "The uproar shows public attitudes are changing. A few years ago, the judge's remarks would have passed without notice."

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