What do the University of Iowa Football Team and the Creston Police Department Have in Common? Oh Yeah, Rapists.
Nathan Greene
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By Emily Geiger
New details have emerged about the reported sexual assault by two University of Iowa football players last fall. The search warrants were executed in November, 2007. The rape occurred the previous October.
There are so many disturbing things in this story, I don’t know where to start. The Register seems to emphasize (and disapprove of) the fact that university officials are saying that they are just a landlord and have no responsibility as “monitors of behavior” of the residents. Hmmm… tell that to other landlords who get in trouble for letting drug dealers and others of the criminal element stay on their property. At a certain point, situations like this become a public nuisance, and the landlord does have responsibility to do something about it. If this was the first time these individuals had caused any problems (and I don’t know if it was), then I do think you would have a hard time blaming the University. I just find it odd that the University is so defensive about this.
What I found even more disturbing than the University’s disclaimer of responsibility, is the involvement of another football player, Jevon Pugh. He had been in the room with the two assailants and the victim, realized what was going to happen, and decided to leave. Kudos to the guy for not wanting to be a rapist, but, what the hell kind of pansy-ass man won’t stand up to his friends and lets them rape a woman he knows is incapacitated? That’s almost as bad as the Creston police chief who actually held the woman down for his assistant chief to rape her.
You would have thought that after the whole Pierre Pierce thing, the University would have figured out how to handle (or at least how not to handle) these things. I generally like and respect Kirk Ferentz. Rumor was that he disapproved of how Alford handled the Pierce situation. To his credit, the guys involved in this situation never played another game in an Iowa uniform. But I heard Ferentz on the news last night say that he found out about this incident shortly after it happened (presumably before the search warrant was executed) and conducted his own “investigation.”
I don’t know exactly what he means by “investigation,” but that just sounds bad. What is this… CSI: Kinnick Stadium? What qualifies Kirk Ferentz to conduct an investigation? Did he notify law enforcement of what he knew and what he discovered?
I think the underlying problem here is that people still don’t take rape seriously. Take, for example, the remarks of John Quinn, assistant director of field operations for the Division of Criminal Investigation, who held a press conference on the Creston police rape incident. He said things like:
"People make bad judgments, and consequently law enforcement officers are not exempt from that."
Creston City Administrator Mike Taylor said:
"We have a lot of good officers here. It's just a very unfortunate situation."
Bad judgment? Wearing polka dots and stripes together is bad judgment. Someone accidentally getting hurt is an unfortunate situation. There was nothing accidental about these situations. And yes, I know Rekha Basu wrote a column on this, and a lot of times she is off her rocker, but on this one, she was exactly right.
I’m sure some of you are thinking that the University of Iowa incident is the girl’s fault because she has admitted to being drunk. Forgive me for being more crass than normal, but let’s look at the following hypothetical situation.
Say, you are a guy, and you are in college. You have too much to drink one night, to the point you need to go home and pass out. (Hard to imagine, I know.) You can’t make it back to your dorm room, so you crash in a trusted friend’s room. Either while you are too drunk to see straight, or while you are passed out cold, someone much bigger and stronger than you comes in, pulls your pants down, and shoves something up your butt repeatedly, to the point that you tear and bleed all over yourself. It could have been the handle of a baseball bat, or another guy’s penis… you don’t know. The next morning you wake up in a pool of blood.
Is that your fault, guys? Were you asking for it? Do you think it’s no big deal as you are walking to class in pain for the next few weeks? Do you think it’s no big deal that you have to go get tested for STDs periodically for the next six months to a year? Maybe you made the crime easier for the assailant by being drunk, but it's still a violent crime nonetheless.
This is a big deal, and it needs to be taken seriously. It’s screw-ups like these that dissuade women from reporting most rapes, which only keeps more rapists on the streets where they can strike again.
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