The Trump Administration Sure Loves Protecting Rapists

By Mike Redmond | Politics | November 16, 2018 |

By Mike Redmond | Politics | November 16, 2018 |

Before we get into yet another glaring example of the Trump administration making it crystal clear that the Republican Party is 100 percent pro-rape (unless it’s committed by Latino immigrants and/or trans-women at Target, then holy shit, call the National Guard), I cannot overemphasize the importance of this maddening ProPublica report:

According to an investigation by @Newsy, @Reveal, and @ProPublica, across the country, dozens of law enforcement agencies are making it appear as though they have solved a significant share of their rape cases when they simply have closed them. https://t.co/xMKs1shoua

— The Marshall Project (@MarshallProj) November 15, 2018

In a nutshell, if you’re at all familiar with law enforcement’s less-than-stellar track record when it comes to sexual assault, then you know that the vast majority of rapes are never reported, and when they are, it rarely ends in an arrest. But according to ProPublica, a vomit-inducing percentage of those small number of arrests are bullshit thanks to a sketchy practice known as “exceptional clearing,” which basically allows cops to mark cases as solved without making an actual arrest. In other words, departments across the country have been presenting padded numbers to the public and lawmakers that say, “Hey, look how many rapists we caught!” When in reality, a sizable chunk of those rapists walked scot-ass-free.

If you’re wondering how the hell something like this happens, there’s a recurring, depressing theme that pops up every time ProPublica gets a quote from both current and former law enforcement officials, and that’s the fact that fudging the numbers on rape cases is extraordinarily easy to do. Unlike murders or theft, there’s rarely undeniable physical evidence that a rape has occurred. And even in the instances where there were rape kits or online paper trails of statutory rape, it still ended without an arrest despite the case being marked as “cleared.”

In essence, prosecuting rapists is already a labyrinthian clusterf**k that’s practically engineered to let them walk, so you’d have to be a gaping asshole to not only think that the accused have it rough, but that the full weight of the federal government should start looking out for them as opposed to the “victims” who keep leaving the house with a vagina.

NEW: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has unveiled a sweeping new proposal that would strengthen protections for college students accused of sexual assault. https://t.co/I4K18WhWdd

— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) November 16, 2018

As for why the hell Betsy DeVos would do something as breathtakingly evil as protecting accused rapists, there’s a stupidly simple explanation: It rolls back something Obama did. I’m not even joking.

From NPR:

In what the administration is calling a “historic process,” the proposed rules aim to significantly enhance legal protections for the accused and reflect a sentiment expressed by President Trump that men are unfairly being presumed guilty. More than a year in the making, the rules replace Obama-era policies on how to implement Title IX, the law barring gender discrimination in schools that get federal funding.

Needless to say, anyone with even the slightest interest in preventing rape is goddamn flabbergasted at the administration’s brazen lack of concern for victims. But there two groups of people who are positively giddy that the president shares its values: MRAs and moms whose precious little boys were “falsely” accused of college rape.

From ABC News:

A small group of mens’ rights groups have pushed for the changes, contending that schools have gone too far and provided little due process to the accused. That criticism has resonated with several White House supporters, including President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who has said he’s more worried about his sons than to his daughters in the #MeToo era.

Cynthia P. Garrett, co-president of a group called “Families Advocating for Campus Equality,” said she’s been pushing for many of the changes included in the latest proposal because they give students accused of misconduct better opportunities to defend themselves. She said most campus sexual misconduct cases she’s seen “involve the lack of affirmative consent, life-threatening regretted sex, not life threatening, criminal conduct.”

As for how a major political party can continue to thrive in a modern society while clearly condoning the sexual assault of women, Republicans consistently lock down 80 percent of white evangelical voters who have been absolutely slathered in misogyny. When you’re routinely taught that the vagina is a direct wormhole to Satan that can only be purified through marriage to a Godly husband who turns it into an on-demand baby cannon, you tend to view women as nothing more than overly-emotional cattle who simply require a man’s man to rope them in.

You may puke now.