Quote:
Originally Posted by 11:11
so nobody sat there thinking- what are you doing girl? run! call the cops!! say no!! don't you think it would be better to encourage that kind of thinking instead of rewarding a person for standing still.
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Actually, I largely agree with this. I did sit there thinking "what are you doing girl? run! call the cops!! say no!!". In Miss Ogborn's defense, she did say that she asked to be taken to the police station rather than be strip-searched at the McDonald's. Apparently she did not insist quite strenuously enough. Why? We don't know. Fear of being fired if she didn't cooperate (apparently her family needed her earnings)? Excessive respect for authority (also given as a reason in the article)? Probably a combination of these and other factors. In any case, however much at fault victims may be for failing to resist their victimization, that they may have failed in their responsibility to themselves does nothing to mitigate the guilt of the victimizer.
Civil liability is a matter of determining degrees of relative responsibility. The court found that McDonald's had failed in its responsibility, as an employer, to provide a safe working environment and awarded damages accordingly. The other parties, who were convicted of criminal offenses, were also held responsible for their actions. Is there any way that the court could have held Ogborn responsible for her failure to resist, short of not holding those others responsible for their actions?
Where I part company with
11:11 is when he makes the argument that verdicts like this simply encourage victims to be victims. The reality is that the victim is already paying, and will continue to pay, a price for her failure to protect herself. And the price she is paying is way out of proportion to the nature of her offense. That, in itself, ought to be sufficient incentive for others to avoid allowing themselves to be vicitimized in a similar manner.
The real travesty is that the instigator of these events (whether it was the guy they arrested and charged, or someone else) has not yet been held responsible for his actions. Hopefully this is not the end of the story. Since this was not an isolated incident the possibility remains that justice will be done in his case as well.