“Nicole,” The Girl Who Cried Rape |
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Columns - A Cup O' Kapeng Barako | |||
Friday, 10 April 2009 10:25 | |||
That’s what she claimed at first. Then when questioned further, she "tearfully confessed” that she was raped by just one Marine, Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, while his three buddies watched and cheered him on.
The Marines were all drunk. And so was Nicole.
They picked her up from some seedy joint in the red light district of Olongapo City. There was a wild party going at that joint. The place was full of Marines, drunk Marines . . . and drunk girls, like Nicole.
After the party, Smith and his buddies invited Nicole to go bar-hopping. She went with them. They got on a van driven by a Filipino driver . . . and from there the story got a little bit murky.
At first, Nicole said she was gang raped. She was so drunk she didn’t even know if the Smith’s three buddies who were with him also raped her. Then later, she changed her story. She said only Smith raped her, while his buddies egged him on.
Because of the nature of this incident, you know, if you would picture it this way – four huge, hulking, horny U.S. Marines forcing themselves on this dainty, helpless, virtuous, young Filipino girl – it became an international event.
And Filipinos in the
So a year later, Corporal Smith was convicted of raping Nicole. Smith’s three buddies, who merely watched and cheered him as he pumped away, were also convicted of “abetting” daw the rape.
But instead of doing time in a Philippine prison, Smith and his buddies did their time within the confines of the luxurious U.S. Embassy in
F ilipino politicians and the country’s current President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo … what kind of credibility do they have, anyway, in the eyes of
There’s only one word to describe the leaders of our poor motherland: CORRUPT. Really, everytime I see a Filipino politician on TV, I see a KURAKUTERO and a KAWATAN.
But really, I am drifting away from my story.
So, moving on … there are rumblings and mumblings and bunglings that Nicole has CHANGED her story once again. She has recanted … and she has signed a statement by Smith’s lawyers saying that she had been “so drunk that she didn’t really remember what happened on that night when she was allegedly raped.”
Okey ngarud, now check this out:
Then she pocketed $2,000 that the Smith family had given her. And then with a one-way ticket in her hands, she got on a plane bound for the
How she got that coveted visa to
Hey, Nicole, honey, welcome to
HIS WIFE SAID THE SAME THING: During a congressional Budget Committee hearing a couple of weeks ago, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, of the “Hara-kiri for
It started after Mr. Conrad responded to a comment Senator Grassley made with, “Oh, you’re good.”
Mr. Grassley quipped back, “Well, your wife said the same thing.”
Senator Conrad responded, “Well, your wife said the same thing, too, about me.”
They both chuckled at their own remarks. Parehong pendeho siguro itong dalawang ‘to . . .
COITUS INTERRUPTUS: My tukayo, Jesse Farrales of Chicago, AKA, “Mr. Debonair,” who is also a fellow member of the DOMs Club, sent me this little story. I think it’s a free ad for Southwest Airlines. Here goes:
A mother and her young son were flying Southwest Airlines from
The little boy, who had been looking out the window, turned to his mother and asked, “If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don’t big planes have baby planes? The mother, who couldn’t think of an answer, told her son to ask the flight attendant.
So, the boy went down the aisle and asked the flight attendant, “If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don’t big planes have baby planes.
The busy flight attendant smiled and said, ‘Did your mother tell you to ask me that?”
The boy, “Yes, she did.”
“Well then, you go and tell your mother,” said the flight attendant, “that there are no baby planes because Southwest always pulls out on time. Have your mother explain that to you . . .
BTW, y’all have a Happy Easter. JJ
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Last Updated on Friday, 10 April 2009 13:04 |
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April 27,2009
Contact; Jerry Esguerra
(818)749-0272
( The EPCC decided to reprint the editorial of the Inquirer, the prime newspaper in the Philippines regarding the Court of Appeals decision on the Smith rape case. We did not see that is funny that three CA spinsters lady judges decided in favor of Smith and against a fellow woman named "Nicole". We believe it is a concerted action of both the US-RP government against not only the women but against the whole Filipino people. )
Editorial
The romance of rape
It is tempting to describe the decision of the Court of Appeals acquitting Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith of the crime of rape, promulgated by the all-female 11th special division, as the revenge of the “manangs”. The decision certainly seems to have been written by a conspiracy of spinsters, in vigorous denial of reality, and sustained by fantasies of chivalry (in favor of the American serviceman) and chastity (against the woman we all call “Nicole”).
“This court finds [as] deceptively posturing Nicole’s portrayal of herself as a demure provinciana lass,” the CA ruled, contrary to the unflattering characterization, sometimes using colors supplied by the victim herself, that the trial painted of flirty, hard-drinking Nicole. “On hindsight, we see this protestation of decency as a protective shield against her own indecorous behavior.”
You can almost visualize the three (married) justices crinkling their noses, at the effrontery of an indecent woman protesting rape. After all, only decorously behaved women can be raped, right? And what happened in Subic was merely the “unfolding of a spontaneous, unplanned romantic episode.”
It would be tempting to mock the justices, especially because this approach allows us to point to the ludicrousness of some of the assumptions that went into the decision. Can’t a brazen city girl (to propose an alternative to the special division’s unfair description) fall victim to rape too?
But the prudery behind the decision masks a deeper flaw. The ruling pushes the jurisprudence on rape back to the 20th century; after all this time, the special division still understands rape as essentially a private crime, as a crime against chastity.
This, truly, is unfortunate. We assail the CA’s reasoning, but we really have no quarrel with the judiciary’s role in the resolution of the Subic rape case. By and large, it did its part in the administration of justice—which is far more than you could say about the Executive, which served as either lawyer to or co-dependent of the Americans. We are deeply disturbed, however, that the acquittal is based on grounds that overturn a decade’s worth of gains in women’s rights.
A key passage (crucial, but not the most offensive) in the CA’s decision reads thus: “No evidence was introduced to show force, threat and intimidation applied by the accused [Smith] upon Nicole, even as the prosecution vainly tried to highlight her supposed intoxication and alleged unconsciousness at the time of the sexual act.”
This finding suggests that only the presence of force, threat or intimidation can affect a woman’s capacity to give consent to sex; it also intimates that women of “audacity and reckless abandon” (the language of the CA’s special division, describing Nicole’s behavior) cannot ever plead that their capacity for consent has been compromised.
The finding negates the breakthrough made in the original ruling of Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Benjamin Pozon, which emphasized that intoxication can rob a woman of the capacity to give consent. Pozon’s emphasis is in accord with the liberalizing tendency that led to the (hard-fought) victory in Congress redefining rape as a crime against persons—and is in keeping with the trend in law that grants greater recognition to the dignity of women.
The special division took issue with the RTC’s assertion that Nicole was too drunk to give her consent—“When a woman is drunk, she can hardly rise, much more stand up and dance, or she would just drop. This is a common experience among Filipino girls.” This blithe and too-pat assumption runs counter to the eyewitness accounts heard in the trial court, about Smith carrying a woman on his back to the van, and about an almost unconscious woman being dumped outside the van (after the “romantic” deed was done).
Worst of all, the decision trivializes the “No” of the drunk Nicole. “Resistance by words of mouth [sic] does not suffice to establish that she indeed did not give her consent to the sexual intercourse,” the court said.
What did they expect? A memo?