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Are Rape Laws Reformed Enough?
I was entering the legal profession as it attempted a sexism flush.
At first, the criminal law efforts only applied to rape laws. Domestic violence would reach the public policy front burner much later and I would be directly involved in those reforms. Because of the timing of my education, my understanding of the bad old days of rape laws — when victims were routinely put on trial, unless they were white and the alleged rapist was black (in which case the skids were greased for death row) — was based on study, not experience.
I became a police magistrate about the time women in policing were achieving some kind of critical mass. There were enough of them to come off street patrol and make detectives. My public service was in the People’s Republic of Austin, and while we had some major disputes about domestic violence within the criminal justice system, most of the hurdles were not placed by the police and, honestly, I cannot imagine the case I’m about to report taking place in Austin back in the late seventies.
Like Austin, Lawrence, Kansas is a university town in a generally conservative state. Good universities create a pronounced progressive bias that codes as liberal among the conservative establishmentarians. I say “progressive” because top shelf professors do not get paid to look backwards…
