MANILA, Philippines ? Goodbye, Dabby Boy, hope you enjoyed your stay in our beautiful isles, though much of the time you stayed here, your view of the Philippines was limited to the four walls of a container van and then of a comfy detention room in the American Embassy. I must say, though, at least you had a ringside view every evening of the world-famous sunset on Manila Bay had you chosen to look out your window.
I doubt very much if you would ever miss the Filipino people, even the women who belonged to your fan club and gathered outside the gates of the Makati City Jail during your very brief detention there. You couldn?t seem to wait a day longer before making your hasty exit, causing your caregiver at the Department of Interior and Local Government to give voice to some hurt feelings. But your friends at the Department of Foreign Affairs even rushed to your defense, wishing you well as you flew the coop.
I can?t say I?m going to miss you, either.
Some people say the best way to treat the entire episode of your arrest and trial, your conviction for rape, your clandestine escape to the embassy, and the tug-of-war that ensued is to forget, to write off what happened and chalk it up to experience.
But women, including Nicole, will certainly never forget you. Nicole may say she has ?moved on,? started a new life for herself in the United States, left behind this country and memories of her ordeal. But the trauma of her rape, the very public trial not just of you and your pals but of her and her sexuality, morality and behavior will remain with her for longer than even she anticipates. It isn?t easy to delete from your hard drive such an experience, and it will take much more than a 14-hour flight to leave behind all the pain, all the feelings of betrayal and abandonment, especially when these were instigated by your own government.
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And Filipino women? Years after, they will still be feeling the sting of your departure. Not because they miss you, but because you will, in a way, still be around.
Years from now, every Filipina who finds herself in the shadowy situation of an unwanted sexual assault, an assault she is sure she doesn?t want but isn?t sure if she had done something, said something to invite it?this woman will not know if she should cry rape.
Will her previous actions, her behavior, be interpreted as having ?asked for it?? Will her being a ?woman of the world? be taken against her, an indication of her lack of innocence and thus of her right to repel unwanted advances? Will the assault be viewed as a ?romantic episode,? even if, as some senators have pointed out, ?there is nothing romantic about rape??
Reading the decision of the all-woman panel of Court of Appeals justices, it seemed more like the admonitions of scandalized maiden aunts to a wayward niece than a reasoned, objective and compassionate appreciation of evidence. They needed only to settle one question: Was Nicole raped? Was she in possession of her faculties such that she could decide freely whether she wanted to have sex with Smith or not? Or was she so drunk that the Marine, taking advantage of her condition, had his way with her?
But instead of answering these queries, what the justices wrote instead was a complicated scenario justifying the rape and gross abandonment of Nicole at the pier of Subic. Filipino women, fighting gender bias and social dictates in court, and finding themselves judged against hoary social standards, will have reason to remember you, Danny Boy. They will remember you and how you, abetted by your and our governments, manipulated the justice system and the unequal relationship between our nations, and managed to get away with a most heinous crime.
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In ?Sexual Violence: Our War against Rape,? Linda Fairstein, who at the time of the book?s writing was assistant Manhattan District Attorney and director of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit, describes the efforts made to make the justice system more responsive to the needs of rape survivors, and more understanding of the crime of rape and its impact on women and society at large. She writes:
?We have made very little progress on the effort to eradicate the crime of rape. That will not begin to happen until we undertake serious research to gain a real understanding of why it occurs?and there are many different reasons?with such alarming frequency in this society. And as long as there is sexual violence to deal with, it is time for people to understand that victims of it can be treated with dignity and with respect in the courtroom ? in (jurisdictions) that have dedicated significant resources to learning how to investigate and prosecute these cases, we have accomplished extraordinary results in the course of a very few years: The conviction rate of rape cases has soared ? in trials for both stranger and acquaintance rapes, and we have fought to make victims more comfortable as they journey through the system.
?The doors that were barred to survivors of sexual assault for so long have been opened, albeit only recently. By examining the changes that have been effected, the distinctions between the great variety of cases, the services now available and those that desperately need to be provided, we can continue to fashion more successful weapons in the struggle to vanquish sexual violence.?
The book, I must point out, was published in 1993, more than 16 years ago. So much progress has been made since then, even here, I will admit. But as the appellate court?s decision on the Subic rape case shows, in many ways, our judges and the judicial system are still hopelessly mired in discredited notions of social standards of behavior for women and for men. Until we jettison such old-fashioned norms, women will continue to be punished by the very system they turn for redress and hope.
