Statement of The RINJ Foundation, August 8, 2014

New Jersey Court Invades FB Account-To Slut Shame Victim

The RINJ Foundation is appalled at the decision of Mercer County superior court judge Robert Billmeier presiding in a case in Trenton, New Jersey, to force an alleged rape-survivor-teen to share with the court the private mailboxes of her Facebook account.

A 22 year-old Mr. Stevens-Parker has been charged with providing this then-16-year-old Princeton girl with alcohol before sexually assaulting her in April 2013. Defence attorney Andrew Ferencevych said he wants to see two weeks of prior Facebook communications to see if there are any hints that the sex was consensual. The judge has ordered that police be given access to her Facebook. Sound a lot like the misogyny of India?

Consent is the ultimate litmus test of the crime of rape.
New jersey's statutes use the term " sexual assault" in place of "rape" as differing to the international definitions of:

sexual assault: "any forced, unwanted, non consensual sexual contact or activity,"

and rape: "the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim".

The brave teen says there was no consent.

Brave she is, and rare too, because in New Jersey, like in all of the United States, persons who have been raped, in the majority, suffer quietly and never report the crime done against them because, for one reason, the court process is unfair ('victim-blaming' and 'slut-shaming') and is onerous for rape survivors.

Lack of consent is the crucial component of sex crime. Sexual conduct becomes criminal when sexual touch is not consented to, either because the offender forces another person to be sexual against his or her will, or because the other person is considered incapable of consent or to have a diminished mental capacity to give consent.

Those who are deemed incapable of consent include:

minor children under the jurisdiction's age of consent, regardless of their mental abilities to understand the nature of the act and their ability to refuse;
a person who is incapacitated, drugged, drunk, or unconscious or otherwise physically helpless.

According to New Jersey statutes, specifically, Title 2C The New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice section2C:14-2 Sexual assault:

c. An actor is guilty of sexual assault if he commits an act of sexual penetration with another person under any one of the following circumstances:
(1) The actor uses physical force or coercion, but the victim does not sustain severe personal injury;
(2) The victim is on probation or parole, or is detained in a hospital, prison or other institution and the actor has supervisory or disciplinary power over the victim by virtue of the actor's legal, professional or occupational status;
(3) The victim is at least 16 but less than 18 years old and:
(a) The actor is related to the victim by blood or affinity to the third degree; or
(b) The actor has supervisory or disciplinary power of any nature or in any capacity over the victim; or
(c) The actor is a resource family parent, a guardian, or stands in loco parentis within the household;
(4) The victim is at least 13 but less than 16 years old and the actor is at least four years older than the victim.
Sexual assault is a crime of the second degree.

According to the statutes (2C:14-2) the teen was arguably too young to consent and the teen was allegedly also too intoxicated to consent but her "no" should have been enough. Prior dialogue on Facebook cannot change these realities. and is a gross violation of the teen's rights.

Moreover this conduct by this Court of his Honour, Justice Billmeier of invading the accuser's rights further discourages women coming forward to police with rape allegations.

Whereas content from social media is routinely used in court to obtain a conviction against an offender, probing a 16-year-old female's private information is no different than the victim-blaming antics of the Salem witch hunt era. More than that, the process of proving that the content of a Facebook post is attributable to one or another person, especially kids, is next to impossible.

This decision to extract from the teen her Facebook access is only bad precedent and bad law. It condemns future crime-prevention efforts in the area of sex crime. Most victim witnesses are discouraged from coming forward by Judges' actions and decisions like this one of Billmeier.

It is shocking that this sort of victim-blaming conduct and violation of the rights of an accuser continues in the United States (which lately has been showing significant traces of 12th century misogyny going by the rants in the Washington Post alleging women covet rape victimhood on campus; and the political world still thinking women's bodies have mechanisms for aborting conception in the event of a rape).

Even if this survivor-witness had consented in her Facebookdealings with the accused, her lack of consent in-person, face-to-face with the accused, as the event occurred, is the *only* evidence that counts. Prying into her past personal conduct is improper and a form of victim blaming.

Any prior event of consent is irrelevent. The concept that an earlier-day Facebook messaging exchange could mitigate guilt of the accused on the basis of a consent, is another disgusting effort at "slut-shaming" in disguise.

If she said (a defacto) "yes" ten thousand times on Facebook and said "no" once in person prior to the event, the crime is one of rape ('sexual assault' in New Jersey).

Facebook messages are not always transmitted in real time because of technical delays in publishing and the variety of locations Facebook's data service suppliers use for storage; they are not :"face-time" messages and therefore do not allow invocation of all senses of the user; and they are somewhat surreal. These points contribute to the unmistakable reality that "messaging and texting" communication is a whole different experience to face-time which might lead to a "no" quickly.

Judge Billmeier has erred seriously and has fallen deeply down the victim-blaming path. Precedent is well established in these types of cases. It doesn't matter what she wore; how she smelled; what her make-up was like; and it doesn't matter what she previously wrote in Facebook; she says she was raped that day in April 2013 so what does matter is the question of her consent at the time. Apparently she was drunk and arguably too young to consent but more importantly she said "no".

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