The Fallout

Rape. It is a difficult word to write or say, let alone discuss. Regardless the society or culture and despite attempts to prosecute rape at the highest levels – even internationally as a war crime – it is still highly stigmatized.

Victims of all ages and genders are often in positions of shame and fear as a result of the assault they suffer. Popular media tends to address rape and its fallout in terms of families or communities that are unsupportive or even condemnatory of victims. In this dichotomy, the impact of rape on the community highlights the reinforcement of shame and ostracism. And when the victim finds supportive communities – be they families, friends, social workers or law enforcement officers – the focus tends to be on providing immediate assurances to the victims with scant attention to the long-term impacts on the victim or the community.

The BBC series Shetland dealt with rape and its fallout in a very different way, however. As the name suggests, the series is set in the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland. It follows the main major crimes unit for the island, headed by Detective Inspector James Perez and including Detective Sergeant Alison MacIntosh (“Tosh”), Detective Constable Sandy Wilson, and Sergeant Billy McCabe. Perez is the highly skilled group leader who is often socially awkward but still quite caring and protective of his teenage daughter, his team, and those impacted by crime. Although raised in the Shetland Islands, he lived in metropolitan Glasgow for many years and experienced the seedy side of life as a police officer there. Sandy is a local officer who appears tough at first but is particularly caring for his community and his family. Billy is at once a blustery older officer with a warm side that is more often expressed in gestures and jokes. And Tosh is a younger officer who is a capable, fun-loving and beloved loved member of the team.

During Season 3, there is a running storyline of a murder investigation that involves a Glasgow mob boss and his henchmen. When the henchmen are unable to convince Perez to back off from his investigation, one of them follows Tosh while she is conducting investigations in Glasgow. Ultimately, an order is given for Tosh to be abducted and raped in order to send Perez a message.

When Tosh is found, she tells the Glasgow officers that she was abducted and left on the edge of the city. Only when Tosh and Perez are alone does she admit that she was raped. The show captures in painful detail the intimate nature of processing for sexual assault. All this time, Perez is behind a curtain talking to Tosh, acting as a father figure and source of comfort for her. Clearly this has an important impact for Tosh but it also has a heavy impact on Perez, who suffers with the knowledge of what has happened.

Tosh insists on returning to work immediately, explaining to Perez that at work she feels normal. However, she also insists that none of her colleagues know what happened to her other than that she was kidnapped. Perez is scrupulous in honouring this request but at the same time is careful to screen her from certain aspects of the ongoing investigation that might be traumatic, particularly when it appears that a rape from years before is at the center of the murder investigation.

Beyond these measures to protect Tosh, the rape takes a personal toll on Perez, who not only wrestles with a certain level with guilt but also with the underlying mentality of men that allows them to commit such acts. This pulls the cover off a level of fallout from rape on the community – how decent and moral men in the community come to terms with the fact that a heinous act was committed by a man. Indeed, as the season progresses this shock and shame at the abilities of other men seems to seep further into Perez’s life and sense of identity at a personal and professional level. Personally, Perez finds himself so disrupted by the sense that men are too often power-seekers in relationships that he nearly ends a budding relationship. Professionally, Perez begins to examine the way in which he – and to a larger extent the male-dominated police force – sees women as officers and also as victims, particularly when they are victims of rape and related crimes.

Perez voices his professional concerns to Sandy in the context of the failure to report the older rape. Sandy at first raises the standard questioning as to why the crime was not reported and is touched when Perez asks him whether the victim (in that instance a former sex worker) would have been taken seriously and handled with dignity. At first Sandy seems to want to protest against this – speaking, one senses, from how he would handle the issue – and then stops to ponder how others in a police department, especially in a tougher metropolitan area, would respond to such a victim. Ultimately, the victim in that case is threatened and comes to Shetland to talk to Perez and Sandy. When she says that she is willing to give a statement about what happened to her, Sandy is tasked with helping her and is deeply affected. Indeed, he starts out by explaining that they will do everything to protect the victim and to make sure that all the necessary reporting is completed no matter how long it takes.

At the very end of the season, Tosh informs Billy that she will be staying with several of her friends for a few weeks. Although not necessary, she then fumbles through explaining that the kidnapping was more than just a kidnapping. Billy’s face goes through stages, from shock to deep sadness to near tears. He struggles to find a response other than to look at her with sad affection and offer her a hug if she is comfortable. She responds that she is not comfortable with anyone touching her and then heads home, leaving Billy to sit down in his office with what seems like the weight of the world on his otherwise reserved shoulders. It is clear that this is a weight which will not soon be lifted and that he is suffering at the idea of the pain caused to such a dear part of his work family.

Shetland does a thorough job of examining the impact of rape on the female victim, particularly where the victim is someone who “should have known better,” in this case because she is a detective. It also portrays a strong victim in the sense that she is eager to return to the aspects of life which give her normalcy even if they are the reason that she was assaulted. Yet it is in the shows portrayal of rape on the community of men who love and respect the victim that it is most noteworthy and unique.

Janie's Got A Gun and Justified Private Violence

Twenty years ago, Boston-based rock band Aerosmith released its highly successful album Pump. Amongst Pump's various tracks was the Grammy award-winning song (and MTV award winning music video directed by David Fincher) Janie's Got A Gun (JGAG). The song highlighted a significant social and legal issue - sexual abuse and incest. JGAG conveys the narrative of the song's protagonist Janie who kills her father for having raped her (presumably not for the first time).

In this blog post, I want to briefly explore how the song deals with the idea of private violence in a familial context. In JGAG, there are fundamentally two acts of familial violence that transpire:, where one causally leads to the other: 1) a father raping his daughter; and 2) the daughter killing her father, both in response to and in order to stop prospective rapes by him against her.

The father and his acts are accurately characterized for what they are - as unjustifiable and wrongful. The rape of one's own child (and anyone else for that matter) is an act of a troubled and disturbed mind - although not necessarily a product of legal insanity. This is conveyed in the following lyrics:

What did her daddy do?
He jacked a little bitty baby
The man has got to be insane

They say the spell that he was under the
lightning and the thunder knew that
someone had to stop the rain

Although Janie is a teenager (as suggested at least in the music video), the father's death is justifiably violent - as justification for raping a "little bitty baby". It also conveys the power imbalance that exists between a parent and child, even when that child is a teenager.

Janie's violence is justified as more than just an act of retribution. It is also presented as a form of remedial action and prospective self-defence. She is the "someone" who "had to stop the rain." As with many individuals who suffer from private violence, there is a fear of revealing it to others only to be disbelieved or to have no action taken to stop it.

They said when Janie was arrested they
found him underneath a train
But man he had it coming
Now that Janie's got a gun she ain't never
gonna be the same.

...

She had to take him down easy and put a
bullet in his brain
She said cause nobody believes me
The man was such a sleaze, he ain't never
gonna be the same.

Janie in this narrative is not presented as just an object of her father's madness/lust/desire, but she is also an agent who takes control of that which causes her utmost pain. Notwithstanding and perhaps in spite of her father's depravity and metaphorical insanity, her agency is nevertheless manifested through a sense of humanity - by taking him down easy and putting a bullet in his brain. One could easily imagine more painful, deserved and vengeful instantiations.

Janie's actions taken against her father are analogous to those who suffer from Battered Spouse Syndrome, where the act of violence waged against an abusive spouse leading to the latter's death does not take place at the time of or in expectation of an imminent attack. It occurs while the abuser is or might be caught unaware of his/her impending death- perhaps even after an abusive act has transpired. In the music video for JGAG, Janie kills her father while he sits in his study, after having just raped her.

The song does not reveal Janie's ultimate fate following her arrest. The song does however convey, intended or otherwise, a sense of justice, retribution and self-defence through Janie's actions.

Defeating Justice?

In a previous post, I discussed the concept of creating justice within the context of the television show Lie to Me. The particular storyline at issue was one in which a female member of an Army unit fabricated an allegation that she had been raped by her superior officer because, as the audience comes to find out, the superior officer had raped another member of the unit, who deserted rather than tell her story in what she viewed as a hostile legal and social environment. The argument made in my post was that the officer who fabricated the story did so in order to create a situation where justice would be done for the act of rape, even if the particular allegation was false. Ultimately, the true victim came forward to tell her story, the offending officer inadvertently admitted to the rape and was arrested, and it seemed that the social order within the military community was restored.

One of the two storylines in last week’s episode of Lie to Me, “Depraved Heart,” presented an entirely different concept of creating justice and the restoration of status quo to those harmed by the actions of a particular individual. At the beginning, the story seems to closely parallel the headline-grabbing facts of the Bernard Madoff case. Foster and Loker are hired by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to investigate an investment manager named Hollin and his business dealings because he has been found to have operated an investment swindle similar in size and effect to that in the Madoff case. Hollin himself is portrayed as an ill old man. He shared control of his investment firm with his daughter, Caroline, although Hollin maintains that he alone acted to swindle the firm’s clients and that Caroline had no knowledge of his actions. He also maintains that the missing money from his clients – many of whom gave him their life savings and are facing dire financial straits as a result of his actions – is gone.

Throughout the course of several interviews with Hollin and Caroline, Loker demonstrates a sense of disgust with both of them, and is extremely hostile to them, to the point where Foster has to conduct interviews without him. During one of these interviews, Hollin admits that the swindle was actually the result of his daughter’s actions and that he has decided to take the fall for her because she has a family and long life ahead of her, while he will certainly die soon. To Hollin, his daughter made a mistake and he is doing the noble thing that any parent would do in protecting her. He then admits to Foster that his clients’ money is not in fact gone. Hollin and Foster make a deal: he will help her and the SEC find and distribute his clients’ money and Foster will not say anything to the SEC about Caroline’s real involvement in the swindle. Foster accepts this deal because to her the best way to achieve justice for the victims of the swindle is to allow them to retrieve their money and be saved from economic ruin. When they return to the office, Foster tells Loker about her agreement with Hollin and Loker angrily objects, arguing that Caroline should be prosecuted because she broke the law. Foster reminds Loker that, if Caroline is prosecuted, the victims will not recover any money and will suffer far more than if Caroline is allowed to remain free. Loker does not seem to accept this idea but agrees to go along with it. Shortly after this conversation, Foster calls her contact at the SEC and is informed that her services are no longer needed because he has received information regarding Caroline’s culpability. When Foster asks about the source of this information, her contact is evasive and ends the conversation. Loker goes missing for a while and is confronted by Foster on his return. He tells her that he is happy that Caroline will be tried but that he did not turn her in. Foster reminds him that the affected investors will now remain without compensation because Caroline was implicated in the scandal and then lets Loker leave. Loker then takes Torres aside and admits to her that he reported Caroline to the SEC and then took a sedative so that he would not visibly react to Foster’s questions. Although Torres agrees not to turn Loker in, she reminds him that he will eventually be found out.

At first, Loker’s actions might not seem objectionable. After all, he did act in strict compliance with the law, turning in someone he knew to be guilty of a crime. From the legal systems’ perspective, Loker’s actions were appropriate – notwithstanding his insubordination at work. However, a deeper analysis of his actions calls into question which character was actually acting in the best interest of justice and the people whom the law is designed to serve.

Loker’s statements regarding Caroline and his overall actions echo the idea of retributive justice. Caroline committed an illegal act which harmed the investors in her father’s firm and should be punished as a result. His focus was solely on Caroline and the initial harm done by her actions. Foster’s agreement with Hollin and her defense of it to Loker, however, echo in restorative justice. While Foster is certainly aware that Caroline’s actions were illegal and wrong, she is also aware that the result of Caroline’s actions is more than the violation of a statute and the initial economic harm done to the community of investors who were defrauded by the swindle. Rather, Foster views justice as returning the presumptively lost funds to Hollin’s clients and restoring them to their prior state of financial stability. To Foster, justice in this instance is not in the trial of Caroline for her acts but in finding a way to mitigate the impact of Caroline’s acts on those who were most harmed by them. Examined at this level, Foster’s vision of restorative justice as appropriate in this case is arguably more compelling, as it gets to the heart of the truly horrific element of the crimes at issue – the loss of investors’ life savings through no fault of their own. In the agreement between Foster and Hollin, the investors are spared financial ruin and Hollin and Caroline are left to resolve their differences as to Caroline’s conduct as an internal, family matter. Thus, the investors who were harmed are made whole and the family in which the crimes occurred is left to decide on its own method of sanction and/or forgiveness. This episode of Lie to Me demonstrates that there are times when it is possible for law to defeat justice, depending on the vision used to define justice itself.


Information on Lie to Me can be found at http://www.fox.com/lietome/ .