Violence against Women an Age-old Story

CT Post
September 22, 2012

http://www.ctpost.com/opinion/article/Violence-against-women-an-age-old-story-3884423.php

In the halls of the New York State Assembly, there's a scandal going on. In a case of the alleged sexual harassment of two female staffers by Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver authorized a secret settlement payment in excess of $100,000.

According Mr. Silver: the payment was made on the advice of counsel that it would be better to settle than to go to trial; the payment was kept secret in deference to the alleged victims' request for confidential mediation; the decision to bypass the Assembly's bipartisan ethics committee was made to protect the identity of the complainants.

According to Gloria Allred and Kevin Mintzer, lawyers representing Lopez's complainants, Silver's "truthiness" leaves room for debate.

A respected feminist attorney, Allred has long advocated for bringing victims out of the closet and their cases into court. Mintzer has been unequivocal on Lopez' refusal to resign: "the notion that he will continue to be in a position to sexually harass other Assembly employees is intolerable." Lest anyone be "shocked, shocked that there's (scandal) going on here," records now show an earlier payout on Lopez's behalf to two other women on allegations of sexual harassment.

"I take full responsibility in not insisting that all cases go to the ethics committee," says Silver. "I now believe it was the wrong (decision) from the perspective of transparency."

Ah, transparency.

The Catholic Church pedophile priest coverup, the Penn State-Jerry Sandusky-Joe Paterno child molestation coverup, the Citadel military academy, Syracuse University, Horace Mann prep school; what part of this don't these guys get?

From 1950-2002, the Catholic Church alone paid out $572,507,094 in partial restitution to victims of its coverups. How much more in taxes and tithes will it take?

What isn't being gotten in "it must not get out that it does happen here" school of denial is that Vito Lopez is an old-school predator: he targets women.

Ask yourself: when have you heard of girls being molested, raped, by pedophile priests? Indeed, the recent spate of high-profile cases have all headlined the sexual abuse of boys. In a society as open to homophobic suggestion as ours, by ignoring victimized girls, we've been encouraged to link the pedophilia of priests to homosexuality.

"Of course it happens to girls. I'm one of them," says Barbara Blaine, founder of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Blaine was 12 when a priest raped her.

"I was taught to revere priests. I didn't have the vocabulary to tell anyone. I believed it was my fault." At 29, did she finally told her parents. Together, they approached their bishop. "The bishop told us we were the first to come forward and led us to question ourselves. He was dismissive and disrespectful of us."

The first to come forward in the 1980s? Even the study of pedophilia in the Catholic Church commissioned by the bishops and conducted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice reports complaints from the 1950s. The study also cites the victims being 80 percent boys, 20 percent girls.

That ratio is in dispute. Although greater opportunity exists for priests to be in situations where they can molest boys, as Blaine states, "The SNAP membership of survivors is about 50/50 male/female."

On the failures of the Church the John Jay study cites: the failure of leadership to grasp the gravity of the situation; elevating the image of the institution above the welfare of the victims; and a lack of accountability.

These are just a few of the precedent points missed by Silver -- points that have not gone unnoticed by partisan foes. Yet, even such attempts to make political hay of the scandal is a coverup -- a bait-and-switch from the real problem.

At the end of the third book of the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" trilogy; after 1,500-pages of reader buy-in to the story of Lisbeth Salander and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist; after all the high drama turns and twists, one line that says it all.

"When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it's about violence against women, and the men who enable it."

When it comes down to it, the State Assembly scandal isn't about politics, partisanship and payoffs; it's about the violence done to women, the institutions which enable it, and the implications of that enabling at a time when neither Democrats nor Republicans are wholly innocent in the "war on women."

Columnist Janus Adams is an author, historian, and social commentator. Readers may e-mail her at: letters@JanusAdams.com.