In keeping with the “women who hate women” theme we sort of had going last week, let’s take a quick look at Arizona Judge Jacqueline Hatch. Judge Hatch, you see, presided over a recent case involving a Flagstaff, Arizona police officer who was found guilty of sexually abusing a woman in a bar. According to the Arizona Daily Sun,
Prosecutors contended that he drank eight beers and then drove himself to the Green Room, where he flashed his badge in an attempt to get into a concert for free. While inside, he walked up behind the victim, who was a friend of a friend, put his hand up her skirt and then ran his fingers across her genitals.
When bouncers threw him out, Evans told them he was a cop and they would be arrested.
The cop faced up to two years in jail for his assault. But Hatch apparently felt the officer, who’d lost his job and served four whole days in jail, had already been punished enough for his crime, and let him off with two years of probation.
She also gave the victim a patronizing little lecture. Again, according to the Daily Sun,
Bad things can happen in bars, Hatch told the victim, adding that other people might be more intoxicated than she was.
“If you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you,” Hatch said.
Hatch told the victim and the defendant that no one would be happy with the sentence she gave, but that finding an appropriate sentence was her duty.
“I hope you look at what you’ve been through and try to take something positive out of it,” Hatch said to the victim in court. “You learned a lesson about friendship and you learned a lesson about vulnerability.”
Hatch said that the victim was not to blame in the case, but that all women must be vigilant against becoming victims.
“When you blame others, you give up your power to change,” Hatch said that her mother used to say.
Hatch has now offered a half-assed apology for her remarks, saying, in part:
As a Coconino County Superior Court judge, it is my responsibility to ensure that all victims and defendants are treated fairly and in a respectful manner in the courtroom. It’s a responsibility I take very seriously. I also believe victims should not be blamed for coming forward to report crimes.
In a recent case, my in-court comments to the victim at sentencing did not further these important tenets. My comments were poorly communicated and for that, I am truly sorry if they caused the victim further distress.
No, you communicated pretty clearly. The problem is what you communicated.
Huh. I didn’t know going to a bar was an open invitation for sexual assault. And apparently telling the attacker to keep his hands to himself was too hard to do.
On another note, has the “poorly communicated” excuse ever got someone off the hook for making stupid comments?
“Ya know, if you’d only predicted the future and known that this dude was going to sexually assault you, none of this would have happened.”
This may just be the biggest victim-blaming leap I have ever seen, anywhere!
So when I was injured at work, I just shouldn’t have gone to work that day. EASY PEASY!
If you hadn’t been on that plane when it crashed, you would have lived. Why can’t you idiots just be more careful?
(Because rapists and sexual abusers are just a thing that happens, not people with free will.)
Fucking hell. Would she have said “Don’t go to bars, you’re asking for it” if this slimy cop had shoved his hands down a man’s jeans and groped him? Don’t reckon so. What a totally disgusting attitude.
Most of my friends have been saying “what do you expect from a Brewer appointee?” And for once I agreed with a local rabble rousing reporter (who’s rabble rousing never extends to fully funding CPS by raising taxes.)
I mean, jeez, if you hadn’t been carrying a purse, it wouldn’t have gotten snatched. You should magically know better than to be any place where a purse snatcher is, gosh!
“You learned a lesson about friendship?” What is this, a My Little Pony episode?
Disgusting. I hope she can be held to account, and feel sorry for what the victim must have gone through at hearing that rubbish.
UGH. While I don’t like to drink alcohol, so would probably not visit a bar, I have always found it frustrating when I go to a place where drinking is going on, and I have to encounter drunk people with serious boundary problems (such as the drunk girl who decided that because she has boobs that grabbing MY boobs was “ok” at a wedding that I went to awhile back). I don’t drink, but my husband enjoys a bit of social imbibing, and it never fails that at some point, some boundary-pushing creep comes along and looks for someone who is smaller and vulnerable to enact their boundary-violating behaviors on. You never see these people going up to some giant scary Viking guy and fondling his testicles without asking first if said behavior is ok with him. But if you’re less than 5’5″ and/or you’re female, suddenly IT IS TOTALLY OK.
I once read this blog entry by this woman who was talking about how rapists and other predator types LISTEN TO WHAT WE SAY when people start talking about who “deserved” it because of wearing a short skirt or whatever. It’s not that short skirts = rape. It’s that SO MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE that short skirts = deserving of rape, so when a rapist targets someone with a short skirt, people are less likely to immediately go, “OH SHIT A RAPIST” and instead focus on skirt length and totally miss the point. Very few rapists wear a shirt emblazoned with the word RAPIST in big red letters across the front. Very few predators out themselves obviously in a way that everyone recognizes (jumps from the bushes with a knife, attacks a nun wearing floor length clothing who was walking home with friends, etc).
So, honestly, I get more pissed off at people who are perpetuating these harmful stereotypes and expectations for rapists and predators to prey and take advantage of by basically pre-selecting out “acceptable” victims. Truly, the actions of the people who say shit that singles out PERFECTLY INNOCENT PEOPLE as being “deserving” of assault are at the very least on par, if not even worse, because they are setting up a huge swath of people who are not “perfect victims” who will continue to be victimized and blamed and told they “deserved” or “asked” for it for months or even FUCKING YEARS after the actual incident.
And that, my friends, is fucked up.
I hate this woman more and more every time I see an article about her. Brewer, Arpaio, the who lot.
I’m curious as to what lesson about friendship the victim was supposed to learn here. Don’t have friends just in case they might have other friends who might one day sexually abuse you?
@Cassandra,
I think the message was: choose your friends, and the friends of your friends, more carefully, or they might sexually assault you and then be let off with probation. Again, it’s all the victim’s fault.
If she hadn’t been in that bar, he would have groped someone else.
If he hadn’t been in that bar he would have groped someone somewhere else.
A couple of weeks ago a guy sat next to me on the bus and started jerking off.
GUESS I SHOULDN’T HAVE GONE TO WORK THAT DAY.
OR SHOULD HAVE FLOWN TO WORK OR RIDDEN A PONY OR SOMETHING.
I’ll remember this useful advice in the future–anytime anything bad happens to me that is actually the fault of some dude being skeezy, it was really my fault for being there and tempting him into skeeziness.
If he hadn’t decided to grope someone, nobody would have been groped.
HOLEE FUCK. Some people are just… I don’t even… FUCK.
Yeah, if the victim hadn’t been there that night, this wouldn’t have happened to her that night. But it would likely have happened to another bar patron. What does this judge want, for women to be confined to the home (because no one EVER gets sexually abused there!)?
I refuse to wish harm upon another person, so I won’t. However, if I lived in this judge’s neighborhood I’d never pick up after my dog if it dropped a deuce in her yard.
@chocomintlipwax That is creepy as all fuck. What did you do? I’m lucky enough that in all my time riding public transport I’ve never been harassed, sexually or otherwise. Just thinking about being put in that position makes my want to take a hot shower and exfoliate all of my skin.
I still remember the time a dude on BART decided to unzip his fly, check to see if I was looking, then stick his hand in and start wanking, then check to see if I was looking again, then start pulling himself out, again with the looking.
It was at that point that I figured out that one great way of, um, deflating a flasher is to point at his exposed genitalia and laugh.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m filled with immense seething RAGE for having to endure shitheads like the Public Masturbator or the Guy With No Sense of Personal Space Who Likes To Get Grabby or even the Shouter of Sexually Gross Slurs. It’s getting hard not to imagine their heads exploding every time I have to encounter one of these gross horrible people who not only make me feel unsafe in public spaces, but who obviously know they’re totally in the clear and will get away with it.
When I’m alone, I am harassed pretty much every day, multiple times a day. When I am with my husband, no one dares say a thing. My husband is over 6 feet tall and built like a gorilla (a very, very sexy gorilla, but I digress…). These shitheads KNOW they’re being shitheads. “He didn’t know he was being creepy and gross” is not even close to the truth.
@Cassandra- I still think it would be great to just pepper spray public masturbators right in the junk. Better yet, make it SPRAY PAINT. They can have REAL “blue balls” if they’re so fucking tactless that they can’t even make ti to a public restroom to wank off.
What always gets me even worse than the victim blaming of these types of comments is the false sense of security it gives women (and men, obv, who believe they can’t get raped or molested). It’s like, be a good girl and stay home and only talk to trustworthy people and you won’t get raped. Only “good girls” get raped too, people get raped in their homes, and people get raped by people who seem trustworthy. I’m just waiting for someone to honestly say, “If she hadn’t have been born this wouldn’t have happened to her.”
“Please, don’t go into public with a vagina, It is your choice to exist in possession of a vagina, and as men are disgusting, untrustworthy fucks, we let them out to roam around in public. Therefore, don’t go outside, there might be men.”
I will remember your wise advice, O Judge Fuckwit.
It appears that the cop was sentenced to 2 years and that he lost his job and probably any pension. I’d have to see the full story to make some sort of judgement on this.