Whether we want to or not, we will soon learn many more horrifying things about what the three young women imprisoned and tortured in Cleveland went through. But here is something we already know: It might have been stopped earlier, but for a culture of denial. Charles Ramsey\u2019s now-famous intervention shows some success with decades of cultural messaging that violence can happen in the house next door and you should do something about it. But it took over a decade.<\/p>\n
The Cleveland story fits every societal expectation of what sexual violence looks like: Young girls, abducted off the street, imprisoned by grim-faced perpetrators whose mug shots are straight out of a crime procedural. And even then, it was allowed to continue, hidden in plain sight.<\/p>\n
Police deny that neighbors ever called the police to say there were naked women on leashes in the backyard. But that\u2019s what the neighbors say, possibly due to false memories: \u201cWe thought it was funny at first, and then we thought that was weird, so we called the cops,\u201d said Nina Samoylicz. \u201cThey thought we was playing, joking, they didn\u2019t believe us.\u201d (Cleveland police claim they have no record of such calls.) Israel Lugo told the paper he knew of three calls made to police about the house between 2011 and 2012. Elsie Citron told USA Today her daughter called the police after a similar sight, \u201cBut they didn\u2019t take it seriously,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
People who are officially tasked with keeping people safe have also been making excuses. On Tuesday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh went before the Senate Armed Services Committee to answer for a 35 percent rise of sexual assaults \u2014 only a tiny fraction of which are officially reported \u2014 and blamed \u201chookup culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Welsh pointed out that 20 percent of women said they had been sexually assaulted before their military service had begun. \u201dSo they come in from a society where this occurs,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He should have stopped after \u201ca society where this occurs.\u201d Yes, the military is not alone in its epidemic of sexual violence, though it has its own particular systemic enabling of it. What does that have to do with a \u201chookup mentality,\u201d unless you want to suggest that rape is caused by teenage promiscuity rather than by rapists?<\/p>\n
Doing something other than shifting the blame would require facing up to an ugly fact. The \u201cenemy\u201d is the man you hired to oversee sexual assault response. The \u201cenemy\u201d is your neighbor with whom, per Charles Ramsey, you ate ribs and listened to salsa. And, as we learned Wednesday, the \u201cenemy\u201d has also been Charles Ramsey, a repeat domestic abuser, as 10-year-old records show. Maybe he\u2019s learned something since then, but even people who do heroic things can also be abusers.<\/p>\n