Imperator_DK said:
Why would rape be a less serious offence against a prostitute?
And who would trust the validity of information from the current Libyan administration, which dragged her off in the first place?
EDIT:
As far as I can see, it's the government representative who complain about the family honour of the attackers, saying that it's against Libyan custom (presumably the clan system) that she publicly named them.
Though I find a notion that prostitutes should automatically be without entitlement to "honour" to be utterly despicable. Certainly anyone who'd deny the worth of others merely because of their harmless choices in life - perhaps even made in dire circumstances - are the lowest creatures of all; what honour have they?
Actually I can see their point to some extent. The nature of the sex trade is one where agreements are typically made verbally, and it can be difficult to say what someone agreed to or accepted money for, especially after the fact.
Some girl accepts money from a kinko, or to be entertainment at a party, and some kind of disagreement arises or she sees an angle on it, it's very easy for her to claim she was raped even if she wasn't. The situation can also become quite interesting when your dealing with things like bondage, S&M, or BDSM (or any variation thereof), if someone accepts money to be tied up and tortured as a matter of routine, it does put a reasonable doubt on any claims they might make on having been molested. Such cases rapidly coming down to a he-said, she-said type arguement without any real hope of resolution especially if what happened was in private as most sexually oriented stuff tends to be.
Honestly, this is a big part of why I don't support legalized protitution. Most people think in terms of "well it's her body, she can do with it what she wants" but don't tend to think in terms of the other kinds of issues that go along with it. Not allowing prostitution tends to avoid having to try and deal with these kinds of things, or spend tons of money in the legal system bringing cases to trial that are in many cases going to be almost impossible to resolve accuratly.
In this paticular case, I do notice that she went to the US media. The US being well known for it's civil liberties policies, and also we made a big deal about wanting to bring women's rights to The Middle East even if we ultimatly failed. Her claims could simply be an attempt to get five minutes of fame, and perhaps if she becomes well known and capture's the public eye, it will make it easier for her to obtain immigration. From the way it sounds, it doesn't seem like she even really went to the authorities. Even if her problem was with the authorities there is STILL a chain of command she could move up to make a complaint.
What's more, as much as I dislike Libya, they also have a point about naming names in the media that way. In the US we very much have an innocent until proven guilty policy, and when accusations are made in most cases the authorities DO make an effort to protect the identities of the accused, especially when nothing is yet known. This is why in many cases you hear "the police are interrogating suspects" or "have suspects in custody" without any names being mentioned if it can be avoided. I'm sure things are differant down there on a lot of levels, but that's still kind of a common sense thing, above and beyond any tribal issues. Just being accused of rape, even if it's totally false, is going to put a public stain on someone that is never going to fully go away.
Sounds like a messed up situation, so all I can say is that we'll see what happens. If the reporters found her it would be one thing, but with her approaching them it gives me the wrong vibe for some reason.
Besides, as "unfair" as it might be, just because she got tied up and had 15 guys have sex with her along with water sports and fecaphillia does not mean it's rape. That's a fairly typical "extreme gang bang" situation and you find women who get paid to do that kind of thing on video all the time. If she's known to be a professional, and do that kind of thing, it's not so much making her "sub human" to treat such claims with doubt, as simply applying common sense, especially when thre is something (media attention) to be gained.
But then again, as I said, I prefer not to go there, which is why I prefer not to support the idea of legalized prostitution, the adult film industry can be considered similar, but I think that has enough eyes on it (one way or another) and enough differances where it doesn't raise quite the same questions in of itself. Largely because if a "porn star" is doing something like this it's typically under contract and documented, not typically the result of some word of mouth/handshake agreement in a bar or on a street corner, or at least not to my knowlege, I'm hardly an expert. Any deals that might be being cut under the table though, well that's differant, and aren't protected the way "art films" are, which to my way of thinking is a good thing.
