This summer, high-profile sex crimes trials claimed the headlines. These are important prosecutions and the coverage is understandable. Yet as I read story after story, I was struck by the number — and type — of cases that do not get the coverage they deserve.
Too frequently, sex crimes are only covered if they involve a celebrity, or if they conjure the deep-seated horror of a random attack by a stranger who jumps from the shadows.
Unfortunately, those crimes do happen. This spring, for instance, we announced the guilty plea of a man who robbed and then sexually assaulted a stranger at gunpoint as she walked in East Harlem. We take those cases extremely seriously: he is now serving a 20-year prison sentence.
But so-called stranger rapes comprise less than half of our docket. The ink and airtime dedicated to those disturbing cases is wholly disproportionate to the rape cases we see, tragically, on a regular basis. And crucially, I believe, that hurts our efforts to encourage survivors to come forward about these consistently under-reported crimes.
So here are the facts: Sexual assault and rape are typically committed by someone the survivor knows. Sometimes that means an acquaintance from their neighborhood or workplace. Sometimes that means a date. Often, that means a current or former intimate partner — which is exactly why, when I created the Manhattan district attorney office’s first Special Victims Division, we combined our sex crimes and domestic violence practices into one Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Bureau.
This summer we secured convictions in multiple cases like these, from a man who raped a woman who knew him from their apartment building to a man who raped a woman as she repeated “stop” the night of their first date.
To be clear, we have come a long way since the decades where a man could not be prosecuted for raping his wife. Our collective understanding of rape has expanded tremendously thanks to activism and education led by advocates and survivors. Far from dire headlines questioning if “#MeToo is over,” I would argue that the survivors who shared their stories in 2017 and the months that followed accelerated this process and remains impactful today. The movement forced us to confront the long-engrained idea of the “typical rape” and rape victim.
It certainly changed law enforcement’s approach to these crimes. Prosecutors are more willing to take on cases where the survivor doesn’t come forward for many years, where memories have faded and there is no physical evidence to speak of, where there were only two people in a room.
Rape takes many forms which rarely make headlines. I want to affirm to survivors that my office’s Special Victims Division knows that, and knows that rape is rape.
Whether it happens in a long-term consensual relationship. Whether it takes years to come forward. Whether money exchanges hands. Whether alcohol or substances were involved.
Simply put, rape is rape.
We must talk about the realities of rape, including the prevalence of rape committed by people known to the survivor. That includes reaching survivors, who may never see intimate-partner rapes covered in the media, and the everyday New Yorkers who will weigh the facts as they sit in the jury box.
We are increasingly helping juries and judges alike understand these nuances by putting experts on the stand to bust common rape myths. We are constantly working to improve our practice through extensive, trauma-informed trainings.
And I am proud to say that the D.A.’s office is no longer a black box. We are proactively and purposefully welcoming outside perspectives to consistently challenge us to be better through our Special Victims Division’s Advisory Council.
That’s all part of our core mission: centering the experiences of survivors.
Centering survivors means not placing a conviction rate above all else. In fact, we will help and support survivors even if a prosecution is not possible, or an arrest is never made. Our Survivor Services Bureau offers everything from high-quality counseling to legal referrals, all for free.
Sadly, even when a case does proceed, survivors can be re-traumatized by the criminal process before and during a trial. Having to relive a terrible experience, while being questioned about your credibility, is an immense undertaking to ask of anyone.
I am consistently inspired by the survivors that do so to secure justice in their case and, as we consistently hear, to stand up for other survivors. I want survivors to know that regardless of the form it takes, rape is rape. And we are here to help.
Bragg is the Manhattan district attorney.
