If she really was raped, why didn’t she speak up earlier? Why did she get drunk? Why was she wearing such a short skirt? Why did she walk home by herself?

God, it’s exhausting, isn’t it? Every time a story about a woman being raped becomes headline news, the same pattern repeats without fail. People accuse the woman of asking for it. They question her motives; they scrutinize her looks; they attack her character. And without fail, she is punished for speaking up.

It happened to Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh, then a supreme court nominee, of assaulting her when they were both teenagers in the 1980s. Ford and her family reportedly had to flee their home because of threats and harassment.

According to her lawyers, her email was hacked and she was impersonated online. Her entire life was turned upside down. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh was praised by Donald Trump and now has a lifetime appointment on the supreme court.

It happened with E Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her back in 1996. Trump said Carroll was not his “type” and “totally lying”. His lawyer asked Carroll why she didn’t scream during the alleged attack and why she didn’t go to the police at the time. Carroll’s life was upended and the Trump administration opened a criminal investigation into her.

Now we’re seeing the cycle repeat with the woman known as Jane Doe in the Cornell gang-rape case. According to her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, Doe is receiving threats from people who have discovered her identity and is terrified for her safety. Doe was even the victim of a swatting episode this week, a form of harassment where someone places a false call to emergency services with the goal of sending armed officers to the victim’s location. Giuffra told CNN that officers pointed weapons at Doe’s family after a fake tip about someone “killing people in the house” on Tuesday evening. “If you had a trigger-happy cop, or somebody had done the wrong thing, somebody could have ended up dead,” Giuffra said.

Nobody ended up dead on that particular occasion, but........

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