Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
(Updated below.)
I think the following story out of Kentucky is an interesting one. Savannah Dietrich, a seventeen-year-old, is the victim of a sexual assault. Last August, she was assaulted by two boys she knew after she passed out at a party. It wasn’t until months later that Dietrich learned that pictures of her assault had been taken and shared with other people.
The victim told a newspaper that she cried herself to sleep for months. She added, “I couldn’t go out in public places. You just sit there and wonder, who saw (the pictures), who knows?”
According to the Courier-Journal, Dietrich felt frustrated by what she thought “was a lenient plea bargain for two teens who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her and circulating pictures of the incident.” She took to Twitter and named her attackers. She also tweeted, “There you go, lock me up. I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell” and “Protect rapist is more important than getting justice for the victim in Louisville.”
Dietrich is now facing a possible jail sentence. The attorneys for the boys who pleaded guilty to her assault have asked a Jefferson District Court judge to hold her in contempt for publicly naming her attackers. Dietrich stands accused of violating “the confidentiality of a juvenile hearing and the court’s order not to speak of it.” If charged with contempt, Dietrich could receive a “potential sentence of up to 180 days in jail and a $500 fine.”
Jason Riley of the Courier-Journal wrote: “Legal experts say such cases are becoming more common, in which people are communicating more frequently through social media and violating court orders not to speak.”
Greg Leslie, who is the interim executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Virginia, said, “In the past, people would complain to anyone who would listen, but they didn’t have a way to publish their comments where there would be a permanent record, like on Facebook and Twitter, for people to see worldwide.” He continued, “It’s just going to happen more and more.”
“So many of my rights have been taken away by these boys,” Dietrich told the Courier Journal. “I’m at the point, that if I have to go to jail for my rights, I will do it. If they really feel it’s necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me … as opposed to throwing these boys in jail for what they did to me, then I don’t understand justice.”
Dietrich claims that she and her family “were unaware of the plea bargain and recommended sentence until just before it was announced in court — and were upset with what they felt was a slap on the wrist for the attackers.” Dietrich said. “They got off very easy … and they tell me to be quiet, just silencing me at the end.”
Emily Farrar-Crockett, one of Dietrich’s attorneys, said that her client had looked at the laws of confidentiality before she tweeted her comments. Crockett said that Dietrich “tried not to violate what she believed the law to be” by not tweeting about what happened in court or what was in court records.
Greg Leslie said he thinks that Dietrich should “not be legally barred from talking about what happened to her. That’s a wide-ranging restraint on speech. By going to court, you shouldn’t lose the legal right to talk about something.”
Not all legal experts agree with Leslie. Ohio media law specialist David Marburger said that even if the judge might be limiting freedom of speech with an order, “it doesn’t necessarily free you from that order. You have to respect the order and get the judge to vacate the order or get a higher court to restrain the judge from enforcing the order.” And Jo Ann Phillips, head of Kentuckians Voice for Crime Victims, said that she “doesn’t blame Dietrich for standing up for what she felt was an injustice, but said she should have gone about it another way.”
“This (assault) could affect her for the rest of her life and the fact that she said, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,’ you have to applaud her,” Phillips said. “But you also have to respect authority.”
“ … She should have gone to a victims’ group or her local legislator and fought for the right to speak out.”
What do you think? Was Dietrich wrong to name her accusers publicly? Do you think Dietrich has the right to speak out about what happened to her?
UPDATE: The motion to hold 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich of Louisville in contempt was withdrawn on Monday.
SOURCES
Assault victim’s tweets prompt contempt case (Courier-Journal)
Savannah Dietrich, 17-Year-Old Sexual Assault Victim, Faces Charge For Naming Attackers (Huffington Post/AP)
This is my opinion-I’m not a lawyer
Freedom of Speech is a Constitutional Right. A judge that orders someone not to speak, especially for no ethical reason, is likely guilty of Oppression Under Color of Authority. If a law that is contradictory to the Constitution is Void, then a Gag Order that the court forces upon someone for no ethical reason and in violation of their free speech rights should be Void as well, both surrendering their force of authority because of their Constitutionally defective substance. If the judge told a convicted criminal defendant to rob a bank as part of their court-ordered sentence, should the defendant be subject to contempt if he refused? No, the sentence is void by unlawful coercion and oppression. The lawyers for the defendent should file in a court of appeals to have the sentence vacated and then file with the state bar and the judicial ethics commission.
This whole thing looks like some people with financial means and attorneys using same to frustrate justice in the best interest of their likely ill-raised children. The lawyers have so thoroughly corrupted the good faith intent of common men by “lawyering up” the law that we should probably just shut the system down and start over. Justice systems are typically horrible at delivering justice to anyone. They do seem to favor those having the least ethics when same also have the most money and/or influence. In this case, it appears that the children have adopted a code of opportunistic behavior learned from their parents.
Refusing to be Silenced
By Francesca Ernst
July 25, 2012
http://emilyslist.org/blog/refusing-be-silenced
Last summer, 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich was sexually assaulted by two teenage boys. Not only did they attack her, they also took photographs of the incident and shared with others. The two teenage boys recently accepted what Dietrich found to be a lenient plea bargain and have yet to be sentenced. In the meantime, court rules legally prevented Dietrich from ever speaking publicly about her attack and its perpetrators.
But Savannah Dietrich wouldn’t be silenced. At the risk of up to 180 days in jail and a $500 fine, Dietrich used Twitter to speak out against her attackers and speak up for other victims of sexual assault:
“There you go, lock me up,” she tweeted, naming the boys who sexually assaulted her. “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”
Shortly thereafter, the attackers’ attorney asked the Jefferson District Court judge to hold her in contempt because she violated juvenile court confidentiality rules and the court’s order not to speak about the case.
Dietrich said: “If they really feel it’s necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me … as opposed to throwing these boys in jail for what they did to me, then I don’t understand justice.”
On Monday night, the contempt charge was dropped. But Savannah Dietrich isn’t the only woman speaking the truth who has been silenced this year.
In February, Sandra Fluke was prevented from testifying at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Hearing on contraceptives.
DC’s only elected representative, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, was denied the right to speak (not once, but twice!) during hearings about anti –abortion legislation that was proposed for the District by Arizona (!) Congressman Trent Franks.
In the Michigan Showdown of mid-June, Michigan State Representative, and 2010 POP candidate, Lisa Brown candidly spoke out against anti-abortion legislation. Rep. Brown and her likeminded colleagues were banned from the floor the following day—the last day before a five week break.
There is no making sense of the constant assault on women’s rights we’ve seen over the past year. The war on women isn’t a figment of your imagination—it’s a campaign being leveraged in steady waves by ultra-Conservatives in Congress and in courtrooms across the country.
Savannah Dietrich’s courage to defy an unjust system led to an outpouring of support that ultimately led to a withdrawal of the motion to be held in contempt. Savannah Dietrich, just like so many of her predecessors, proved that one voice fighting for what’s right can make a difference. Now more than ever, we need courageous, defiant women on the front lines.
Citing Savannah Dietrich contempt case, county attorney to pursue opening some juvenile courts
After Dietrich case, O’Connell to work on bill
Written by Jason Riley
The Courier-Journal
7/26/12
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120725/NEWS01/307250077/Citing-Savannah-Dietrich-contempt-case-county-attorney-pursue-opening-some-juvenile-courts?odyssey=nav|head
Excerpt:
Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell’s office will push to open some juvenile court proceedings in Kentucky, citing the recent case of 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich, who was up for a contempt charge for tweeting the names of two boys who assaulted her.
“Kentucky is way behind the curve,” O’Connell said at a news conference Wednesday, saying the state has some of the strictest secrecy laws in the nation and is one of only 11 states that bar any access to juvenile proceedings. “… It is time for a change” and Kentucky needs to “join the ranks of the rest of the states throughout the country.”
O’Connell said juvenile court should be open to ensure accountability and alert the community to violent juvenile crimes. He said reform will have to come from the General Assembly and he is developing legislation to introduce at the next session and will be seeking sponsors.
“It has been my position, when I served as juvenile court judge, and the position of the county attorney’s office, that juvenile court should be presumptively open,” O’Connell said.
The news conference came just days after a contempt motion was dropped against Dietrich, who violated a gag order out of frustration with the plea bargain in her sexual assault case case and with being told by a district judge not to talk about the case because juvenile court is confidential.
Malisha,
He could have fined me $1,000 dollars and put me in jail for 90 days. He only fined me $200.00 dollars.
Lower court judges have almost unmitigated power in cases involving small people. They are the deadliest force in our culture. Legislators can be removed, exposed, etc.; even people in the executive branch can be gotten to, but a corrupt or even psychotic judge in a trial court in a regular ordinary place is invulnerable. LOOK OUT FOR THEM!
Circuit court judges have to be elected. Impeachment is difficult.
I had a nonsense charge. I dared the judge to remand. He charged me $200.00 plus court costs.
The Judge has committed contempt of the Constitution and of the rights of the victim. The Judge has to go. Do not wait for re election time. Citizens of that state need to implement impeachment proceedings now.
idealist707 1, July 24, 2012 at 8:52 am
Matt,
Stop enabling your bad side? You hate certain kinds of people, your privilege. There are those who hate your abuse, ditto their privilege. Show your tolerance by refraining, use your tolerance which I know is there. Cool it.
You write GOOD stuff at times. Be satisfied with that.
Nobody made you or I moral police here. Give folks free rein and they will expose themselves. Be content with smirking to yourself. This is advice to myself too. Shall we do better, we two?
===============================
I have never abused anybody. Okay, I’m refraining.
Elaine,
Excellent article … thanks
How to Out a Rapist
Jessica Valenti on July 23, 2012
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/169009/how-out-rapist
Excerpt:
Dietrich ignored the order and tweeted their names. “There you go, lock me up,” she wrote. “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.” Deitrich now says she ready to go to jail to stand up for the right to speak out. As Amanda Hess at Slate writes, “The criminal justice process can also rob the victim of control over her own narrative.”
Hess also points out that Deitrich is not the first young woman to use social media to out rapists:
In 2010, 19-year-old American University student Chloe Rubenstein took to Facebook and Twitter to out two men on campus she said had victimized several of her friends (“ATTENTION WOMEN,” she wrote. “They are predators and will show no remorse for anyone.”) In 2007, a group of women at Portland’s Lewis & Clark College, led by sophomore Helen Hunter, created a Facebook group calling one of their classmates a “Piece of Shit Rapist.” When the administration caught wind, it suspended the man for just a semester. But five years later? Google his name, and the online rape allegations still register as the fourth hit.
Thanks to a widespread culture of victim-blaming and rape apologism, attackers usually have it pretty cushy. Victims are still not likely to report the assault and when they do they’re very likely to be blamed for it—an awful reality that re-traumatizes the victim and paves the way for future rapes.
So making the world more uncomfortable for rapists—letting them know that there will be consequences that include public shaming—is something I’m entirely at ease with. Especially considering how often women are silenced around issues of sexual assault. Sometimes that silence is enforced through a culture that makes women afraid to come forward, but sometimes that silencing is explicit.
In 2007, for example, a Nebraska woman and her attorneys were banned from using the words “rape,” “victim,” “sexual assault”—even “sexual assault kit” in a rape trial lest they prejudice the jury. From Dahlia Lithwick:
The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they’ll just have to read the witnesses’ eyebrows to sort out the difference.
Something tells me mugging victims have never been ordered not use the word “rob” when recounting the crime committed against them—but when it comes to sexual assault, logic and human decency always seem to go out the window.
We live in a country where a videotaped gang rape can result in a hung jury, where jokes about raping a woman are still considered hilarious and where the seriousness of sexual assault is so minimized that writing a research paper on rape is actually considered a reasonable punishment for attackers.
Rape survivors know that there’s a world of shame and stigma that awaits them should they speak up. In this kind of environment talking about sexual assault—let alone reporting it—is not just difficult, it’s straight up heroic.
Preventing victims from naming their attackers—or in this case, even acknowledging the assault—sends the message that rapists’ reputations are more important than a victim’s right to speak up. Savannah Dietrich refused to be silenced. Supporting victims’ voices should be a no-brainer—whether they’re on Twitter, in a courtroom or scrawled across a bathroom wall.
Dear fredaricka,
I think you misunderstood me. Apparently you believe I supported Matts in his smirking at women and rape. NONONONONO. OK?
I encouraged him to smirk at people he does not like and their comments. I do that because it is better than if he post more crap like before. OK.
Now it seems you think he is smirking at rape and I am approving that. NOOOOOOOOO!
I can only speak for me, the answer is no. If I thought he was supporting men as opposed to women then I would not even talk to him. Full stop.
And anyone supporting rape in any way, or victimizing the victim is SH*T.
Matts is three years old at times, and plays “I can scream more outrageous things than you can.”
And he did not realize, hope he does now, that that game doesn’t go when the subject of rape comes up.
At least not for me.
I’ve been kicking guys’ heinies on these questions as some can confirm.
Wait and you will see more.
My moral position is clear even here on this girl’s case. I suspect she was doped by the guys, that I have written above, and was victimized by, I believe, repeat offenders and outted to public shame.
How can anybody smirk at that?
Get my drift now? Join me and the ladies. I’ve been pushing their cause since the catholic bishop’s campaign and the ALEC anti-abort and anti-contraception campaign, both going on still.
@idealist707 — Be content with smirking to yourself. This is advice to myself too.
Men who sit in front of their computers and smirk at a discussion about men committing rape are in a class all their own. Thanks for the heads up.
Background checks are going to be the bane of these young men’s existence for the rest of their lives. As it should be.
Privacy is a RIGHT. If the boy feels his privacy has been taken without due process of law, maybe he should sue and then there will be a trial and a jury will hear what his damages are. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
Rafflaw, I’m just going on memory from what I saw in a documentary years back. I can’t find the documentary any more — I could easily be wrong.
His rights may have been trampled. Her body was penetrated violently. Which trumps which?
“Defense attorney Mejia said his client was accused of things he didn’t do and that his privacy had been ‘trampled.'”
So his client didn’t take pictures of the victim and pass them around thus respecting her privacy after the rape? Or did he take pictures of the victim and pass them around but since it wasn’t his privacy being trampled it didn’t count?
Matt,
Stop enabling your bad side? You hate certain kinds of people, your privilege. There are those who hate your abuse, ditto their privilege. Show your tolerance by refraining, use your tolerance which I know is there. Cool it.
You write GOOD stuff at times. Be satisfied with that.
Nobody made you or I moral police here. Give folks free rein and they will expose themselves. Be content with smirking to yourself. This is advice to myself too. Shall we do better, we two?
Contempt motion withdrawn for assault victim Savannah Dietrich
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120723/NEWS01/307230081/Contempt-motion-withdrawn-assault-victim-Savannah-Dietrich?gcheck=1&odyssey=obinsite&nclick_check=1
Excerpt:
Emily Farrar-Crockett, deputy division chief of the public defender’s juvenile division and one of Dietrich’s attorneys, said on Monday that “Savannah greatly appreciates the overwhelming support she has received from all over the world” since the newspaper story was published.
“We are encouraged by the private defense attorney’s belated recognition that their action was inappropriate and only served to make worse what this child victim has already endured,” she said.
Farrar-Crockett also said her office is still looking to have set aside the original court order forbidding all parties from talking about the case. Farrar-Crockett said the order was overly broad, and Dietrich should be able to talk about aspects of the case.
Assault victim won’t face fine, jail for tweeting names
By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY
7/24/12
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/07/assault-victim-wont-face-fine-jail-for-tweeting-names/1?csp=34news#.UA6WvfXYEUo
Excerpt:
Lawyers for two teenagers who pleaded guilty to assaulting a 17-year-old Kentucky girl have dropped their motion that she be held in contempt for tweeting her attackers’ names in defiance of a court order, The Courier-Journal reports.
After the story circulated worldwide, says David Majia, an attorney for one of the teens, there was no reason to continue the contempt motion.
“What could contempt do now?” Mejia tells the Louisville newspaper, noting that the boys’ names have already been circulated far beyond the original tweet. “Seems like a rather useless exercise doesn’t it?”
The newspaper, following its policies, does not identify minors in juvenile court. The assault victim, Savannah Dietrich, and her parents agreed to talk to a Courier-Journal reporter last week, saying she wanted to publicize her story.
The original court order had forbidden all parties in the case to discuss it, writes Courier-Journal reporter Jason Riley.
Savannah, however, tweeted the boys’ names and criticized the justice system in frustration over what she viewed as a lenient plea bargain for the two teens who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her and circulating pictures of the incident.
“There you go, lock me up,” she tweeted. “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”
Defense attorney Mejia said his client was accused of things he didn’t do and that his privacy had been “trampled.”