Columbia PhD candidate, Anna Krauthamer, has caused a stir over her column in the far-left Nation on “Why I Didn’t Report My Rape.” The reason? Krauthamer is a prison abolitionist and wanted to protect her rapists, saying it would be “silly and strange” for her to subject these rapists to the carceral state. Instead, she allegedly allowed multiple rapists to potentially rape other women.
In her column, Krauthamer alleged that she was gang raped in a Las Vegas hotel room for several hours. She explained that she “never did anything about it” and “the simple answer to the question of why I never reported the rape is that I believe in the abolition of police and prisons.”
She added:
“The prospect of being a participant in other people’s incarceration is as alien to me as anything could be, to the point that I can only conceive of it in childish terms – how silly and strange it would be to have a group of people incarcerated at my expense when doing so would do nothing to fix the damage they have already so thoroughly done.”
Rather than having concerns about future victims, Krauthamer said that these rapists would be the victims of a carceral state: “I don’t want to ruin the lives of my rapists, and I don’t know if they have children. The only thing I want is for them to have never done what they did to me – and nothing, including sending them to prison, will ever change that reality.”
Whether you call it virtuous or virtue-signaling, the suggestion is that rapists would never be sent to prison for their crimes in a nation without prisons. This is a PhD candidate at a leading university. She is not alone. Some faculty members have espoused the same anarchist position. In places like Columbia, this absurdist position is considered intellectually valuable while the faculty has largely purged any conservatives and libertarians from their ranks.
This is not a black-and-white issue. I can understand the need to protect future victims, and I can also understand the student not wanting to be involved in a trial, or to be responsible for placing people behind bars. Have you read women’s accounts of what happens to them in the courtroom when they testify against a rapist? It can feel like the trauma is repeated and magnified in humiliation by the defense attorney and the lying witnesses.
Turley is correct that rape is a horrific problem, and that millions of women who live in fear are not being protected. Krauthamer is correct that our legal system is dysfunctional and immoral at its foundation.
In a partially parallel incident, I was bicycling 5 years ago when I was struck head-on by a hit-and-run driver in a maneuver that was illegal on multiple levels. I almost died, and it was 8 months before I could begin re-learning how to walk. But I never made any attempt to locate the driver.
You did not try. But I bet the police did. As well as insurance adjusters, the hospital, etc. This is a bit different as it involved never telling the police (non-reporting). Like if you were hit as described but you managed to get home and work it out internally.
My concern is a principled stand against reporting crimes that may result in offenders imprisonment conflicts with many legal and moral requirements of certain professions like nursing, teaching, doctors, counselors etc.
And when the offenders repeat such behavior, the victims, in hindsight, become enablers for not reporting.
I have zero idea of what to make of this one. I cannot imagine being gang raped for hours would lead anyone to protect the rapists. I will not question the veracity of her statement of the rape as others have suggested. Yet, I cannot understand her statements. This too me is like being in Oz by way of Alice in Wonderland.
. It would also become public knowledge, humiliation, shame, victimization, fear, dread, gossip and rumor, judgements, whispers, self doubt …
Lucky to get out alive. It may be fiction unkn. Her PhD is contemporary fiction.
Flaubert’s explanation of Bovary was c’est moi.
No prisons no police is absurdity or just 🤪. Best wishes , Anna. Hope you sell a lot of novels.
I hope she is never in a position to influence anybody much less young women. What a totally selfish and self-centered person.
Do we have evidence that this incident actually occurred ?
No
. BREAKTHROUGH on who is Anna Krauthamer! She’s an English literature student at Columbia University. Ha ha
Yes, PT, it qualifies. 1A is applicable.
Bow to your moral superior.
It is obvious that diversity, and the views she holds regarding it, are more precious than anything she actually wrote about.
https://archive.is/20260126073140/https://www.thenation.com/article/society/why-i-didnt-report-my-rape
. It’s a literary genre– the Absurd movement mid 20th century. Started way back as realism and Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Quite a sensation and went to trial. Frederico Fellini filmmaker, Albert
Camus the myth of Sisyphus, surrealist Salvador Dali artist. She’s a writer of absurdity. Maybe the next Herman Melville.
For the umpteenth time, freedom of speech and press are neutral until the character speaks or picks up a pen. 1A stands
Once again you are taking a liberal at face value. What evidence is there that she was gang raped? Other than her word, none that I can see. Could it be she is a groupie that likes group sex? Possibly in light of no evidence to support a contrary view. It’s hard to make a judgement of any kind here when you have a person making a controversial statement with nothing to back it up.
never happened.
. Stockholm Syndrome much the same as Minneapolis.
. It’s part of literature genre- Absurdist stemming from a movement that life is absurd, mid 20th century. Albert Camus, Myth of Sysiphus. Theater of the absurd.
Flaubert’s Bovary was perfectly, perfect work.
Why is this an issue?
Christ said to turn the other cheek.
Some truly believe in the message of Christ, others only claim to.
The legal system, on the other hand, seems to offer a slap on the wrist to many rapists, excusing them as boyish escapades or just what happens when alcohol is involved or accidentally falling with their erections into sleeping women.
Look at the backlog of rape test kits that were shelved because they were from seemingly one-off rapes. The cops care very little, the Legislatures that oversee the cops care very little, and the executives of the various levels of government care very little.
Unless an immigrant is involved. They care a great deal then, but otherwise it’s dealt with as if it was some misunderstanding, a change of mind, a drunk girl regretting a decision, or a false accusation.
The legal system is allowed to question the rape victim over every emotionally devastating second of the event, what they wore, what they said, what they didn’t say.
“Did you agree to sex?”
“I was pinned face first against a brick wall when he asked.”
“Did you say ‘Yes’ or did you say ‘No’?”
“I said yes for fear he would kill me.”
“But he didn’t kill you and you did say yes. Nothing further.”
prejudice
“. . . on the other hand . . .” (?!)
Everything you wrote after that is turning the other cheek. So why are you condemning it?
Besides, nothing you wrote has anything to do with her (irrational) excuse for not reporting the (alleged) gang rape.
I don’t think Christ meant turn the other cheek and spread them. The Old Testament says eye for eye and tooth for a tooth.
Jesus Christ was also an activist who forced reforms on the religious establishment and who would have told Ms. Krauthamer to forgive her attackers —after reporting them to authorities, giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
I don’t get it. Why not buy them a new car, t.v. a house in Paradise Valley and a $1200 weekly allowance?
. I’ll defend her. I give you “Madame Bovary”, author Gustav Flaubert. 18something date, trial for morality of the work. Flaubert did not give testimony at trial because it wasn’t the practice. His lawyer defended the work. Flaubert attended the the trial on a specific date.
It’s a genre in fiction. Yes, it’s valid as fiction and as PhD material. There’s precedent. It’s Realism as a category. It’s 1A.
. ^^^ The explanations of Bovary miss the mark.
So what discipline is she in? I can’t find it. What’s the fictional objection? Nathaniel Hawthorne? Larry Flynt? Robert Maplethorpe? The morality is presented by the artist, 1A, or immorality. 1A is neutral.
Someone asked for a defense. I obliged. Maybe she’s a crackpot. Flaubert’s Bovary was a big hit.
. She’s most likely an unintelligent fool. Her argument is restricted to herself. She does not want to ruin their lives, incarceration is money, nothing can undo the damage. 😂 no attempt at morality.
Sure
Give that women a PHD, Doctor of Dumb and Dumber!
. Maybe she writes perfect prose. Her genre is Theater of the Absurd.
Not enough information
. She’s exposing the damage done to her being.
PHD is a synonym for “piled higher and deeper.”
Well, we do have to consider this person probably had already allowed numerous men to use her as a sperm dump, probably has had abortions too. So physically I doubt she had harm beyond abrasions, bruises, soreness.
That’s what liberation looks like to some “modern” women—have indiscriminate sex with any partner who strikes your fancy. I have long believed A. Jean Carol is probably one of those, or at least was when younger.
But if she hasn’t considered it, she needs to realize there are men whose favored sexual repertoire includes violence up to and including killing. And as another said, looks like she is advertising.
Mike Watkins lives in a little, backwoods town where there are no women under 70.
It probably never even happened.
What is scary here is that it seems she’s advertised herself as an available victim. That is not the way to an happy ending.
My first thought was she is doing research.
This girl is definitely sick in the head.
Take a walk in the park
Does the wind in the dark
Sound like music to you?
Well I’m thinking it does to me
Could it be her story of being gang-raped is itself but an example of the the genre of sexual violence contemporary fiction she is purportedly studying at the doctoral level?