Missoula: Rape And The Justice System In A College Town, by Jon Krakauer

In many ways it is best to begin this review where the book ends, and then try to make sense of it, to separate its emotional force and my own identification with the subject of the book from the larger substantive questions of justice that the book raises: “Rapists rely on the silence of their victims to elude accountability. Simply by recounting their stories and breaking that silence, survivors of sexual assault strike a powerful blow against their assailants. Inevitably, many victims who come forward will be disbelieved, and will fail to find justice in the courts, in the halls of academia, or anywhere else. But by speaking out, they are likely to encourage other victims to tell their stories too, and may find that they’ve advanced their own recovery in the bargain. As more and more survivors emerge from the shadows and reveal the pervasiveness of sexual assault, they draw strength from their numbers. This collective fortitude touches all victims, even those too fearful to speak for themselves, by eradicating the undeserved sense of shame that is so often borne in isolation (349).” It is important to begin at the end because this book uses noble emotions in the defense of a misguided approach to law. We ought to have compassion with survivors of rape and to feel upset at those who act as if they are not accountable for their actions, but we ought not to let this compassion, or even this empathy from an understanding of our own experience, justify behaving unjustly towards others, even if they have committed great wickedness.

This is a book that received bestseller status by writing about the travails of a fairly average college town and its massive problem with coed rape in a tabloid journalism way, showing clear advocacy towards the rape victims and a great deal of attitude of blame towards the local state university, police department, and especially the county prosecutors in a full endorsement of the corrupt activism of the Obama DOJ. The author praises efforts at lowering the bar of the standard of proof for dealing with rape cases on the school disciplinary level to a preponderance of evidence and stripping away the legal protections in court to criminals, which is ominous, since prosecutors and police and other agents of government cannot be trusted to behave justly when they wield accusatory power, even against those who are flagrantly guilty. Despite our similar feelings about the horror of rape [1], the author seeks to build an emotional case based on anecdotal and statistical evidence, along with an ad hominen case and a presumption of guilt on the part of anyone involved in the justice system that seeks to reverse the hard-won gains of those accused of crimes in the face of prosecution by the agents of states as well as institutions. The reader must never forget that the stories themselves which fill the book over a four year period of life in Missoula are merely a pretext for a larger attempt at instilling a sense of pity and a sense of anger in the audience.

Yet even where this sense of anger is justified, it opens up more problems than it solves. It is a horrible thing that anyone should think that anyone else exists merely to fulfill their desires, period. It is unacceptable that we as a culture should enable people to behave irresponsibility and wickedly simply because of their athletic talents. Yet these are issues of education, of massive cultural change, and it is unclear how we are to go about encouraging this change, which would require a moral renaissance that does not appear in the offing. Only those who believe that people and their choices have dignity, and that this dignity springs from being human, but that human beings are fallen and sinful beings in need of repentance and restoration are going to be able to attack the root of the problem of rape and its related evils. This is a book that is full of detailed accounts, of court transcripts, of blog posts and troglodyte comments in favor of thuggish athletes with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and an underdeveloped sense of empathy. The author makes it clear, from statistics, that what happened in Missoula is emblematic of what goes on all over the United States. From my own experience and that of friends of mine, I believe him to be right about the statistical prevalence of rape of women, although I believe he underestimates the prevalence for men, and hence his book comes off as being more biased than the reality would indicate. Be that as it may, this is a book that ought to inspire a sense of compassion for survivors of rape, although the author does not make a strong enough case on a legal or constitutional level to support the drastic changes in our rule of law that he wishes to support, changes that would imperil the freedom of ordinary Americans who are by no means guilty of the crimes the author, and all decent people, would deplore.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/rape-and-the-military-culture/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/rape-and-the-military-culture-part-two/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/rape-and-the-military-culture-part-three/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/on-the-credibility-of-rape-victims/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/17/ficken-ist-frieden/