The defense will argue the young men are not guilty of rape, but rather of making a mistake. Batey’s lawyer Worrick Robinson claims that college culture put his client in this situation.
“It was a culture that encouraged sexual promiscuity but not, not just alone, it was also a culture of alcohol, and alcohol consumption. Alcohol that changed him, changed others, and changed several people on the morning of June 23, 2013,” Robinson said.
The trial comes on the heels of a national debate about the prevalence of rapes on college campuses. Roughly 97,000 students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date-rape each year, according to the National institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Read it all from ABC Nightline.
Translation: I can’t get a plea deal from the prosecuted, so I have to come up with something.
Oops, Should be “Prosecutor”
A couple of things are flaky with this ABC News report. It grossly overstates the numbers of college assaults and claims college women are at higher risk when recent Justice Department statistics say the opposite.
However, as described, this doesn’t sound like a “he said – she said” case in which the facts can’t be determined. As described, and if the evidence is what they say it will be, this is a clear case of the rape of a woman who had passed out and did not consent. No “campus climate” defense will overcome that.
Here’s the other problem. Doing a little Googling shows all the attackers (and presumably the victim) were underage for drinking. And yet we have a college culture that encourages this.