Pennsylvania woman blamed for her own rape in state response to lawsuit

[IDemo]

Source: CNN

The Pennsylvania attorney general's office is blaming a former state prison clerk for her own rape, in response to a federal lawsuit the woman filed.

The 24-year-old typist was working at the state prison at Rockview in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, when she was attacked in 2013. She was choked unconscious and raped for 27 minutes by inmate Omar Best, who had been convicted three times previously of sex-related crimes, and then been transferred from a different state prison for assaulting a female assistant there.

"Despite this knowledge, defendants ... still allowed Omar Best to have unsupervised access to the offices of female employees," according to the lawsuit, which also blames the state for the rape.

In fact, the lawsuit says that the prison superintendent actually moved the clerk offices from a secure floor where there was no inmate contact to a location that was on a cell block.

Read more: http://us.cnn.com/2014/09/24/justice/woman-blamed-for-her-rape/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[seveneyes]

1. Why wasn't Omar Best in 24*7 solitary for previous rapes and violence?

Allowing convicted and dangerous criminals any freedom at all is plain stupid and harmful to innocent people.

[Dont call me Shirley]

2. State College, PA, doesn't that just say it all!?

[Beowulf]

5. No, it says nothing at all

The victim is local, the perp isn't from State College. The local DA prosecuted the perp, it was the States Attorney who mounted the blame the victim defense apparently without the knowledge of the Attorney General. How does this reflect poorly on the people of State College? That was a stupid attempt at humor that totally missed the mark.

[Dont call me Shirley]

9. Oops I misread. I mistakenly thought the prosecution was in State College, it was the newspaper

report. This led me to remember Sandusky incident.

Thanks for your clarification.

[rurallib]

3. blame the victim, blame the victim, blame the victim

[jberryhill]

4. It's not as if the rapist is the defendant in this suit

This is not a criminal trial in which the rapist is using a "blame the victim" approach.

No one is questioning who is the criminal here. The parties agree on that. The question in this proceeding is whether someone other than the criminal owes the victim a sum of money.

[sanatanadharma]

8. Expand the blame the victim defense to poor criminal thieves...

...because obviously the rich are to blame for theft, robbery, burglary, petty crime

[JPZenger]

6. Attorney General is angry this was included

The state employee apparently included this argument as part of a list of possible issues that would be raised. In the article, the Attorney General says she is unhappy that it was included, and she did not know about it.

[malthaussen]

7. It's all about the do-re-mi

I'm sure the government of my fine Commonwealth is happy to convict the perpetrator, but when it comes time to shelling out for contributory negligence... not so much. And if "all possible defenses" are supposed to be employed, where's the one saying the Tooth Fairy did it?

-- Mal