Reply #27: It wasn't so long ago we read articles about white kids who beat

[Judi Lynn]

homeless people to death in San Diego, with NO screeches for the death penalty for them, none at all.....

In fact, it's easy to remember a movie by Jodie Foster, for which I found a synopsis:

A hard-living, fiercely independent woman is gang-raped in the back of a neighbourhood bar. But that is only the beginning of her ordeal. Now she finds herself battling the legal system not once but twice as she and her attorney go after both the attackers and the onlookers whose cheering encouraged the evil assault.

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Foster won her first Oscar for her role in The Accused (1988), based on an actual incident. While out for a night of fun at a poolroom, before her character knows what's happening she finds that the men she's been flirting with have pinned her down for a gang rape. The story centres on the efforts of a district attorney (Kelly McGillis) to press her case, in spite of a wall of silence by the participants--and then to take the unusual step of going after the witnesses as accomplices. Foster is outstanding as a tough, blue-collar woman who persists in what seems like an unwinnable case, despite the prospect of character assassination for standing up for herself.
(snip/...)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004CI0L/202-5181973-5424667

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In other cases, rape victems have been dragged through the mud, trying to defend themselves after being assaulted by white cretins.

A lot DOES "color" some peoples' perceptions, bringing out more vitriol than if different circumstances were in play.