That is: your fellow humans have decided that you can neither deter nor punish rape by getting married; so rapists can have open season (see below for treatment of the larger situation – which is that this is another gross example of the lack of rule of law, that exposes both men and women to varying degrees of terror).
Note the Monterey County Now hosting of the police report (thanks! some media outlets enable scholars to study the issues in depth):
Historically, people have used words like “marriage” to describe a number of social and legal constructs; it is not always the case that marriage even implies sex between the two parties. However, we should bear in mind that marriage, especially in the context of fertile women and childbearing, is a clear statement of consent to sex and commitment to one partner, and, in the absence of a substantial amount of contrary evidence (e.g. presence at and participation in swinger parties), therefore is the strongest form of consent registry-like documentary evidence. That is to say: if you are married, that’s as clear of a statement of your sexual intentions as you’re going to get. (which is not to say that e.g. vow of nunnery or Promise bands, etc. are not also sufficient)
Unfortunately, the way that people in our society behave in marriage (e.g. tolerated cheating/mistresses, hot wives, etc.) has normalized promiscuous behavior in marriages, to the point that people do not even have the prejudice that a woman’s allegations of rape could be founded (or e.g. that a married man could not be hiring prostitutes on his work trips). Effectively, a married woman and an unwed barfly have the same claim to chastity and in general responsible behavior. Hence, we can expect a married woman to suffer the same popular callousness to tales of spiked drinks, being dragged into bathrooms, etc. That is to say: most rapes will go unpunished under this treatment, and an average woman doesn’t have much she can do to protect herself if she goes out alone.
The linked police report is the evidence of this. Under California law (there is some level of complication, but), if your sex partner is significantly impaired (e.g. making irrational decisions), your decision to penetrate them means that you legally are treated as a rapist. Regardless of any prior relationship or circumstance, that is the standard.
The linked police report details that witnesses observed Jane Doe (a woman) having several drinks. This already suggests significant intoxication. Do also note: several witnesses described Mr. Hegseth as drinking, behaving badly, etc. and yet, somehow, on exiting Knuckles Bar, video footage indicates Mr. Hegseth was walking straight. The point being that while other witnesses thought that Jane Doe’s drinking (or possible lack thereof) was not enough to impair her, yet we see Mr. Hegseth, cursing and about to make a very foolish decision, walking around like he isn’t so badly impaired, either. This reminds us: people who are severely impaired by drugs may act normally enough to leave the impression of competence on witnesses. While we don’t know how much the two of them drank, if Jane Doe was observed having several drinks including vodka, we should be skeptical that all said alcohol was processed out of her female body in the space of a couple of hours.
Now, we must come to the point of irrational decisions. There are several poor decisions being made here:
- A man drinking to excess
- A woman out late and drinking, also likely to excess, without her husband or other chaperone
- A woman who has just met a man, going alone to any private or out of the way area with him, especially without telling anyone where she’s going with him
- Mr. Hegseth on another skirt-chasing rampage, possibly without his then-wife’s or lovers’ consent or knowledge (the details of this are not something I care to spend my precious life hours researching)
While I raise and acknowledge the point of “who was raping whom” because that clearly applies in this case (i.e. Jane Doe would be considered to be raping Mr. Hegseth, based on the apparent levels of intoxication), if the California standard for inability to consent to sexual activity is that people are making clearly irrational decisions, Jane Doe took more than one irrational action (and maybe more e.g. if we credit cellphone chats).
Hence, this case should have been referred to a grand jury under the usual standards: Mr. Hegseth admitted to penetration and ejaculation, which under the usual standards, establishes that sex did occur. (I point this out because I have not seen any rape kit or other report that clearly establishes sexual penetration, ejaculation, etc. by Mr. Hegseth via DNA test, therefore we might have to treat with the question of whether sex occurred. This may have been a case where the kit wasn’t tested because both parties concur that sex happened.) And, since there was substantial evidence to suggest that Jane Doe was inebriated to the point of making irrational decisions, under California law, she could not have consented to the sexual act.
How then, even before we consider marriage consent, could the Monterey jurisdiction not have brought this case to a grand jury? If we may consider the most optimistic treatment: the prosecutor’s office didn’t think they could get a jury to convict. But what reasonable doubt could there be? Accuser and defendant both agree intercourse occurred, it met the intoxication standard, and on top of that the accuser was married.
To put it bluntly: the police report also is broadly (but not in details, as noted above) congruent with both:
- Jane Doe, possibly under the “liberating” (but not California incapability of consent standard) influence of alcohol, deciding she wanted to destroy her marriage.
- Jane Doe preying on Mr. Hegseth and strategically waiting a few days so that the rape kit would be inconclusive, in order to extract money from him. (Kids aren’t cheap, especially for political operatives.)
particularly as it relates to possibly conflicting accounts of Jane Doe’s intoxication status. If the jury were to believe that Jane Doe wasn’t intoxicated, then she’s going up to his room of her own will, at least. This is where the point about Jane Doe’s married status comes into play: if she is married and in sound mind, she wouldn’t consent to sex with him, so if sex happened, it must be rape. Thus, whether or not Jane Doe was intoxicated, she would not have consented under California law; and hence because of Jane Doe’s married status, and the general circumstances (i.e. not a pattern of cheating), possibly conflicting eyewitness accounts are redundant: Mr. Hegseth could have raped her because she was drunk, or he could have overpowered/intimidated her. Her being married is the major problem, and her possibly also being drunk is piling on evidence.
Thus, in order for the prosecution to think the jury might not convict, the prosecution must think that Jane Doe’s married status proves nothing, and so the jury might think that Jane Doe wasn’t drunk, and those two statements together would form the basis for the acquittal – meaning that the jury would find that Jane Doe deliberately cheated on her husband with a man she just met and already suspected of being a womanizer. And why would the jury not believe that Jane Doe’s marriage meant something? Why would they so massively discredit this possibility? Because of the pattern of promiscuity established in Western culture. Indeed, even the text logs in this police report allude to other men trying to seduce married Jane Doe.
As a result of this horrible social norm, Mr. Hegseth could have gotten away with rape; and any rapist who is good at spiking drinks, getting women drunk, etc. could expect to see similar lenience in this jurisdiction.
This is another example of refusal to establish the rule of law, and particularly, to tolerate the contravention of legal contracts like marriage, and to try and sort it out much later in the courtrooms. Apparently, in Monterey, CA, you can get a married woman drunk, or maybe not even that, and have your way with her. It seems you can have every matter of evidence and documentation on your side, and law enforcement looks the other way. A different, but related perversion: in jurisdictions like the District of Columbia or New York City, zero rape kit evidence and contrary circumstantial evidence gets you sent to prison for 30 years. There, the issue is punishment with zero evidence. The terror for women is complemented by the terror for men; everyone loses when the law means nothing.