I Was Sexually Assaulted by Another Marine. The Corps Didn’t Believe Me
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
While the software industry is not as tight-knit as the Marine Corps, the harsh reaction when people who have experienced abuse come forward has many of the same qualities.
Sexual abuse of various kinds is often perceived to be exclusively one-directional in terms of gender (notwithstanding Kevin Spacey and other examples outside software). I wonder if more male survivors coming forward would make a difference in the industry zeitgeist, or if they would be rejected as violently as this Marine.
E.g. nobody would have said anything of the kind if an older man raped a young boy (they'd want to send their ass to jail), but for a marine this kind of thing is not something they're expected to allow to happen to them, or complain about.
So, it's part of this macho thing, but then again, this goes hand to hand with being a marine.
The rejoinder is, how far should vigilante justice go? Should the abuser be killed? Maimed?
Because if the attack is just brushed off, the abuser will move on to other targets. And what if there's a misunderstanding -- if we rely on vigilante enforcement, how do we handle the fallout of a disproportionate or inappropriate violent response?
Once we accept that abusers should face consequences, it's in everyone's interest for cases to be handled through formal administrative procedures with proper rules of evidence and protections. But sadly, those administrative procedures don't always fulfill their potential -- as in the case of this Marine, the case where HR gets rid of the reporter rather than the abuser, etc.