THE RAPE OF FARCE

Lance Corporal Daniel Smith

When the news broke that a teenage girl was gang raped by US servicemen that befriended her in a bar, I told myself, "Well it was her fault." If ever there was no sign of violence and that she willingly rode with them inside a van where she was purportedly raped, then it was her fault. Why in the world would she go out with these obviously burly men she just met in a bar? Any girl trying hard to be a lady will not ever dare engage in deeper conversation with men she has just met, much more ride with them in the middle of the night inside a close van. Nicole, as she has fondly been known ever since, is definitely not a lady.

Lance Corporal Daniel Smith was convicted of raping Nicole more than a year ago. For few hours of giving in to his baser instincts, he was made to realize the foolishness of his decision only when inside the cold city jail. There was so much outrage afterwards. Women's group claimed triumphant. Some government officials viewed everything a threat to the VFA. I pitied Smith because he himself was a victim too tried in a country whose judicial system is as rotten as her leaders. I pitied Nicole because she herself became prey of her own foolishness and the anger of marginalized groups promoting the cause of women.

Just two days ago, however, Nicole recanted everything about the alleged rape. Through a letter she asked her mother to give to her lawyer, she wrote that she was tired of how slow the case was moving and that she no longer was sure if she was indeed raped or was it her own undoing of flirting with the men that led to her being gang raped. Our memory indeed is so bad that after a year or so, we can no longer remember how savagely degrading we were raped or how blissfully satisfying was it climaxing with four or so sex-crazed US servicemen. How quaintly foolish a statement this is. From the very start, I knew it was Nicole who was guilty and not those sex hungry burly young men out of sea for just few hours of fun.

For these turn of events, a lot speculated that Nicole was bribed. She allegedly has received a sizable amount of money bigger than any slut's boobs and, surprise of all surprises, she is now in the land of spunk and honey, in the land of men who made her their spigots' end. What a crazy unfolding of plot this has become. What a sad twist of fate for the women's group. What a welcome news to Daniel Smith's throng of crazy fans. What a blow to our already rotten judicial system. What a farce! The joke of all comedies, making our courts look like small-time moro-moro stages.

If Nicole was really true to the cause she had been fighting ever since, she should not have done this comedy of errors. If she was indeed gang raped, no amount of money could ever dissuade her out of the case. If she was indeed violated, however slow her case was moving on could not have caused her to recant what she told the court then under oath. If everything she said was true, and that she was indeed gang raped, then her action definitely was sending a very wrong message about women in general. I was never all praises to her when this hullabaloo started. Deep within I knew something was out of picture, not in sync with the whole song Nicole was singing.

A lesson or two may be learned from this comedy. A young girl's mind that sets in between a slutty pair of ears is changeable, and unfortunately holds only a few memory cells. She may be gang raped but for a few dollars more, she will forget everything and confuses rape with mere child frolic. Her cerebral folds are almost indistinct with apparently just a smear of gray matter. Another very important lesson to bear in mind is that when a man's brain is allowed to sit in between his legs, expect for a catastrophic foreplay that will have its climax inside a stone cold jail. This case may not go down in the annals of our rotten judicial system. Definitely though, this is no equal to even Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors.