The Bizarre Case Of A Professor Charged With The Grisly Murder Of Her Rapist *Trigger warning*

[ismnotwasm]

This covers so many bases, probably why they call it bizarre.

Esparza had a single. Ramirez lay down on her bed and asked her to have sex. She said no. He insisted, saying she’d led him on. She told the police that she said to him, “You know, you have to leave, because I have to do my work.” Ramirez persuaded her to lie down next to him, and they talked for a bit, but when he tried to kiss her, she got up and asked him again to go. Instead, he started pulling off her clothes and she wound up on the floor. “We were struggling and I seriously don’t know how I ended up there,” she said. After he wrestled her pants off, she stopped trying to fight. “I figured it will be better for me if I pretend that, um, I’m going along with it,” she told the police. “I kind of just blanked out.”

Afterward, Esparza cried into her pillow. Ramirez asked if he could see her again. She said no, and he left. Esparza went the next day to see a college nurse and got a morning-after pill. She told the nurse she’d been “date raped,” but the nurse, according to what Esparza told investigators, didn’t suggest making a police report. Neither did a professor Esparza said she talked to about the rape, when she burst into tears as she tried to explain why she’d missed a deadline for class.

Esparza told one other person: Her ex-boyfriend Gianni Van. Esparza and Van had started dating the previous August. They met at the clothing store where Esparza was working for the summer when Van came in to pick up an order. He was the 25-year-old assistant manager of a shoe store in nearby Costa Mesa and had an interest in fashion design. He liked to surf and drove a sports car. Esparza and Van went on dates to the beach and the movies, seeing each other a few times a month until February, when Esparza broke up with him. She felt that Van was getting too possessive and she wanted to concentrate on her studies, she says.

In April, though, Van called and asked if he could come to Pomona to see her. He visited two weeks after the rape. When she opened the door, there were tears in her eyes. Van asked what was wrong, and she said she just wanted him to be there and comfort her. They spent the day together. That night, they both later told the police, Esparza finally told Van she’d been raped, and when he pressed her, she told him Ramirez’s first name.



Read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/02/patricia_esparza_case_how_much_responsibility_does_the_victim_bear_in_the.html#ixzz2tVP9facb

It's a long article with a number of twists and turns. But as I said it conveys so much of what is wrong we wrong with how we define rape as well as how we respond to it.