Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you. – George Bernard Shaw
In every country in the world where prostitution is illegal, from Southeast Asia to Russia to Africa to the United States, prostitutes at every level of the profession (but most often streetwalkers) are raped by the police on a regular basis. The report presented on November 5th to the UN Human Rights Council by the Best Practices Policy Project, Desiree Alliance, and the Sexual Rights Initiative contains a section entitled “Freedom from torture, and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” which reads in part:
U.S. sex workers’ greatest fear is abuse by the police and other state agents. Organizations working with sex workers have documented a pattern of practice by police towards sex workers, which includes assault, sexual harassment and rape that constitutes torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment…When sex workers seek recourse for crimes committed against them, officers do not take their reports seriously or may further violate these sex workers by arresting them, physically assaulting them or pressuring them for sex.
This is not an exaggeration; if anything it is a polite understatement of the problem. Of the whores I know who have been raped, a fair percentage of them were raped by police; the prevalence of it in San Francisco was one of the issues which spurred the founding of COYOTE. Nor are these abuses limited to local law enforcement personnel; activist Jill Brenneman reported in September on her rape by a federal air marshal (WARNING: this is both graphic and disturbing). Do I believe that a disproportionate percentage of rapists join the police? Not at all; I believe that as Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Many cops are simply not afraid of the consequences of their actions, and so are more likely to act on an impulse to commit rape than men in the general population, particularly when the victim is a prostitute, because hookers are vastly less likely to report the crime and less likely to be believed even if they do report it.
But when the typical siege mentality (i.e. cops lying or committing crimes to protect other cops even if they know them to be guilty) is strong in a department, rapist cops may also choose non-professional women as victims. As I’ve alluded to in the past, the first time I was raped was by three cops whom I let into my own home because I was still young (28) and naïve enough to trust them. I was not a professional at the time, but as I mentioned in my column of July 30th my ex had accused me of it, which was apparently enough for these bullies. Because they knew that an accusation with visible injury might possibly be believed, they refrained from beating or otherwise physically injuring me (except for abrasions from the handcuffs and some bruising on my arms, thighs and abdomen). They told me that no one would believe my allegations of rape, so I might as well “relax and enjoy it like a good little whore.” Well, I relaxed as much as I could with a gun pointed at my head, and they eventually got done and left and I showered until the hot water ran out, then hard-as-nails Maggie McNeill curled up on the sofa and cried until about three o’clock in the morning.
I was not and am not concerned with whether I acted “correctly” in failing to report them; from my viewpoint the rape could last an hour and be over except for nightmares and flashbacks, or I could let lawyers and judges and cops subject me to a waking nightmare, a slow-motion rape that might go on for months or years. No thank you. Those of you who are concerned about the possibility they might victimize other women will be glad to hear that one of them was accused of rape by someone else two years later and another was arrested on a charge of domestic violence in 2000. I never saw or heard the third one’s name so I don’t know if karma has dealt with him yet, but I have faith that it will. Here is a recent example of the sort of thing I avoided by not reporting them; it was paraphrased from a report on scnow.com:
A young woman was raped by a Marion, South Carolina police officer, then threatened with prison by two other cops (one of them female) unless she “confessed” that her report was false. She was in a traffic accident on the morning of September 25th, then in the afternoon officer Tyrone Reed showed up at her door, ostensibly to talk about the accident; when she let him in he raped her.
After she told her boyfriend about the attack, he reported it to the police and lieutenants Farmer Blue and Betty Gause came to her house to “investigate” the complaint. “I showed him the trash where I know the officer that assaulted me was standing and I said, ‘Here’s the tissue,’ and Blue got the tissue out of the trash can and he took that evidence with him,” she said. “I never saw [an evidence bag]. I asked him what he was going to do with it and he said, ‘He got this.’” The lieutenants then got another call and had to leave the scene, but before leaving, they told her to go to an area hospital. Once there, she waited for several hours to be examined; someone from the rape crisis center should have been notified immediately by the hospital staff, but mysteriously that didn’t happen. “Every victim is entitled to a specialized sexual assault victims’ advocate” said Lisa Hyatt, the victim services coordinator for the local Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Assault.
After the victim returned to her apartment, Gause and Blue followed in order to inflict a second, emotional rape on the distraught young woman. “He read me my [Miranda] rights. And I thought I was going to jail, there was no doubt in my mind,” she said. “They told me to listen up.”
She said the officers told her State Law Enforcement Division agents would question her: “‘When SLED comes in and they find anything wrong with your story, they are taking you to prison. You’re going to prison for five years,’” the victim said Blue and Gause told her. “They said, ‘Your story is all over the place. We talked to our officer and his story sounds consistent. You don’t look like a rape victim.’” Gause then told her that a rape victim is ‘balled up in a corner, shivering’ when police respond to the reported assault. She responded, “I don’t know what a rape victim looks like. I never thought this would happen to me.”
The officers then questioned her about changing her clothes and shoes after the incident; “They said, ‘We don’t know anybody that go out and come in and change clothes and don’t wash, that’s nasty.” She said the officers went on to tell her five years was a long time for her to be in prison and away from her 4-year-old daughter. “And I said, ‘If you don’t want to call it rape and I didn’t agree to it and I didn’t consent to it, what is it?’ They couldn’t give me no answer,” she said. The officers then told her just as long as she wrote in her statement that she wasn’t raped, SLED agents would not arrest her; they forced her to write, “Though I didn’t agree or consent to it (it) was not rape,” and to sign it. Apparently satisfied by their disgusting manipulation of a rape victim to save their buddy from the consequences of his actions, the two then returned to the office and wrote a report claiming that the victim had “recanted her story”.
Fortunately, she refused to take this lying down and went to the media with it; this resulted in Reed being suspended from the force without pay until “an investigation can be completed,” but he has not been arrested or charged with rape as any non-cop would have been. The investigation was turned over to the SLED, but no action of any kind has been taken against Blue or Gause despite their heavy-handed attempt at intimidation and obstruction of justice. State police officials said proper department protocol was not followed, because SLED should have been called immediately to investigate; Marion police shouldn’t have handled the matter because the incident involved an officer in that department. Hyatt said she’ never before heard of an alleged sexual assault victim being read a Miranda warning; her Coalition has been working closely with the victim since the incident. “She shows classic post-trauma symptoms and she continues to display those symptoms,” Hyatt said.
“I just want to start by saying that I didn’t recant my story or change anything I said happened. I was coerced by officer Blue and…Gause to…put what I said at the end of my report,” the victim said. “[They] are saying, ‘He was wrong for coming, but I was wrong for letting him in.’ He had on a uniform and I wasn’t thinking nothing of it,” she said. “When you see an officer, you’re either scared of them or you’re going to respect them and let them in…because I didn’t scream loud enough or fight hard enough, I wasn’t a victim. I never thought this would happen in my own domain.” Since the incident, the victim said, she has been afraid to drive because she’s scared she’ll be stopped by an officer. “I don’t sleep too well because I’m always thinking about what happened. They make it seem like it was my fault,” she said.
Note the insultingly patronizing attitude of the cops; a rape victim is told how she “should” react, just as cops, neofeminists and politicians tell whores how we “should” feel about prostitution. Every woman reacts differently to rape; while this young woman is now afraid to drive, I was afraid of walkie-talkies. My rapists’ police radios kept beeping and squawking during the whole ordeal, and for years afterward I had to fight down panic whenever I heard such a sound in public. Even now I tend to jump when I hear it; fortunately the explosion of cell phones have made such radios less common among maintenance men and other non-cops who used to use them. And though I’m not afraid of cops any more, I think I can be forgiven for disliking them intensely.
Maggie, I am so sorry that this happened to you. I knew about it in the sense that I knew you had been raped, by cops, but I didn’t know this much. I hope karma has indeed caught up with all of them.
For anybody wanting to shout that Maggie should have been willing to pay any price, bear any burden, etc. I want to say: STFU.
If there had been a good chance of justice being done, maybe such arguments would be valid. There was not and so they are not. I don’t see any reason Maggie or anybody else has to make a martyr of herself for nothing. Even a religiously-motivated suicide bomber hesitates to push that button if it looks like there are no infidels around to kill.
Thank you, Sailor. The memory’s been hovering around in my mind, wanting to come through my fingers into the keyboard, since I started the blog, but as I said in that “Rough Trade” column I wasn’t ready to tell it publicly yet and didn’t know if I ever would. Then when I read the story of that poor girl I knew it was time, and the words came easily. As I said, the nightmares are gone now and the flashbacks rare and much less intense than they were the last time I tried to release the story six years ago.
My sincere thanks for that; you’d be amazed how many women who have never been raped themselves have this Hollywood delusion that justice is always done and the underdog always wins against a corrupt system, when the truth is more often the opposite. 🙁
First of all, I am very sorry that you were assaulted and raped by cops. It’s unfortunate but true that cops operate under a different set of rules than everyone else because they can and almost always do get away with things that would be crimes for anyone else. Not only do they have power over us, but they are not subject to any punishment for what they do. Giving them leverage over anyone (by making what they do illegal) is an open invitation for abuse. Just one more example of why I don’t think anti-prostitution crusaders are in the least bit interested in protecting women.
You hear the constant refrain from most people that “the vast majority of cops are professional, respectful, and law abiding”. That’s a myth. Police forces almost universally are staffed by two kinds of people: “bad apples” and those who protect the bad apples.
The one blog I read more than all others is theagitator.com. Radley Balko works at Reason and his specialty is police and prsecutorial misconduct. I posted a link to the story you cited there.
Thank you, Dave. I am reminded of the time the Chief of Detectives in my home town crashed a police car into a tree while drunk, and the sheriff assured the public that he would have to pay for the damages; I was still a librarian then and wrote a letter to the newspaper asking if the new sheriff department policy was that anyone in a one-car DUI would walk away without penalty except for having to pay damages on the vehicle, or if that only applied to cops.
I agree. There are of course good cops, but they are usually promoted quickly, assigned to PR jobs or quit out of disgust with the corruption. And absolutely NONE of them work in vice.
And, Maggie, I’m more sorry than words can say that this happened to you. It makes me ill. I just tend to be better at thinking “action” than sympathy, and anger comes more naturally to me. I’m not proud of that.
In this case, anger is the right emotional response.
Bullies, regardles of origin and nature, prey on the weak and only respect superior force. That’s my personal experience, too.
We should be enraged at any abuse of power.
Maggie : ❤ <3
I agree on all points.
Dave, Radley Balko is a great resource. I’m glad you’ve pointed him out for everyone who might be reading Maggie’s blog. He shows every sign of keeping up the pressure since his move to HuffPo.
The great videos available at FlexYourRights.org make a good point, which might not have saved Maggie or the woman in Marion, but which would be well taken to heart by all of us: Never, ever, ever let a police officer into your home without a warrant (and preferably a witness). I have a couple of friends at church who are cops. My wife and kids know that if they show up in a church or personal capacity, they’re welcome inside, but if they ever show up in an official capacity, the conversation takes place on the front stoop with the door closed and locked behind us. And if/when they show up, the question is always asked.
Every time I think of this and other abuses of prostitutes (not just those by the boys in blue) I am reminded that sunlight is the best disinfectant.
DECRIMINALIZE!
What a great line! May I have your permission to steal it? 🙂
A lot of men think like these SC cops: don’t call it rape even though you did not want it and didn’t consent to it (a mental exercise I just can’t seem to complete).
Thank you for sharing your horrible personal story. My own few brushes with various authority figures have been enough to leave me with traumatic memories and I have not been raped at gunpoint. There is strength in telling — even if it’s anonymously online. You and I both agree that women should be heard loud and clear.
XX
You’re right about “strength in telling”; despite the fact that it happened 15 years ago and that I’ve largely gotten over it, even talking about it in the limited detail I provided really does feel like cleaning out a mental closet. 🙂
I’m sorry this happened to you, Maggie. Beyond that, I really don’t know what to say.
Just saying that is plenty, Jay. Thank you. 🙂
this makes me sick
i am so sorry…
Thank you, Ant; I think it would make any normal man feel sick. As I said to Sailor I’ve been wanting to tell this in a public forum for at least six years, but I’ve never been able to manage it until I saw the story about that girl in South Carolina and realized people had to be made aware of this. The problem as I see it is that the police are given greater privileges without greater responsibilities and greater power without increased accountability. Obviously, we need police to track down violent criminals, but we need to take away the power they have over ordinary citizens by A) reducing the number of laws to only ACTUAL, truly harmful actions against others, and B) make the police accountable for ALL of their actions and stop slapping them on the wrists for rape, violent assault and even murder. The internet (along with pocket video cameras and YouTube) has helped “B” dramatically, but “A” has only grown worse in the past few decades. 🙁
Pocket video cameras and YouTube are why police are ILLEGALLY arresting people and confiscating such cameras and cell phones; so that their malfeasance won’t get publicized. But the US Supreme Court has ALREADY found that anyplace you can legally stand, you can take photographs from, without penalty. Some jurisdictions have already declared video recording in public legal (Maryland is one such state), and the police STILL illegally arrest and destroy evidence of their malfeasance. There’s a case wending its way up towards the supreme court about video recording (many jurisdictions make audio recording illegal, and video cameras typically also record audio), and assuming that the Supremes add this to their current position on photography, we may soon be able to videotape the police with impunity. Or at least, have the legal right to defend against such illegal acts.
However, in the Great State of Illinois, the police and states’ attorneys are using a law against wire tapping to prosecute people who videotape the police without permission — they are calling it an illegal electronic recording and are prosecuting people who have done it. The lower state courts have upheld that interpretation so far.
And they do this with a straight face, with no shame. Of course, shame has never really been in fashion in Illinois government. Something which I’m sure Maggie can relate to down there in Louisiana.
I’m reading this for the first time as a result of your putting a link to this essay in a reply to one of my comments. Please add my condolences to all the others.
I’d like to suggest one correction about the “power corrupts..” quote. Power doesn’t corrupt. Power is magnetic to the corruptible.
It isn’t that people in positions of power get corrupted by that power. People enter positions of power so they can take advantage of opportunities to be corrupt.
Alas, I think in most cases you’re absolutely right. 🙁
This goes back to what I’ve said about police work (and politics) attracting the best and the worst that society has to offer.
You have people with brave hearts and noble intentions, who are willing to work a dangerous job for low pay because they truly want to protect and to serve, to clean up the neighborhood so that children can play in their front yards.
Then you have those who are more “Woo-hoo! I get to carry a BADGE and a GUN and I get to kick some ASS! Don’t you give me any lip, muthafucker; I’m the LAW!!”
And as Maggie has said: the good cops quickly get promoted. The bad cops? They don’t want to be promoted; how much ass do you get to kick from behind a desk?
“Whoa, wait… there’s free drugs and pussy too? And I can get away with it all? Woo-hoo! did I ever pick the right job!”
And then there’s stuff like this.
“Power is magnetic to the corruptible. . . .It isn’t that people in positions of power get corrupted by that power. People enter positions of power so they can take advantage of opportunities to be corrupt.”
This.
And, sadly, a lot of younger cops are now combat veterans who have been seeing the brutalizing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade, and are bringing that air of us/them superiority back home.
Unfortunately it all too often is the bully with the badge. This same bully would be trying to intimidate female workers in a store if he could, but would realize that he would likely suffer consequences unlike a LEO. The business has changed and the PDs are culling the bottom feeders. Oh they may have Masters degrees along with the badge and the gun, but they are all too often bullies. And interestingly they gravitate to Vice. Go figure
I know I should say something here, but I really don’t know what I can say. This was such a horrible thing to go through, and I can’t blame you for waiting so long to tell it.
I think you’ve said it quite well. Thank you.
Damn Maggie. I’m sorry you went through this. Having gone through my own variation I know how hard this kind of situation is to experience, to recover from and what pieces it takes out of a soul. This shouldn’t have happened to you. Thank you for sharing it. It takes a lot of courage to be public about it. You rock babe!
Thank you, Jill; coming from you that means an awful lot! 🙂
I’m sorry you had to go through that. I am in law enforcement in South Carolina and situtations like yours or the young lady from Marion County really make me upset. The bullies in law enforcement are the minority but they tend to make a much bigger stamp. Usually I can read a story of alledged abuse by a law enforcement official and help explain why they may have acted the way they did. However, there is no excuse for what these officers did. We enforce the law, but we are not above it. If anything it’s more important for people in law enforcement to abide by the law. As for the officer’s in the Marion County story, I have often said, rather the rape is true or not, (almost impossible to truely investigate now with the treatment of the victim), the responding officers should have been fired or at least harshly diciplined for the was they handled a case. We can’t even investigate own car accidents. The mere notion that these Lietinents could question this victim is absurd. You don’t get to that rank and not know the policy on that. That’s police academy 101. Very sorry to hear about these stories. Hopefully the victim will seek to get whatever justice she can through civil action. I believe she has a case against Marion County in that the did not investigate properly.
Thank you, Agraham; I only wish there were more cops like you, and that y’all had enough influence to root out all the bad ones! A number of police and retired police feel that prohibition laws attract bad elements to policing, and have formed a group named LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) to fight such laws; perhaps it’s something in which you might be interested. 🙂
[…] http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/license-to-rape/ Why the police are often the perpetrators, and a sex worker explaining why she didn’t report. […]
Maggie,
I have followed your column for almost eight months now. I enjoy reading your articles and find myself agreeing with many of your points. I have never commented or interacted with you before because I expect I will be received with hostility; that’s right, I (and many of my family) am your sworn enemy, the LEO. I am also, along with my wife, a friend to and client of prostitutes. Let me preface the rest of my reply with this statement: Had I witnessed those LEOs assaulting you in the way you describe I could would have put two to the chest and one to the head of each of them…and slept well that night. There is NO excuse for raping a woman. And it is my firm belief that those who make and enforce the laws should be held doubly accountable for living within them.
That said, it saddens me to see what I believe to be a insightful and intelligent person spreading the same hate and fear that she rants against. You should make no mistake Maggie…as long as hate and prejudice is spread against ANYONE it can be directed TO anyone. As evidence I point above to Dave’s posts that you quoted and agreed to. It is simply untrue and hateful to apply those qualifiers to ALL LEO’s across the US. If it is acceptable to stereotype all cops as ‘above the law’ and ‘bad apples and enablers” then why is it not also acceptable to stereotype all prostitutes as ‘whores’, ‘drug addicts’ and ‘victims’? I think deep down you know the answer….its not.
What those LEOs did to you is horrific. But by allowing their actions to manipulate you into fearing and hating cops, you are allowing them to continue to control you. Most officers would at the lest protect you from physical harm…its our duty and one we take seriously. A few others might even be your friends. Some of us (this guy) are even victims advocates to help those who have been victimized. But thanks to the actions of these asshats that has been taken away from you. I hope that in the future you are able to find some peace with what happened to you. It really makes me fucking sick that those who were supposed to protect you hurt you instead.
You are not the only girl I have had this issue with, unfortunately, so I suppose it is somewhat of a sore spot. I had a very interesting ‘provider’ (her words) in the Seattle area who I quite admired and got along well with. Once she learned I was an LEO…well lets just say it wasn’t pretty. She had an experience similar to yours. Make no mistake…if you break the law then a police officer WILL hold you accountable. It is our job…don’t blame us for trying to do our job and we will return the favor. But we will also treat you with dignity and respect that we would anyone else.
Maggie, there are evil assholes all over this world. In every profession…from cops to prostitutes and everything in between. I have long ago learned to judge the book, not the cover. I would ask you, please, try to understand that not all, or even most, LEOs are your enemy. We are not evil. We are not ‘above the law’. Most of us are not even interested in arresting you for violating prostitution laws (except for vice. I’ll admit most of them are asses 🙂
And there are most likely more of us that are clients than you might think.
Thanks for reading the long post Maggie, and take care. Keep on writing!
Do you have any concept of how patronizing, how condescending and ignorant it is, to tell a rape victim ‘they’re not all like that! Evil can turn up anywhere!” No SHIT, sherlock! But you can’t say you speak for the entire department, you can NOT say that her feelings are not legitimate. SHE had the experience, NOT YOU, she is entitled to her own feelings and reactions about the kind of people who took advantage of her, and it is unbelievably arrogant and self serving of you to tell her otherwise. Your BS about ‘putting two in the chest’ is just more hollywood wanna-be-action-hero garbage.
This just makes me sick. I think you know what I think about cops, particularly rapist cops.
But wow.
Frankly, I don’t even know what to say. I just felt like I needed to let you know I was reading/listening.
Thank you, Rick. Every time this column gets re-publicized it opens a few eyes (not that yours needed opening, but I mean other people’s), which makes me very glad I wrote it.
Reblogged this on Pycraftsworld’s Weblog and commented:
Excellent article
Excellent article Maggie. Every time I read of a story of a rape, I cringe. I am at a loss of what to say that would make the person feel better. It surely saddens me. Be well
[…] towards sex workers, it also means you are more likely to be battered or raped by cops if they just think you’re a whore. Anti-sex work laws restrict women from traveling alone or being alone on the streets. They are […]
This … tightens my jaw. It is awful. Words fail me.
I am so sorry this happened to you. I could barely read through all of this… The actual events described are horrible enough, but it’s the behaviour of the cops afterwards that really frightens me; the coercive, bone-chilling patronisation is all too familiar to someone who’s had run-ins with cops as well. I don’t agree with the idea that power corrupts; I believe that power attracts the already corrupted. Growing up in a small town meant that I knew the guys (and not through choice, either) who joined the cop force; each and every one of them were seeds of evil a long time before they joined Cop Inc.
[…] McNeil M. (2010, November 16). License to rape. Retrieved March 08, 2016, from https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/license-to-rape/ […]