Hey, Can A Woman "Ask To Get Raped"?

Rape survivor inspires other vicitms
Katie Hnida played college football
Wednesday, 06 Oct 2010, 4:27

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - In 1999 Katie Hnida walked on to Colorado University's football team. Just a short time later she said she was harassed and groped by her teammates. One of them who she considered a friend allegedly raped her.

Wednesday afternoon Hnida spoke to students at IPFW about her painful experience. She travels the country talking to people to inspire rape victims to come forward and tell someone their story.

Hnida was the first woman to play and score in a Division One college football game, but her experience certainly didn't start out like she dreamed.

Hnida left Colorado University after her alleged rape. She didn't tell anyone about her story for two years. Eventually she did and she said letters from other rape victims started pouring in.

"I had no idea there were so many women out there who had been through the same thing that I had who were still suffering in silence," said Katie Hnida, rape survivor.

The letters inspired Hnida to start traveling the country and inspiring other rape victims to become survivors. On Wednesday at IPFW she talked to students about how unexpected rape can be.

"So often it is an acquaintance, there doesn't have to be drinking involved, there doesn't have to be a weapon involved, it can just literally be coercion," said Hnida.

Hnida said she couldn't heal until she told her story, and that's why she's willing to relive her painful experience everytime she speaks.

"They are not alone, there is hope, there is light on the other side no matter how bad you feel," said Hnida.

A few years after her rape Hnida became the kicker for the University of New Mexico football team. She also wrote an autobiography, "Still Kicking: My Journey As the First Woman to Play Division I Football."

She's appeared in magazines and on a number of major television programs to tell her story.

Hnida still plays football. This season she kicked for the Kosciuscko County Mustangs after a brief stint with the Fort Wayne Firehawks. She plans on playing again next season

New Analysis Shows Freed Man's DNA On Rape Victim's Sheet
Joseph Lamont Abbitt Freed In 2009; Case Now In DA's Hands
October 6, 2010

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Additional DNA testing in the case of a man whose 1995 rape conviction was overturned has showed his DNA actually did exist on evidence from the crime scene, Winston-Salem police said Wednesday.

Joseph Lamont Abbitt was released from prison last September after DNA testing determined his DNA wasn't present at the crime scene.

On Wednesday, police said new technology used to analyze the evidence showed Abbitt's DNA on a flat sheet from one of the victim's beds.

The findings have now been turned over to Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O'Neil. A call to O'Neil wasn't immediately returned.

"We were diligently investigating this because it was our intent to identify the true attacker," Winston-Salem Police Chief Scott Cunningham said Wednesday morning. "We continued to investigate the case and reviewed all of the evidence again."

Police said evidence from the crime scene, including a comforter, two sheets, a pillow case and a wash cloth, was given to the State Bureau of Investigation for hair analysis in October 2009.

The evidence was then turned over to the Forensic Identity Section of Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp) in June for more advanced DNA testing. Police said the analysis done by LabCorp turned up new hairs on the comforter, as well as nuclear DNA belonging to Abbitt on the sheet. The LabCorp analysis was completed in July, police said.

"That is a significant find and a significant change in the course of events," Cunningham said. Police said Abbitt, who remains free, learned about the potential findings several weeks ago.

Cunningham said police have attempted to interview Abbitt. "We asked to interview Mr. Abbitt to try to get his side of the story and see why his DNA was found on those sheets. Those requests have not been granted despite ongoing and continued opened requests to interview Mr. Abbitt," Cunningham said.

Abbitt was convicted in 1995 in the rape of a 15-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister.

The crime happened early on the morning of May 2, 1991, while the girls’ mother was at a boyfriend’s house for the night, leaving the girls unattended, according to a report from the Forsyth County District Attorney. The two girls were bound and raped at knifepoint.

The girls told police they thought the attacker was someone in the neighborhood named "Joseph."

Additional investigation revealed that Abbitt had been charged with two prior rapes in the late '80s. The district attorney’s office at the time reduced both charges to misdemeanor assault on a female.

Abbitt pleaded guilty to the reduced charges in both cases. The district attorney said the similarity between the two prior rape cases and the 1991 rape led them to Abbitt, who lived two doors down from the victims, as the primary suspect in the later case.

When officers attempted to locate Abbitt for arrest and questioning, they learned that the he had fled to Texas, where he was serving time for other crimes.

Abbitt didn't testify, but said he had been at work the morning of the attack. His employer couldn't verify that detail. The girls, who had picked Abbitt out of a lineup, identified him as their attacker during the trial.

The jury convicted him of two consecutive life sentences, plus 50 years.

The 2009 reanalysis of a vaginal swab taken from the older victim showed DNA from the victim, the victim's boyfriend and from another male who was not Abbitt.

Abbitt's case was one of 2,100 cases that had been reanalyzed, but it was the only one to have a conviction overturned as part of the program in conjunction with the Center on Actual Innocence, which spearheaded the reanalysis of the DNA evidence in the cases.

Abbitt's release was the second case in five years where a person convicted of a crime in Winston-Salem was exonerated by DNA evidence.

Darryl Hunt was freed in 2004 after serving more than 19 years in prison in the death of Deborah Sykes. Sykes, a newspaper copy editor, was raped and murdered in 1984.

Abbitt spoke with WXII shortly after his release last year saying he planned to get in touch with the victims.

"Right now, I think it's best for me to stay away, but my prayers will always be with them," Abbitt said.

Abbitt was most recently working with Hunt's Darryl Hunt Project, which helps incarcerated people who have been convicted of crimes they didn't commit. WXII attempted to contact representatives with the group, but was unsuccessful.

"There's one suspect and that prime suspect is Joseph Abbitt," Cunningham said.
http://www.wxii12.com/r/25300307/detail.html

Lehigh Acres rape victim refuses to let crime bring her down
October 3, 2010
Today is the first of two columns looking at Tonda Soisson-Lawson, whose crusade against sex crimes has helped and inspired women.

Tonda Soisson-Lawson wasn't victimized once, she was victimized twice.
Eight years ago, a drunken Christopher M. Hiatt raped Soisson-Lawson in her Lehigh Acres home.
Seven years ago, a six-member jury acquitted Hiatt of rape and burglary.
How many victims bounce back from a 1-2 punch that devastating?
Soisson-Lawson has.

Unlike most rape victims, Soisson-Lawson, 46, turned the attack on the defendant. Refusing to hide behind a victim's cloak of anonymity, she told the story of her assault to every media outlet.
"The statistics were that one out of three of my ballet students would be me,'' she says. "I had to do a proactive crusade to try and lessen that statistic.''
State Attorney Steve Russell called her tactic refreshing and inspiring.
Better yet, it worked.
"I have gone from victim to survivor to thriver,'' she says. "I was only a victim for an hour and one-half of the attack. I didn't let the rape destroy me.''

Soisson-Lawson, a former dance instructor, credits Ray and Lelia Hignite with raising their only child right.
"My parents are from good Kentucky stock,'' she says. "Quitting is not an option. Failure is not an option. I give them all the credit for that.''

Credit, too, for Soisson-Lawson's rebound goes to the state attorney's office and Lee County Circuit Judge Lynn Gerald Jr.

After the verdict, the state charged Hiatt, then 24, with violating his probation on a driver's license conviction by committing the burglary and rape.
A month later, Gerald listened to testimony for two days and pored over evidence for a week.
Hiatt's lies fooled jurors, but not the judge.
Gerald ruled the "greater weight of the evidence clearly reflects'' Hiatt was guilty of burglary and rape - despite the jury verdict.
He sentenced career criminal Hiatt, who lived a mile from his victim, to 44 months in prison.

With Hiatt's credit for time served, Soisson-Lawson's violation-of-probation victory amounted to less than two years.

Although incarceration time was short-lived in Florida, it was a matter of time before Hiatt ran afoul of the law after moving to his native Indiana.
Two years later in Columbus, Hiatt broke into three homes while people were inside, according to The Republic.
Ten months later, the newspaper reported Hiatt, then 27, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for three counts of burglary and threatening to kill a woman. The judge also ordered him to undergo sex-offender and substance-abuse treatment.
"You have not done well in society since 1995,'' the judge told Hiatt.
Sound familiar?

Does Soisson-Lawson feel vindicated because Hiatt struck again?
"Oh, no,'' she says. "There's no vindication for me. I feel an enormous sadness he has more victims. The whole reason I did what I did is so there would be no more victims.
"The jurors, they're the ones who should feel for the victims that came after me. I tried to stand up and put the monster in the cage. They refused to do that. It's on them.''
No "I told you so.'' No karma. No justice.
"It doesn't need to be said,'' she says. "Because I'm the victim, I can only think about the victim. I can't relish in the fact that I get an 'ah-ha' moment.''

How does she feel about Hiatt after eight years?
The 90-pound dynamo balls up her fists, ready to slay the monster.
"I haven't forgiven him, which is what people want me to do all the time,'' Soisson-Lawson says. "God gave me this because He knew I was strong enough to deal with it.
"If God wants to forgive Hiatt, fine. Not my job.
"I can't do it. Just can't.''
After all Tonda Soisson-Lawson has been through, can you blame her?
http://www.news-press.com/article/201010030110/COLUMNISTS02/10030373?odyssey=mod_related_topix

Quote:

These are the men who tarnish the image of their gender, who cause men to be regarded with suspicion as potential predators, because of their attitudes about the acceptability of sexually exploiting females--including female children. Sexual exploitation of females is what rape is all about

My lord Firefly I do not myself view either Intrepid or Occom Bill with such contempt and you are being far too hard on those gentlemen in my opinion.

CNN) -- The Obama administration vastly underestimated the tens of thousands of barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon disaster despite contrary information from scientists using better methodologies, a report by the staff for a national panel investigating the response said Wednesday.

And, the report said, the White House Office of Management and Budget squelched higher estimates once government officials accepted them, preventing the public from hearing them
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"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," said Wednesday's report.

Federal officials have stated that the low flow-rate estimates did not negatively affect their operations to stop the oil spill.

"Even if responders are correct, however, loss of the public's trust during a disaster is not an incidental public relations problem," the 29-page report said. "The absence of trust fuels public fears, and those fears in turn can cause major harm, whether because the public loses confidence in the federal government's assurances that beaches or seafood are safe, or because the government's lack of credibility makes it harder to build relationships ... that are necessary for effective response actions

Another great and very costly government idea that will only work on the stupid.

Woman testifies at father's NJ incest trial to years of abuse; security guard asks for break
SAMANTHA HENRY
Associated Press Writer
October 6, 2010

PATERSON, N.J. (AP) — The daughter of a man accused of raping and impregnating her and her sisters testified Wednesday to years of abuse in terms so graphic that a courtroom security guard passed the judge a note asking for a break.

The 24-year-old woman spoke in a calm, articulate voice about the extreme abuse she endured throughout her childhood, culminating with her becoming pregnant at age 15 with her father's child.

"When I was about 3 years old, I thought screaming and crying and yelling would help," the woman testified. "As I got older, I realized it made it worse."

Her father was arrested in 2006 and ruled competent to stand trial earlier this year. He has pleaded not guilty to 27 charges including sexual assault, lewdness, child endangerment and criminal sexual contact.

The man is accused of raping five of his daughters and impregnating three, and they are believed to have given birth to a total of six children. The Associated Press generally doesn't identify victims of sexual crimes and is not reporting the name of the man or his former wife to protect the identities of their children, who are now older than 18.

The daughter testified Wednesday in the first of five trials — one for each child he's accused of victimizing.

Recounting how her father spoke often of being a prophet sent by God to change the world and "change the system," the woman said he told her he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ who was meant to ensure his family bloodlines were pure by keeping her as a sexual slave.

"He said that if he has a child with one of his own children, it will be a supreme being to normal people," she testified.

Although the trials are being held separately, Superior Court Judge Raymond A. Reddin Reddin ruled that testimony about the home environment and what happened to the other children would be narrowly allowed. The absence of such details, Reddin said in his ruling, could make the case totally unbelievable to jurors.

Both the man's former wife — who had nine children with him — and the daughter testified to a home atmosphere of constant beatings, physical and mental abuse and extreme isolation of the family.

The former wife testified that the man insisted all children be born at home so none would have a birth certificate or social security number. She said the man strictly controlled their diets and prohibited them from seeing a doctor or visiting a hospital.

None of the children attended school and were prohibited from having friends, the wife and daughter said.

They were prohibited from telling anyone about their situation, an order they said the man enforced with death threats and constant beatings.

The daughter testified Wednesday that her limited contact with the outside world meant she rarely questioned her father.

"I once asked him if we could go to school. He told me: 'School isn't any fun. Children don't like it,'" the daughter testified. "I said: 'That's what normal people do, I saw it on TV. Can I do it?"

Authorities said the assaults on the children began in the mid-1980s and lasted until 2002, when the parents separated. The assaults occurred at homes in Paterson and nearby East Orange, Orange and Eatontown, urban areas across northern New Jersey.

Testimony from the daughter and the man's former wife detail a timeline of abuse that escalated gradually until the man seemingly had control over everyone in the household and prevented them from going to authorities.

The former wife said the pair met as high school students in the 1970s in Paterson, and their relationship deteriorated from teenage infatuation and once-playful arguments to a deeply dysfunctional marriage of extreme abuse.

The daughter described a similar escalation of events in her testimony, recounting how her father started beating her with a leather belt when she was 3, touched her sexually at 8 and forced her into regular sexual intercourse by the time she was 12.

The issue of whether, or when the case may have come to the attention of any authorities or outside agencies has not been raised in the trial thus far.

According to court records and published reports, some of the crimes are alleged to have occurred while the family was under scrutiny by the state child welfare agency and after the father pleaded guilty to assault and child endangerment.

New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services has declined to comment, citing confidentiality requirements.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-father-rape-trial,0,912170.story