'The Bitch made me do It!' Defense

by Pat Brown

You know, if it weren't for all those bitches in the world, we would have a whole lot less crime.

Consider poor Joran van der Sloot. Twice, bitches have messed up his life. First, Natalee Holloway dies on him while trying to force him into sex on the beach (or after falling off a balcony while stupid drunk), and now he is languishing in a South American prison because another bitch, Stephany Flores Ramirez, took her pants off and snooped on his laptop. Geez, what's a guy to do with hos like this in the world? Joran can only hope that the jury will understand his temporary insanity and realize that he only bludgeoned and choked Stephany to death because "The bitch made him do it."

Mayor Marion Barry, the long-serving Washington, D.C. politician, had his career ruined by another bitch, Rasheeda Moore, who enticed him away from his wife to her hotel room and stuck a crack pipe in his mouth. "The bitch set me up," defense didn't work very well for Barry because the jury couldn't get it that Barry was sucked in by this siren. Post-prison, Barry got reelected and the second time he was caught with drugs, his career was dealt a death blow. Apparently, this time the bitch split before the cops showed up and left him high and dry with nobody to blame but himself for getting caught.

Convicted serial rapist, Sammie Lee Nichols, was just a teen when he unfairly got 149 years to life when two bitches took advantage of him on separate occasions, forcing sex on this underage kid. He explained to the jury how he had been a victim of statutory rape. In fact, he was so terrorized by these adult women's sexual assaults on him that he had to hold a gun to their heads during the acts just to protect himself from further harm. I guess, in this case, the bitches did it to him.

One of the hallmarks of a high level of narcissism and psychopathy is not taking responsibility for one's actions and always blaming someone else for one's poor choices or crimes. It is always someone else's fault. Many serial killers have an interesting way of twisting their crimes into a "Bitch made me do it" scenario. "All I was did was knock at her door and when she answered, she got all nasty toward me." Of course, it will be proven later in court that Mr. Handyman was carrying duct tape, rope, and a knife in his tool bag.

Serial killer David Bullock blamed one of his many victims, saying "He started messing with the Christmas tree, telling me how nice the Christmas tree was, so I shot him." He also used "The bitch made me do it" excuse, claiming one of his female victims "laughed in his face," causing him to have to shut her up with a firmly applied pillow over the offending wordhole and a bullet to the mouthy bitch's brain. Sometimes, the victims don't have to do anything except be who they are. Thugs like Daniel Rodriguez and Daniel Aleman, who were charged with a hate crime in the brutal assault of a gay man, simply believe their victims "deserve the beat down."

Women, though, almost always get blamed by the offenders who attack, rape, and kill them. If a woman was walking home from work on an isolated road, jogging alone at dusk, or exiting a bar at closing time into the parking lot, the perpetrators of crimes against them will say she was asking for it; if she had any sense of decency, she wouldn't have been there, and since she wasn't decent, she deserved what she got.

The truth is, when you get caught doing nasty things to defenseless women, pretty much all you have to salve your ego is to tell yourself and everyone else, "The bitch made me do it."

Note: Female offenders also toss blame around to avoid accepting responsibility for their crimes. They may say, if they murder their husband, "The bastard made me do it," and claim he was abusive or that she feared for her life (due to the fact women are more vulnerable in a domestic situation, this can sometimes be true). Women who are part of serial killer teams may claim their partners forced them into it or they fell under his spell. However, women more often than men to claim a psychiatric disorder as an excuse. And, oddly, women are more likely than men to simply tell the truth: it was fun, I was sick of him, I got tired of taking care of the baby, I killed them because my boyfriend didn't want my kids around.

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Risky Business

by Pat Brown

Prostitution is the world's oldest profession and also the most dangerous. Recently, we have had a spate of homicides with victims who put their lives at risk to earn money in the sex trade. Yet, interestingly, the last few times I commented on these homicides, the television shows I was on decided not to report this aspect of these women's lives; the idea is not to lessen the horribleness of the crimes by insinuating that they deserved what they got or that they are less important as victims than a student, a churchwoman, or a middle- or upper-class professional woman.

I can appreciate the concept of presenting a victim of violent crime in a rosier light; she is someone's daughter, sister or mother, and she is loved by her family regardless of her choice of activity. But, it is also a damaging and dangerous concept. Damaging because it can prevent useful information from being offered that might lead to the killer, and dangerous because other women involved in prostitution in a certain jurisdiction might not get the warning they need to avoid being the next victim of a dangerous predator.

Three recent cases I have commented on come to mind.

One is the "Lady in the Suitcase" crime out of East Harlem, New York City. A chilling video of a man dragging a suitcase along the streets of the city has been broadcast repeatedly with the hope someone will recognize the leather-jacketed man who left the suitcase on the sidewalk in front of an apartment building and then just walked away. The name of the victim was known very quickly and not likely because she had her ID on her. Betty Williams, 28, has been arrested some fourteen times in her life. Arrests which include drug involvement, theft, and trespassing. She spent jail time on Rikers Island, which indicates to me she has had a rough life and deals with some tough characters. It would be important to find out whether she has dabbled in prostitution. As it stands, we have no information indicating this, but serious drug users often need to earn money in a hurry. If prostitution is one of Betty's activities, her killer could be a john or not. If she hasn't worked on the streets, then he could be a boyfriend, a drug dealer, or a fellow drug user. The truth will help focus the investigation.

While it is always a possibility that Betty was grabbed off the street by a man who had no connection with her or her activities, it is highly unlikely. The fact that her body was found in the suitcase fully clothed, strangled, and with trauma to the head indicates she was in her killer's apartment and that the crime was not premeditated. Usually when a victim ends up in a piece of luggage, it means the murderer did not plan to kill the victim, which is why he got stuck with a body in his home. Then, he had no way to get the body out of there without being noticed, hence the need for zipping up the victim in a suitcase and toting her down the stairs or elevator and out of his residence.

So, Betty probably knew her killer, and why she might have been in his apartment is very important to figuring out who the perpetrator is. If one wants useful tips, it helps to give people information that will lead them to link someone to the victim or some activity they have in common. Keeping Betty's background a secret is not going to help get justice.

We also have two serial killers on the loose who are clearly targeting prostitutes. One, the "Kensington Strangler," is in the Philadelphia area. Even though the first two victims were both prostitutes, and DNA from the killer matched in both crimes, no warning went out to women working the streets that they could be next. Consequently, a third prostitute became the victim of the same serial killer.

Up in Long Island, a serial killer appears to be getting his victims off of Craigs List's adult service ads. Yet, when I did a TV show on the topic, two of the possible victims were identified, respectively, as a tourist and a local woman. It sounded like some guy was grabbing women off the street as they walked home, or was using some ruse to get them into his car. But this was not accurate. The women were running ads on Craigs List and were going to someone's home to provide their services. Knowing this and getting this information out is crucial in identifying this sexual psychopath and letting women know not to respond to customers in the vicinity of the dump site where four bodies have been found on an isolated beach. Or, at least not to go without letting the john know that his information is being recorded and that the woman is going to have a driver waiting in the car for her.

Not all risky behavior is the reason for women becoming victims, but sex, drugs, and alcohol tend to top the list, and we need to know if these issues are linked to victims so we can catch their killers. We also need to know if they are overly kind, naive, or happy-go-lucky because these not-so-bad behaviors can also put a woman in a situation where she becomes the unlucky victim of a psychopath who catches her in his evil little web. All behaviors are important to recognize in both the victim and the perpetrator; the truth will get someone arrested and put away, hopefully, for good.

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Did She "Ask for It"? Does it Matter?

By Pat Brown

A victim is a housewife, college student, go-go dancer, model, teacher, nun, virgin, slut, whore, churchgoer, caretaker, drug user, pervert, cop, criminal, social worker, thief.

She may be sweet. She may be a bitch. She may not have deserved it. Then, again, maybe she sorta did.

What a victim is, and what a victim does, doesn't matter. Or, what a victim is, and what a victim does, makes all the difference.

Over and over, we hear that the behavior of the victim is not the issue. No one deserves to be murdered. No one deserves to be raped. Even the suggestion that the victim might have in some way contributed to her unfortunate demise is considered blasphemy. When pushed, it might be admitted, in a politically correct manner, that the victim "may have lived a high-risk life-style that increased her chance of becoming a victim." This is a nice way of saying the victim's personal decisions and behavior got her in trouble. Her unfortunate choices range from opening the door without knowing who is on the other side, jogging at dusk, or working the streets as a prostitute.

The continued white-washing of the victim's character, and the refusal to examine her actions, can make it harder to find, profile and try attackers. We think we are doing women a favor when we refuse to acknowledge that their behavior helped make them victims. We are, in fact, clouding the thinking of investigators and jurors in their abilities to identify and convict the perpetrators of rape and sexual homicide.

Let's examine how this political viewpoint of women's responsibility has affected these areas.

The investigation of a sexual homicide depends heavily on accurate information about the victim. Victimology includes the past history of the victim, the personality and habits of the victim in the recent months prior to the crime, and the activities and relationships the victim was involved with in the minutes, hours, and days before the murder.

The desire to believe that a totally crazy bogeyman appeared out of nowhere and, for no reason, murdered this totally innocent person, keeps many relatives and friends from informing the police investigators of dangerous activities and habits that could have set up the victim as the target in the killer's crime. Since the victim didn't deserve to be killed, then nothing she could have done should be relevant to her death.

This belief wastes valuable time and leads that could have led them rapidly to the perpetrator. The longer it takes for truthful information to reach the police, the more time the offender has to move or eliminate evidence, create alibis and generally disappear under the radar. When investigators accept this bogeyman theory, they too can overlook important information.

Still, investigators mustn't carelessly attribute risky behaviors as factors leading to a rape or murder. A prostitute is not necessarily murdered by a john, nor is a drug dealer always killed over drugs. Hitchhikers aren't necessarily murdered by the people who pick them up. It's entirely possible that none of the victim's less-than-desirable behaviors contributed in any way to her death. A drug-using prostitute with a real mean streak could be hit over the head and dragged into the bushes on her way home from church. The perpetrator may have no clue to her personality or lifestyle. She was just there; a victim of opportunity.

Wonderful traits can make someone a target as well. Take the horrific case of Annie Le (left with her fiancé), Yale student killed by a worker in the lab. She was beautiful, brilliant, sweet and friendly ... maybe too sweet and too friendly. Maybe she was overly polite to someone she should have avoided or maybe she was just so perfect and successful that her killer resented her existence. Good traits can get you killed, too.

Investigators must analyze all elements of victimology before making any conclusions. Even after a theory is developed, room must be left for the other possibilities, regardless of how unlikely. Paying close attention to all aspects of the victim's life as quickly as possible increases investigative leads and brings to police attention suspects who might  otherwise have gone undiscovered. 

In the courtroom, the defense often focuses on the victim's character. In a strange twist of reasoning, the politically correct refusal to make the victim responsible in any way for her fate allows the defense to assassinate her character.  

Because no one deserves to be killed, and no one contributes to the killer's choice of victim or decision to kill, then the victim must be totally innocent and the perpetrator must be totally guilty -- a hard case to prove. 

When the issue is seen so black and white, the jury is emotionally prepared to love the victim and hate the perpetrator. Then the defense presents their well-dressed, humble, intelligent, well -loved family man defendant. And then it proceeds to chip away at the victim's character (Jasmine Fiore, right, the model killed by her quickie-Las Vegas-marriage hubby) by, say, noting that she had numerous sexual relationships over the recent months (one of the other boyfriends could have done it), she frequented bars (oh, yeah, she could have picked up a freak), she did drugs (a low-life drug dealer probably offed her), she was a real flirt and wore provocative clothing (she asked for it ... oops ... not politically correct, but, hey, maybe she was into freaky sex and s/m), and she was not very nice sometimes (geez, maybe she really upset this guy and he lost it). 

Now that the victim has been so degraded in the eyes of the jury, they feel guilty if they put Mr. Nice Guy Defendant away for a crime, well, gee, for a crime that seems like any of the victim's acquaintances could have committed or that the victim herself encouraged. 

The truth gets lost in the jury's emotional response -- disappointment that the victim wasn't perfect. Oddly enough, it is easier to convict a murderer who killed during a drug deal, because character isn't an issue for either the prosecution or defense. The killer and the victim are both criminals. The only issue is the fact that the victim was killed. The trial then focuses on the evidence, not personality. (I am not saying this is cut and dried. Certainly defense attorneys still play the-defendant-is-a-nice-guy game, but the jury is not so conflicted over what to focus on to reach its verdict.) 

The issue in court should not be whether the girl was "easy," but whether she was easy prey, a vulnerable target for the offender. It should be stressed to the courts that these easy catches are often practice runs an offender uses to hone his skills before he goes after more difficult game --people with less risky behavior. When the concept of "good versus evil" raises its head in a court of law, the jury loses the gray area in between. If the defendant is "evil," then the victim must be "good." If the victim is not "good," then the defendant is not "evil" -- and neither gets justice.

A good example of this was the OJ Simpson case. When Nicole Simpson's character was raked over the coals, she went from being the innocent party to being the guilty party. This in turn made OJ the innocent party, unjustly accused. Anyone less than totally evil could not have committed such a heinous act; therefore, OJ couldn't have done it because he is no longer totally evil (as Nicole Simpson is no longer totally innocent). 

The focus of the argument in court is skewed. We should not be concerned about innocence or guilt of the perpetrator in relation to the victim. Nor should we focus on the innocence or guilt of the victim in relation to the perpetrator. We should simply be convicting the defendant if he has committed the crime, regardless of the relationship between them, and in spite of any behavior of the victim that rendered her the status of victim.

Did he commit the crime?

 

Let's take two examples of rape occurring at the same location. Both victims claim they were raped at a party. Both victims are college students. Both victims are deaf. Everyone at the party was deaf (Gallaudet University, the only university for the deaf in the world, pictured left). The perpetrators were both deaf. Both victims and both perpetrators were drinking. Victim One said she entered a back bedroom willingly with the suspect. The suspect started kissing her, which she allowed. The suspect pulled her onto a bed and started removing her underpants from under her skirt. The room was dark, and though she signed "no" to him repeatedly, he continued and then attempted sexual intercourse. She tried to push him off, but as she was drunk, she had little success. The suspect ejaculated quickly, got up, pulled on his pants and staggered out of the room. Did he commit a rape? 

Victim Two was on her way to the bathroom when the suspect came up behind her and shoved her into a back room. He pushed her to the floor and started pulling off her clothes. She struggled, but as she was very inebriated had little strength. Each time she tried to push him off, he shoved her back on the floor. He had sexual intercourse with her, ejaculated, got up, spit on her and left the room. Did he rape her?

Both victims came to the hospital. Both had semen evidence in the vagina. Neither showed any other injuries. The district attorney refuses to take either case to court because he claims to have no proof of rape. While both cases fit the societal definition of rape (the male is supposed to have asked and received permission for the sexual act in question), the legal definition of rape is another matter, and proving it is another matter still. 

The offender must have committed an act in which the victim is forced or coerced into participating. Victim One entered the room willingly with the suspect. She made no effort to turn on the light which would have enhanced her ability to communicate with the male. The male pulled (not pushed) her onto the bed and although she claims she pushed on his chest to get him off, she did so ineffectively; the suspect did not receive a clear indication of her refusal to have intercourse. During intercourse she did not attempt to cause him any kind of pain such as biting or stabbing him with her fingernails. She says she did not want to hurt him. She claims she was not particularly scared. His actions, although not welcomed, were not threatening. 

Because she could have taken precautions upon entering the room to ensure communication and she could have inflicted some sort of pain as an indication of objection, this victim clearly did not take action to prevent the event from occurring. The suspect may well have had no clue he was committing a sexual act against her will.

Victim Two did not enter into the back room of her own free will. She gave no indication of a desire to have sexual relations with the suspect. By shoving her into the room and pushing her to the floor, his aggression put the victim in a state of fear. When she tried to push him off, she made it clear she didn't want to have sex with him. She said she was afraid to try to hurt him because he might react violently. At a party with no hearing guests, screaming would have brought no help. At the end of the sexual activity, the perpetrator spit on her, clearly indicating his contempt for her and his awareness that she had not been a willing partner. 

There is sufficient circumstantial evidence here to prove a forcible sexual act.

Suppose both these cases actual were tried in a court of law. The jury learns that Victim One is a virgin and rarely drinks. Victim Two is rather promiscuous and is on the pill. Victim Two also hits up a party every week. In this profiler's opinion, both of victims' characters and behaviors could have led the perpetrators to the choices they made. The victims' choices of response to each suspect's acts established or negated the legal definition of forcible sexual activity. 

When Victim One went willingly into the room, virgin or not, she negated that she was being forced. By not attempting to turn on the light, she negated her desire for clear communication. By not attempting to inflict any kind of injury to the suspect that would make him question her desire for the sexual act, she negated that he was forcing her.

Victim Two, however, was forced into the room. That clearly establishes that the activity was forced. If Victim Two at that point turned and signed "Hey, Big Boy, let's do it!" she would have established consent and negated any forcible issue. Instead, his actions showed he was forcing sexual activity on her. If, in court, the jury feels sorry for the virginal Victim One and doesn't think one more round of sex is a big deal to the more sexually experienced Victim Two, then no one receives justice. 

All victims of crime are indeed victims, but we mustn't ignore victim behaviors that can help us identify the offender; we mustn't over-focus on their behaviors and characters in court, and we should learn from those victims just how certain behaviors can make us victims as well.

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