In late February, on the beaches of Ecuador, the bodies of two young girls were found dead in plastic bags. They had been bludgeoned over the head and stabbed. They were identified as Maria Coni, 22, and Marina Menegazzo, 21 who were backpacking through Ecuador. Reportedly, they ran out of money on their trip when two local men offered them a place to stay for the night. Unfortunately, Coni and Menegazzo accepted the offer. These two men confessed to the murders shortly after the girls were found. One of them even went as far as admitting that he hit Coni over the head with a board after she wouldn’t let him touch her. This tragic, disturbing, and horrific event was further upsetting by people posting victim-blaming comments on social media. They said unwarranted phrases such as “What clothes were you wearing?”, “Why were you alone?”, “Why would a woman travel alone?”, “You were in a dangerous neighborhood. What did you expect?” and “They were surely on drugs and were asking for it”. As if the girls wanted to be killed and dumped like garbage.
A Paraguayan college student named Guadalupe Acosta was tired of this victim-blaming and decided to finally speak up. She wrote a powerful Facebook post from the point of view of the two young women who were murdered. It begins “Yesterday I was killed. I refused to be touched, and with a stick they cracked my skull open. I was stabbed and they let me bleed to death. Like waste, they put me in a black polyethylene bag, wrapped with duct tape and I was thrown to a beach, where hours later they found me. But worse than death, was the humiliation that followed. From the moment they found my inert dead body nobody asked where the son of a bitch that ended my dreams, my hopes and my life was. No, instead they started asking me useless questions. Me, can you imagine? A dead girl, who can not speak, who can not defend herself.”
Her full statement has been shared over 700,000 times.
There are people in this world who are not only unable to take responsibility for their own actions, but refuse to see the responsibility for someone else’s actions.
Yes, those girls willingly chose to stay with two strangers for a night because they had nowhere else to go. Does that mean they deserved to die because of it? Perhaps we should be putting the blame on the right people – the two men who killed Coni and Marina. Of course there were sympathetic and proper responses to the entire situation on social media as well. Commenters gave their thoughts and prayers to the families and expressed the tragedy of such a loss. For every rational person though, there is always an irrational person whose words speak a little louder simply because of their blatant ignorance.
This idea follows the world into June as the Brock Turner scandal unfolded. The freshman Stanford swimmer was found guilty of the intent to commit rape of an intoxicated/unconscious person, penetration of an intoxicated person, and penetration of an unconscious person. As everyone knows, he was sentenced to meagre 6 months in jail with probation.
Brock Turner’s father wrote a letter to Judge Persky pleading for lenience before the sentencing. He had the audacity to dismiss his son’s crime as “20 minutes of action”. Furthermore, upon giving his pathetic sentence to Brock Turner, Judge Persky defended his actions stating that “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him” which is why he did not give him a harsher and more deserved punishment.
The unidentified female in the case who was assaulted by Brock Turner wrote a prevailing 12 page letter to her attacker. At one point she addressed the fact that he claimed a night of drinking can ruin a life. She replied to his statement by saying “A life, one life, yours, you forgot about mine.” She continues to say that “You have been convicted of violating me, intentionally, forcibly, sexually, with malicious intent, and all you can admit to is consuming alcohol. Do not talk about the sad way your life was upturned because alcohol made you do bad things. Figure out how to take responsibility for your own conduct ... He has only apologized for drinking and has yet to define what he did to me as sexual assault, he has re-victimized me continually, relentlessly. He has been found guilty of three serious felonies and it is time for him to accept the consequences of his actions. He will not be quietly excused.”
In this case, a majority of the world was on the right side – her side. However, it was Brock Turner’s family, friends, and even a few teachers who refused to put the blame on him. Brock Turner himself has constantly, consistently, and continuously refused to take responsibility for his actions. Now, victim-blaming is getting away with its atrocities due to Judge Persky’s wretched 6 month sentence.
Victim-blaming can again be seen with other rape cases throughout the nation taking place at universities. Baylor University, University of Tennessee, Vanderbilt and countless others all have football players who have been accused of, are convicted of, or are under investigation of sexual assault. The public is more interested in the failings of the administration though instead of the crimes committed by the rapists themselves.
Individuals need to start taking responsibility for their own actions. The world needs to start holding those guilty of crimes accountable for their wrongdoings. And more strong people like Guadalupe Acosta and the woman in the Brock Turner case need to speak out for the victims who are being blamed.
