Lessons From the Past

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Our political system is an amazing thing.

It really is. Oh, I know we all complain about things that government does or doesn't do, and we get mad at our elected officials from time to time — but nearly without exception our system has permitted us to make peaceful periodic changes in our elected leadership. We take that for granted, but we wouldn't if we lived in many other places in the world.

But our system also has its idiosyncracies.

The pendulum is always swinging, and the out–of–power party always has plenty of reasons to be energized by midterm elections, starting with the clear historical trend that favors the folks who are outside looking in. This time it is the Democrats' turn as the out–of–power party, and everything seems to point to a big year for them. The president's approval numbers remain low, and Democrats continue to hold a lead in the generic congressional ballot.

Along with that, nearly three dozen Republicans in the House have announced their intention to retire, and more seem likely. The terrain certainly looks favorable for Democrats in 2018.

But history has some cautionary tales.

Let's start with the most recent history that Democrats ignore at their peril.

In 2016 polls showed Hillary Clinton with the lead over Donald Trump — and, indeed, Clinton did win the popular vote by a considerable margin.

But the United States has never elected its presidents by popular vote. It has always elected its presidents by electoral vote, and Clinton's popular votes were too heavily concentrated in the coastal states to influence the Electoral College. (In fact, if you took California's vote entirely out of the mix, Trump would have won the popular vote as well as the electoral vote; Clinton's margin in California was about 3.1 million whereas her margin nationally was 2.86 million.)

The same thing appears to be likely in this year's congressional races. Democrats are concentrated in urban districts, and the Democrats' nominees in those districts are likely to pile up impressive margins. Nancy Pelosi, for example, routinely rolls up incredible margins in her Bay Area district. It's even likely in some places here in Texas, where Clinton carried the metropolitan counties of Dallas, Travis, Bexar and Harris by wide margins.

But all you need to win an election is a single vote. You'd like to do better than that, of course, but some Democrats are likely to roll up huge margins in some districts — when many of those votes would be more beneficial elsewhere.

In Texas, outside of the metro counties and the ones that border Mexico, Republicans still dominated in 2016 — and likely will continue to do so. Some Democrats are salivating at the thought of the open seats that have been held by Republicans, like the South Texas district that has been represented by Republican Lamar Smith for more than 30 years. Smith is retiring, and there have been rumblings of how Democrats think they have an opportunity there, but one of the Democrats seeking the seat once served on Pelosi's staff. That might help win the Democratic primary, but it isn't likely to be a general–election winner in a district that voted for Trump by 10 percentage points.

That brings me to another point. The Democrats, like the Republicans in the first midterm of the Obama years, are engaged in a battle from within. The battle is between the establishment and the extremists. At stake is the direction of the party.

As the battle plays out, the establishment will prevail in some places, and the loose cannons, who are typically the most energized in the midterms, will prevail in others.

Democrats are certain to try to nationalize the campaign, but midterms are not national campaigns. They are held in every state and every House district, but the issues and candidates vary. It is tempting to vote for the loose cannons because they typically oppose everything the in–power party does, but Democrats need to remember how some of those loose cannons worked out for Republicans in the past.

In 2012, Missouri Republican Todd Akin made his widely reported remarks about "legitimate rape" that helped politically endangered Sen. Claire McCaskill win a second term by 16 percentage points. McCaskill is back, still politically vulnerable and running for a third term in a state that voted for Trump by nearly 19 percentage points.

Similarly, Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock's remark that "even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." Mourdock won the nomination by defeating six–term incumbent Richard Lugar in the primary.

Indiana has only voted for a Democratic presidential nominee once since 1964, but it voted for the Democrat in that Senate race, Joe Donnelly. He, too, is up for re–election — in a state that supported Trump by slightly more than 19 percentage points.

McCaskill and Donnelly were originally expected to lose in 2012, and their victories are big reasons why, when Democrats need to win only two seats from Republicans to have a majority in the Senate, they must defend more than two dozen Senate seats in November.

Democrats have a rare opportunity in 2018, but it is not a slam dunk.

A Nation of Witch Hunters

When I was growing up, "innocent until proven guilty" was practically a mantra whenever someone was accused of a crime. Even if everyone knew the accused was guilty, it simply was not considered American to speak of someone as guilty until a jury had reached that conclusion.

That, after all, was the kind of thing the early settlers came to America to escape (and then, ironically, engaged in their own witch hunting in Salem, Mass.).

The newsrooms where I worked in my newspaper days were always sensitive to that. For a time, when I was a police/courts reporter, my editors always reminded me, when I came to the newsroom to write about the day's proceedings in court, to refer to the defendant as "the accused" or "the alleged" until the jury reached its verdict.

Even if we knew the defendant was guilty. We couldn't say so until it was official — meaning that a jury had reached that conclusion.

Saying so in print only made it seem — and rightly so — that the press had already reached its conclusion. To hell with the jury.

That has never been the role of the press. The press' job is to be the eyes and ears of the community. The newspapers for which I worked, as I say, were always very sensitive about that kind of thing. They earnestly sought to maintain an aura of neutrality, and most of the reporters with whom I have worked would have bristled at the suggestion that they were not absolutely fair.

It's been awhile since I worked in a newsroom so I don't know when that began to change. All I know is that it did — probably tentatively at first but grew progressively bolder as the press began to discover that no one was going to hold it accountable for prejudging criminal defendants.

Even if the press was wrong.

Today, all that is needed for the public to turn on someone is for someone else to say something. Anything. Doesn't matter if it is true. It is accepted on face value. Look how quickly people have turned on Bill Cosby, one of the most beloved entertainers of his day. He has been accused of truly reprehensible behavior. If those accusations are true, he should be held accountable. But they haven't been proven in court, which is where every American who is accused of something is entitled to face his/her accuser and defend himself/herself against the charges if possible. That's what the people who braved the unknown to settle this land wanted.

Well, at least, that's how it used to be.

How about the case of cable TV cooking star Paula Deen, who admitted using the "N word" many years ago and apologized profusely — only to be driven from the airwaves anyway by those whose only motive appeared to be a desire to see how the other half had been living all these years — not a quest for justice.

In Ferguson, Missouri, the grand jury, as you undoubtedly know, has been investigating the August shooting death of Michael Brown, an 18–year–old black man. The grand jury's decision not to indict the white police officer who shot Brown sparked riots and looting.

If you look at the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings, you will see that most of the witnesses' accounts supported the officer's version of events — and most, if not all, of those witnesses were black. The facts simply did not support accusing the officer of a crime and spending who knows how many taxpayer dollars in a futile attempt to convict him.

And that is what grand juries really are designed to do — filter the unsupported cases from the supported ones. Do you believe that there are too many frivolous cases clogging up the judicial system? Grand juries have been doing their part to keep the frivolous cases out of the system in this country for a couple of centuries. If you think it is bad now, try living in an America that doesn't have grand juries to serve as courthouse gatekeepers.

Apparently, there are, to misquote Jack Nicholson, people who can't handle the truth, though. In spite of the testimony of those witnesses, there are still people who say justice wasn't served — and that race was the reason.

That is mere speculation unless there is proof to support it. Astonishingly, there are people who continue to cling to claims that have been recanted, citing them as evidence in this case — when, in fact, they are no such thing.

Things are a bit murkier in the choking death of Eric Garner in New York in July. I haven't seen those grand jury transcripts, and I would like to because it could give me some insight into the jurors' mindset. From looking at the video, it appears that, at the least, a charge of negligent homicide might be in order — but a video doesn't tell you everything you need to know.

Videos do help, of course, and I like the idea of equipping police officers with body cameras so investigators can see precisely what the officer saw when something like this happens. It's a worthy goal, but Barack Obama's pledge to provide federal funds to help police departments pay for such cameras is one more example of how Obama ignores feasibility in order to pursue what he believes would be an ideal world.

America is already $18 trillion in debt. The wise thing — the prudent thing — would be to focus on bringing down the debt, not adding to it. Hard choices must be made. Such choices almost always involve sacrifice, and, in the last six years, many Americans have had to make sacrifices they never thought they would have to make. Their leaders must give careful consideration before asking for more.

Of course, homicides aren't the only things getting attention these days. There have been a couple of cases of rape — or, rather, alleged rape — in the news. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that rape is anything other than what it is — an act of violence. But it is the kind of charge that sticks to someone even if he's been cleared.

I covered a rape trial once. The defendant was acquitted, but he was forever linked to the charge. He lost his job, couldn't find another one locally and, eventually, had to leave town. I've always hoped he was able to pick up the loose threads of his life and get back on track.

I also left that experience thinking that, if newspapers voluntarily withhold the names of alleged rape victims (and that is a voluntary thing — it is not mandated by law — freedom of the press, don't you know), they should also withhold the names of the accused until they have been convicted.

Rape is an incendiary charge. Bill Cosby, as I have pointed out, hasn't been convicted. He hasn't even been formally charged, yet his long–time associates are throwing him under the bus, one after the other. Maybe they're right to do so. But what if they are wrong?

Yes, sexual assault is an incendiary charge. It must be handled judiciously, which makes the case of actress Lena Dunham both fascinating and troubling.

For the last couple of months, Dunham has been hawking her memoir, "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned,'" which includes her account of an occasion when she was raped.

Well, to be fair, she never actually accuses anyone of rape. But she does describe an evening of what is best described as non–consensual sex.

Dunham, in case you don't remember, made advertisements for Obama's re–election two years ago. Those advertisements were intended to appeal to young voters, equating casting one's first vote with losing one's virginity.

I do not mention that to explain any conclusions I may have reached about Dunham or her moral compass or anything like that — I think most readers are capable of doing that on their own — but because her political leanings are important to remember in the context of a portion of her narrative. I refer to her description of an occasion when she claims to have been raped by a prominent "campus Republican" named Barry when she was a student at Oberlin College.

Oberlin is in Ohio and, from what I have heard, put the liberal in "liberal arts." Just about any Republican would stick out like a sore thumb there.

Her account has been effectively debunked by John Nolte of Breitbart. It was praised for its "truthiness" in TIME back in September.

Now that the reliability of the story has been brought into question, Eugene Volokh of the Washington Post wonders if this prominent "campus Republican," identified in Dunham's book as "Barry," has grounds for legal action against her.

The most egregious example of this willingness — nay, eagerness — to blindly accept anything that is said could be found in the pages of Rolling Stone last month. The article described the horrific gang rape of a woman identified as Jackie at a University of Virginia frat house.

There were angry protests and the school suspended all fraternity activities for a year. Those would be appropriate responses except for one thing — "there now appear to be discrepancies" in the account, Rolling Stone's managing editor says. More than a few, actually. There are more holes in the story than you'll find in the average block of Swiss cheese.

As a journalist, I am embarrassed by the blatantly sloppy fact checking. It is shoddy journalism, and it is inexcusable.

Rolling Stone's managing editor was right to acknowledge that the "failure is on us," but the mistakes were so basic that a first–year journalism student, never mind a newsroom full of seasoned vets, would have spotted them.

The thing that concerns me, though, is this: What if the editors at Rolling Stone knew in advance about the problems with the story, and they gambled that no one would call them on it? That it wasn't sloppiness after all?

I am reminded of the bogus charges leveled by Tawana Brawley against a group of white men back in the late '80s. Do you happen to recall who one of her chief supporters was? Al Sharpton.

Blaming the Victim

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I've been following politics most of my life.

I understand how the game is played and how one side or the other is apt to use things — appropriately or inappropriately — to score points in political campaigns.

That is how it was with the alleged "war on women" that the Democrats used — admittedly, effectively — against the Republicans in 2012.

Sexism is like racism — in the sense that it really does no good to deny that it exists. Clearly, it does exist — but it isn't the exclusive domain of one political party. That's where propaganda comes in.

To assert that it is the domain of one side or the other renders the accuser no better — indeed, probably worse — than the accused, for the accuser gives in to the very prejudice that supposedly is being decried.

Right here in Dallas recently, we had a blatant example of how sexism is not limited to a particular party — or, for that matter, a particular gender.

A district judge — a Democrat named Jeanine Howard who is unopposed in her bid for re–election this year — issued a ruling in a rape case that was nothing more than a case of old–time victim blaming and shaming. Howard sentenced the defendant, now 20 (18 at the time of the assault), to probation.

"He is not your typical sex offender," she said.

The victim, a 14–year–old girl, "wasn't the victim she claimed to be," Howard said and imposed an incredibly light sentence on the girl's rapist, who had confessed to the crime.

Howard also suggested the crime was not a rape because the victim apparently was not a virgin, that she had been promiscuous and had given birth to a baby. Really. The judge might just as well have said the victim asked for it.

By Howard's logic, any female who has had sexual intercourse cannot possibly be raped — even if she says "no," which, apparently, the victim in this case did. Several times.

(The victim did consent to intercourse away from the school grounds, but the young man attacked her at school.)

Also, the victim and her mother both say she has never been pregnant. Not that that should matter — except, apparently, in Howard's courtroom.

Meanwhile ...

In Montana, an astonishingly lenient sentence for rape handed down by a district judge in that state has been overturned. G. Todd Baugh sentenced a former teacher to one month for raping a 14–year–old student — who later took her own life.

Baugh said the victim was mature for her age and asserted that she was "probably as much in control of the situation" as her attacker.

CNN's Carol Costello wrote an opinion piece on the two cases that was posted on CNN.com (she may have delivered it on the air, too; I seldom watch CNN anymore so I don't know). She wondered — a bit naively, I thought — "Is America really clueless about the meaning of rape?"

I think the answer to that is that a certain portion of America has always been clueless about sexual assault — and probably always will be. Costello never mentioned Howard's political affiliation; the Dallas Morning News did. She never mentioned Baugh's political affiliation, either. I tried to find it, but I couldn't.

Perhaps Montana is one of those states where judicial candidates run nonpartisan campaigns. That really isn't the point, though.

The point is that, regardless of what Americans may have thought would be the outcome of electing the first nonwhite president in the nation's history, a post–partisan America is one of those achievements that is easier said than done.

America has always been a nation of laws, but it is a lot easier to change laws than to change minds. It takes time, and I'm not speaking about the inevitable disappearance of a generation because attitudes tend to be handed down from one generation to the next.

I don't know how old Howard is, but I have seen pictures of her, and I know she isn't of Donald Sterling's generation. Hillary Clinton is much closer, I'm sure, and we heard allegations today from Monica Lewinsky that the former secretary of State blamed the women around her husband — herself included — for the affair.

As long as offenders are given that kind of pass, any improvements in gender relations (and racial relations, for that matter) will be cosmetic at best.

Twisting Slowly in the Wind

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There have been many tragic stories coming from Egypt in recent weeks, but the most tragic may well have been the report of the sexual assault and barbaric beating of CBS correspondent Lara Logan.

Reports of attacks on foreign journalists have been fairly common, but Caroline Glick writes, in the Jerusalem Post, that "the most egregious attack ... took place ... when ... Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and brutally beaten by a mob of Egyptian men."

I can't argue with that.

CBS, Glick goes on to say, "took several days to even report the story, and when it did, it left out important information. The fact that Logan was brutalized for 20 to 30 minutes and that her attackers screamed out 'Jew, Jew, Jew' as they ravaged her was absent from the CBS report."

Glick tells a tale of journalistic cowardice and misogyny that makes the attack on Logan seem virtually inevitable, and she begins her column with the bewildered questions that many people no doubt were asking after word of the attack began to spread:

"The Western media have been unanimous in their sympathetic coverage of the demonstrators in Egypt," Glick writes. "Why would the demonstrators want to brutalize them? And why have Western media outlets been so reticent in discussing the significance of their own reporters' brutalization at the hands of the Egyptian demonstrators?"

Such questions distract from the facts. This wasn't some kind of uncontrolled response to persecution. The mob wasn't angry about unfavorable representation in the media. What happened to Logan was a crime, and the people who were responsible should be treated like criminals. No one should justify their acts because their acts cannot be justified.

I am reminded of a scene from the Jack Lemmon–Sissy Spacek film "Missing," in which an American has disappeared during a coup in Chile and his father, played by Lemmon, and his wife, played by Spacek, try to find him.

Lemmon believes his son must have done something to lead to his arrest, and he keeps asking people to tell him what it was. Then a native scoffs at the idea. "You Americans," he says, "you always assume you must do something before you can be arrested."

"Isn't that the way it usually works?" Lemmon asks.

"Not here," the man replies.

And that isn't the way it works in Egypt, either. I've read many reports on the attack on Logan, and I have found not a single word that suggests that she was doing anything other than her job when she was attacked. Meanwhile, the men who did this to her have been protected, their faces blurred to hide their identities in broadcasts of videos showing Logan with her assailants just before the assault.

Here in America, there are still people who think a woman brings such an assault on herself, usually by dressing and/or behaving provocatively. But even if Logan was wearing a short, tight skirt and a low–cut blouse and grinning suggestively at the men who attacked her, that would not make what was done to her all right — by any stretch of the imagination.

Logan's attack presents an ugly picture, and it tells a twisted and shameful tale of media coverage in foreign lands. Many foreign journalists have been intimidated by their treatment in the Middle East, and they have been eager to avoid rocking the boat.

The absence of courage among Western journalists has been, to use the most charitable term possible, disappointing.

But what this says about the treatment of women is, if anything, even worse, because it isn't the kind of thing that is confined to Egypt or other places teetering precariously between freedom and repression. The subjugation of women is often tolerated in supposedly free nations.

In essence, journalists (who have always been willing to risk their lives to bring the news to their readers and listeners — but who could usually count on a certain amount of support and protection from their employers and governments in return) are being left to, in the words of Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, "twist slowly in the wind."

That may be an unfamiliar sensation for many journalists. But the women in their ranks have long felt that way in Egypt and elsewhere.

What happened to Logan may yet yield some good things because it shines the spotlight on the appalling treatment of women in Egypt. As Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe, "Perhaps the most shocking thing about the despicable sexual attack on CBS correspondent Lara Logan ... is that to those who know Egypt, it wasn't shocking at all."

Nearly three years ago, the BBC reported that 83% of Egyptian women — and nearly all foreign visitors — had been subjected to some form of sexual harassment. The BBC called it "Egypt's cancer."

Mary Rogers wrote about sexual harassment at CNN.com nearly four months ago.

While I'm on the subject, a good place to begin moving past the "socially acceptable bigotry" (in Glick's words) that is permitted to exist would be to start calling that attack what it was.

I don't mean to insert a note that is too frivolous for the subject, but I have long been a fan of the late George Carlin — and I particularly enjoyed his observations about language.

Carlin didn't care for euphemistic language. He said Americans had invented a "soft language" to help them avoid dealing with reality, and he was right. Sometimes, as he pointed out, the euphemisms were fairly innocuous — like saying "bathroom tissue" instead of "toilet paper." No harm, no foul, right?

But sometimes euphemisms are used to hide really ugly truths, and this case seems to be loaded with euphemisms like that.

If Logan was sexually assaulted (by approximately 200 men, I have heard) and the attack went on for 20 or 30 minutes, she was raped.

I know the Wall Street Journal disagrees with that. The Wall Street Journal, quoting an unnamed source, insists that she was not raped. But could such a thing really be possible?

"Sexual assault" sounds like it was not as bad as it almost certainly was. It makes it sound like it involved everything but penetration (which wouldn't be particularly good, either, but some people could use that distinction to minimize what happened).

It sounds to me like the attackers were in a frenzy. How many blows would have been required to render Logan unconscious and then strip the clothes from her body? Are we supposed to believe that her attackers suddenly stopped after fondling Logan and said to each other, "Stop! We can go no farther. We are already guilty of sexual assault. If we go past this point, it will be rape."

Let's call it what it was — rape.

Even if, technically, only one of Logan's attackers committed the rape. Or two. Or three.

Wouldn't anyone who stood by while someone else committed a rape be guilty of, at the very least, being an accessory?

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the fine points of the law so I could be wrong. But it would be consistent.

See, "sexual assault" is rather broadly defined and is often used interchangeably with "rape." But "sexual assault" could mean a lot of things.

"Not all sexual harassment is physical," Jacoby writes. "[B]esides groping women's bodies, grabbing at their clothing, and indecent exposure, it can also include blatant ogling, sexual catcalls, and stalking."

And, for the "I'm–too–sexy–for–my–shirt" naysayers, Jacoby has this: "More than half the Egyptian women reported being molested every day. And contrary to popular belief, most of the victims were wearing modest Islamic dress."

Different jurisdictions have different definitions for rape — or statutory rape. And they don't necessarily have to include intercourse. Even if Logan was not violated (which I still find doubtful), her assailant(s) could be charged with rape.

The sight of Egyptians protesting against their corrupt government certainly was stirring for many pro–democracy types, including those who aren't especially worried about whether freedom really is inclusive.

But, as Miranda Devine writes in Australia's Herald Sun newspaper, a free Egypt will mean nothing to its women ...

... And it will mean even less to its foreign visitors.

Surely, there must be some way for justice to be served — and for Egypt's newfound freedom to have real meaning.

Let's stop hiding behind words. Let's say what we mean and mean what we say.

And let's take a resolute stand against this kind of behavior, wherever we find it.

Identifying Rape Victims

Yesterday, I noticed that Nicholas Kristof's New York Times blog addressed an issue that confronted me as a young reporter.

Kristof asks, "Is it ever OK to name rape victims?"

That is something that journalism students and practicing journalists have wrestled with for many, many years. It is not a pleasant matter to think about. It is a brutal crime that frequently stigmatizes its victims. Many people think it is a crime of sex and lust, but, in fact, it is a crime of violence and power. The only thing remotely sexual about it is the weapon that is wielded.

Anyway, after I graduated from college, I took a job as a general assignment reporter, which meant that I wore many hats. One of the things I covered was the police beat. On most mornings, that meant that I went to the city police headquarters and the county sheriff's office and looked over their incident reports from the previous 24 hours.

I was working for an afternoon paper in a small town in central Arkansas where, more often than not, a police report turned out to be the riveting account of a fender bender on a side street or a rural road. The really intriguing reports generally told the tales of residential break–ins while the owners were at work and their children were in school.

I also was assigned to cover many of the trials that were held locally while I remained in that job (and, trust me, there were a lot more trials than you might think, considering the county only had about 50,000 residents at the time). So, if there was a high–profile case, chances were good that I would get to cover it from start to finish — literally.

Often, the standing assignment of police beat and the more random assignment of a trial led to some overlap. That was unavoidable, really. A police reporter gets to know some of the people in local law enforcement. Not all of them, of course. But some of them. And sometimes, due to the nature of their work, those police officers or sheriff's deputies were called as witnesses at trials.

That was never a problem for me. Most of the time they testified about things that were undeniable facts, such as "Mr. X resided at such–and–such address, and his lifeless body was found at that address on the morning of whatever date." Clearly, if Mr. X had not been murdered, it would have been pretty pointless to hold a trial. And, if the police officer who was testifying also was the one who found the body, he was merely confirming when it was found. Such testimony rarely, if ever, provoked an objection from the defense.

There was one case that was a deviation from the norm. It involved a law enforcement officer — I must admit, I can't remember if he was local or county — who was accused of what would probably be called "date rape" today.

I didn't know that officer. If memory serves, he had only been on the force for a couple of months and he was either off duty or on his own beat whenever I came by the sheriff's office and the police station in the mornings. But I had heard his name mentioned — typically in a neutral context.

When I saw him in court, it occurred to me that he was a bear of a man. His accuser was a tiny, petite woman.

They both testified. They agreed they had gone out on a date on the evening in question. And then they returned to the young man's apartment for a nightcap.

Predictably, I suppose, that is where the stories went their separate ways.

In her version of events, he was on top of her the minute he closed the front door, overpowering her, which was not hard to imagine, given his considerable height, weight and strength advantage. In his version, she was the aggressor — and, it seemed to me, he was a bit boastful about how many times she forced him to make love to her that night.

In the past, the officer's colleagues had rarely mentioned his name to me — and then only in the most neutral of ways. I never got the sense that he had any enemies or close friends, but at the trial, it seemed that all his colleagues came up to me at one time or another during breaks to tell me what a fine person he was, how strong he was, how dedicated — and many repeated rumors that reflected poorly on the accuser's integrity.

The trial went on for a couple of days, as I recall, and I remember returning to the office that first afternoon to write part of the story for the next afternoon's edition. We planned to add whatever we could from the next morning's proceedings during the court's lunch break, just before the paper went to press, but this way we had two–thirds or even three–quarters of it done.

The accuser had begun her testimony that afternoon, and I remember asking my editor if I should name her in my story. I was young and new to my job, and I guess I was still operating under the influence of my college instructors. I couldn't recall much discussion about what to do when covering trials, but I did recall that my professors always stressed the importance of spelling witnesses' names accurately, for the record, and most seemed to believe in a policy of not naming a rape victim — but I don't recall anything being said about what one should do if an alleged rape victim took the stand.

For some reason, I believed, at the time, it was illegal to name a rape victim in print.

I have learned since then that whether a rape victim's name is printed is entirely a policy matter for the publication. As a courtesy, most outlets do not disclose the name of a victim, a practice that probably dates back to the days when there were laws on the books in some states prohibiting the publication of a rape victim's name. But most, if not all, such laws have been struck down as unconstitutional interference with a free press.

That was the only time that a rape trial was held in that county while I worked for that newspaper so I don't really know what its normal policy on naming rape victims was in those days. But on that occasion, my editor told me that, if she testified, she was on the record. And we published the names of anyone who went on the record.

So I included her name in the story. When she accused the police officer from the witness stand, I attributed her quote to her by name. And I felt bad about it, too.

Because I was convinced that she was telling the truth. And I knew that the town I lived in wasn't very enlightened, which probably meant she was ostracized for what she did.

I always sensed a strong undercurrent of subservience to authority in that county, and I always wondered if the law enforcement agency where the officer worked, whether it was local or county, had used its influence to force the newspaper's management to publish the accuser's name, perhaps as part of a subtle smear campaign — although the jurors in the case were warned repeatedly by the judge not to read any newspaper accounts of the trial.

Well, my articles never quoted anything that wasn't part of the official record, and, as far as I know, none of the jurors ever read what I wrote about the case — at least before they reached their verdict. But I guess the jury bought the officer's story. He was acquitted.

The look on his accuser's face as he left the courtroom in triumph was beyond words.

That image has stayed with me all my adult life.

And I have always regretted whatever role I may have played in it.

Where Have We Heard That Before?

Every once in awhile, something happens that makes me stop whatever it is I'm doing and go, "Huh?"

Such a moment occurred today, when I heard about the admission by a 73-year-old man in Austria, who acknowledged that he had held his own daughter prisoner underneath his house for 24 years, had raped her repeatedly, had fathered more than a half dozen children with her -- and no one had any notion that anything was wrong in the household.

Apparently, the man managed to explain his daughter's sudden disappearance in 1984 by claiming that she had run away from home.

And then he was able to explain the sudden appearances of three of his children/grandchildren by saying his daughter had abruptly returned and left the children with him.

He and his wife got Good Samaritan points from their friends and neighbors for taking the children in and adopting them.

A medical emergency with one of the children who had been kept captive with the man's daughter exposed the "house of horrors."

And for the second time in the last couple of years, residents of a small, idyllic community in Austria, less than 100 miles from Vienna, were confronted with a case of a woman who had been kidnapped, held captive and raped for years -- and then the case came unraveled and the locals were left to ask themselves how all this could have happened under their noses.

I don't want to stereotype anyone, and I don't wish to be politically incorrect, but this sounds a lot like what the Germans and the Austrians and the residents of their satellites in eastern Europe were saying about the concentration camps at the end of World War II.

The camps were out there in plain sight. The smoke from the ovens was there in the sky for everyone to see in the closing weeks of the war.

Yet, when the allies revealed what had been going on, the locals all said, "We didn't know what was being done." And "What could we have done if we had known?"

The argument has some validity, on the surface. But if you dig a little deeper, there are some disturbing elements.

I know we've had some disturbing cases in the United States. Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors in Milwaukee have to live with the realization of what he was doing in his apartment and no one apparently said anything about what may have been heard or seen around there over the years. Authorities were only summoned when the stench from Dahmer's apartment began to intrude into his neighbors' living space.

And there was the notorious case in New York City in the mid-1960s when a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death near her home in Queens. Although she screamed and cried out for help, according to news reports, more than three dozen witnesses in the neighborhood did nothing to help her. One witness even reportedly opened his door and watched the fatal assault and never tried to summon help or stop what was happening.

I know it's hard to be sure what goes on behind the closed doors of someone else's home.

But these Austrian cases are disturbing for another reason. They're disturbing for what they reveal about the mindset in that part of the world.

There just seems to be something in the culture of that part of the world -- maybe it's an Aryan culture thing -- that frowns on asking questions when one's suspicions are aroused even slightly. Don't get involved. Don't know anything about what others are doing.

It's like the familiar line often recited by Sgt. Schultz on the TV show Hogan's Heroes. It's a prophetic line, really.

"I know nothing!" he used to insist. "Nothing!"

Edmund Burke is often cited as the source of a great quote, although I have yet to see a definitive attribution to him. Whether he said it or not, it seems appropriate to this case -- and others like it.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."