Bad Girls
You know the story, about the girl who goes for a night out, who is carried off, drunk and helpless, to be raped in a waiting van. You know what happens after, and where she is found: along a pier, disoriented, her pants down around her feet. You know where the story takes a different turn, because the girl, unlike the woman who is raped every hour in this country, goes to court and testifies that she was raped on the night of Nov. 1, 2005. This is what she said in a July 2006 hearing: “They took away my dignity … Smith raped me and his companions even encouraged him. They were enjoying it as if they were watching a private show. Then they just unloaded me [from the van] like a pig.” Court evidence established the lacerations and tenderness of her vagina as consistent with rape. Nicole testified in court that she was drunk and too weak to stop the assault. The trial court, in a decision that made international headlines, declared Lance Cpl. Daniel J. Smith guilty of raping the girl the nation knew as simply “Nicole.”
There were many, of course, who were quick to point out that Nicole herself may have been to blame. Good girls, whispered the slit-eyed, tight-lipped few, do not go to bars to drink with foreign boys with baby faces.
But there were many who took up the cudgels for Nicole. Her story became everyone’s story. Here is the Filipina raped and disowned by the vicious American. Here is the living, breathing image of the Filipino nation, raped by capitalist America. That Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith was a serviceman brought to the Philippines by virtue of the controversial Philippine-US Visiting Forces Agreement made the parallelism complete. “Nicole” is not a name but an issue, a concept, a word painted in red letters on a cardboard banner. This was the Nicole of the local media, this is the Nicole of the politicians and the human rights groups: Joan of Arc, banner flying, armor glinting, the light of battle in her eyes.
And then, recently, Nicole’s affidavit, what some have called a recantation. “My conscience continues to bother me,” she said, “realizing that I may have in fact been so friendly and intimate with Daniel Smith at the Neptune Club that he was led to believe that I was amenable to having sex or that we simply just got carried away,” she said. It was all that was necessary for the whispers to become shouts of righteous anger. We knew it, they said. We said she was a whore.
It was suddenly another Nicole who strutted into the Neptune Club on the night of Nov. 1, 2005. This was the girl who wore short skirts and pursued blue-eyed boys with their buzz cuts and pockets thick with US dollars, the girl with an ear cocked to the marching tune of the American Dream. This is Nicole, who sat on the laps of GIs and let them ply her with cocktails, first the Vodka Sprite, then the B52, the Singaporean Sling, the B53, the Long Island Iced Tea. That night, she sat on the lap of American Daniel Smith, a good-looking young serviceman she met on the dance floor. They say she kissed him, that she let him touch her on the dance floor, that they danced thrice, that she threw herself at him. This is the same Nicole that the defense team of Daniel Smith introduced to the Philippine public.
I have been told by many people who Nicole is, what Nicole is, whom she represents, what she should have stood for. I’ll tell you who I am, and why it does not matter to me who Nicole is. I am a 23-year-old girl who wears short skirts, who knows intimately the contents of a Long Island Iced Tea, and who has, on more than one occasion, discovered that a college degree is very little protection against stupidity. I do not walk into a bar expecting to be raped, and if my moronic belief in that men are not animals does get me raped, it does not make it any less a crime.
Nicole had it coming, they say. She was no virgin, she had an American boyfriend, she had drink after drink and was sprawled on Daniel Smith’s lap. There was tongue and lips and a hand up a skirt, she was in a dimly-lit bar in Olongapo City, the bright, bright city where women in tight cropped blouses and lipsticked smiles go to offer their charms to the brave boys of the US Army. Nicole wanted it, or she wouldn’t be there at all. How dare she, said the man who picked up the newspaper and saw her face. How dare she, said the activist who stood in front of the United States embassy. How dare she, said the college girl who shook her head at Nicole’s audacity. To cry rape, then to deny it, to cry rape, after inviting it — that was the betrayal.
Unlike murder or assault or kidnapping, a rape case puts a victim on trial. Her past is raked up, her virginity made an issue, her sexual history a matter for public scrutiny, as if having an engorged male organ rip into unwilling flesh is any less an assault than a gunshot to the chest. The media cannot reveal her name, because society will condemn her—as if she is a criminal, not a victim. To follow the argument that women should be held responsible for rape is to open the floodgates for all kinds of ridiculous analogies — similar to holding Ninoy Aquino responsible for his own assassination (he was warned after all) and to blaming Jonas Burgos for being outspoken. To say any woman invites rape means any male with a hard-on can say a girl batted her eyelashes, that stiletto heels are a come-on, and that a lack of self-control is justified by a kiss goodnight. It is to say some women should be raped, and some shouldn’t.
Even marriage — which is essentially also consent to marital relations — does not permit a man to take a woman whenever he wants her. I’ll tell you where I stand: that rape is still rape, whether or not the girl invites it, whether or not the woman is a Nursing graduate from Ateneo de Manila University or a paid escort in a halter top dancing for a clapping expatriate on the tables of Café Havana.
That Nicole was raped seems no longer the issue. The courts have determined that a man who has sex with a drunk, unconscious girl is a rapist just the same. The recent affidavit, written in a manner Nicole does not employ, notarized by the firm representing her assailant, paints a picture of a girl who won the battle but lost the brutal war: Smith was behind bars, but so was Nicole — without money, without a future, and with very little help from a government stretching its fingertips to reach the coattails of Uncle Sam. She folded, she quit, she did not hold the line. Signing that affidavit was neither brave nor heroic, but then again, unlike so many who have fallen, it was not Nicole who claimed to be a hero.
May 28, 2009
Thanks for writing, I really liked your latest post. I think you should post more often, you obviously have natural ability for blogging!
May 28, 2009
i love your writings.
im intimidated to even be here.=)
hey,
i hope you drop by my site too!
=)
thanks!
Jun 3, 2009
I must say this is very interesting, the way you expressed your opinion. I’m looking forward to your future entries. (:
Jul 12, 2009
The media cannot reveal her name, because society will condemn her—as if she is a criminal, not a victim. = [so true...]
They say chivalry, respect, and honour are dead in most men.
I say, they couldn’t have been more right.
Aug 12, 2009
it’s sad her braveness didn’t last.She suddenly stop her fight even if she’s almost there towards achieving justice.
Many Filipinos supported her. Treating her war as their own.
Aug 15, 2009
PATRICIA I HAVE LOVED YOU SINCE 2003 BUT WAS TOO AFRAID TO TELL YOU. I’M GONNA MARY YOU SOME DAY! -
Aug 1, 2011
You are one of my idols. In fact I always look forward to your articles on the Inquirer.