Charges have been dropped against the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting a stripper. Undoubtedly, that's a good thing—that is, it’s the least bad thing to come out of the whole debacle.
The Duke rape case started out depressing and got worse with every new revelation. First there was the sick thrill of watching what seemed like justified public outcry against an obvious crime. I don’t know anyone who’s been sexually assaulted by a Duke athlete, but I can’t say the same of other top-tier colleges. That hardly made the Duke guys rapists—but it didn’t make me particularly objective, either. And I’m sure I’m not the only person who found a reason to assume the defendants were guilty. Privilege always comes at someone else’s expense, and those lacrosse players were awfully privileged.
Then more and more evidence turned up supporting the athletes, and the whole thing got murkier and murkier. The alleged victim's co-stripper debunked half her story. The prosecutor made all sorts of unethical remarks. The DNA test didn’t point to any of the accused. And it turned out that in North Carolina, a sex crime isn’t considered rape unless a penis is involved (as if forcible penetration by any other kind of object is somehow less of a violation.)
As for the people who’d been crying guilty from the start—people I tend to agree with—they all got weirder and quieter about the whole thing. What could they say? What could I say? “I’m sure she wouldn’t have reported a rape if it didn’t happen?”
That’s the worst part about the whole story: It gives credence to the nasty trope about women who falsely accuse men of rape. The incidence of false reporting is the subject of furious debate (check out the Wikipedia talk page for the entry “rape statistics” if you don’t believe me) but I’ve read that rape is no more likely to be falsely reported than any other kind of assault. I’d like to believe that; more importantly, though, I’d like juries to believe the testimony of women who actually have been assaulted. In a public case like this one, crying wolf can do serious lasting damage.
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