Addiction and the Double Standard of Justice

By Ann

A young woman is jarred awake because there is a man on top of her.  He forcefully thrusts and takes what he wants without her consent.  She screams and pushes him off and goes home.  Unfortunately for this woman, her violation, her victimization has just barely begun and it hasn’t even considered peaking.  She will learn that her rapist carries HIV and she will have to go to the hospital and request a test all by herself.   She will go to the police.  She will plead for justice.   She will be admonished by them and told to go home because this  rape is nothing more than a civil matter rather than criminal. 

Another young woman lays seven minutes away from death completely unresponsive because she has overdosed on heroin.  She lays naked in a drug dealer’s bed.  He has been overdrugging her for weeks.  Every time she would pass out, he would earn a living by allowing anyone to come into the room and do whatever they want with her body.  She wouldn’t realize this happened until the ambulance was called and she would learn that she was naked.  She would never know who violated her or what diseases they had.  She would never really know what happened in that bed.  What she would know is that the justice system has a different set of standards for people like her.  She wouldn’t be tested for STDs at the hospital.   She wouldn’t be afforded a rape kit by any health care professional.  The drug dealer would continue his criminal enterprise.  She wouldn’t be guided by a therapist or a trauma specialist.  She would however, receive a set of criminal charges for possessing drugs.   In the infinite wisdom of the local government, the rationale is that she wouldn’t be near death if she wasn’t using drugs.  Apparently, the use of drugs negates any right to not be raped, kidnapped, or abused.   The system blatantly chooses to ignore her dignity and her right to justice simply because she is addicted to drugs.   A drug addict not only has to struggle with the demons of addiction, but they must also forego any semblance of human rights simply because they are sick.

And I have to sit in my office as each one cries and lets it all out.   They shake and tremble and have no one else to tell.  I will tell the authorities and they will scoff.   The prosecution will assume that the girls are trying to get out of their petty charges which don’t even carry jail sentences.   I will try to explain that the girls aren’t using their trauma as leverage.  Nonetheless, I will be stonewalled  by the authorities and the girls will suffer in silence.  Their attackers will likely abuse them again because the world of addiction and abuse is a vicious cycle.

 I will do everything I can but it will never be enough.  I have no power and we have no leverage.    

And I don’t even get to wear a white hat.