At Safeplace tonight there is a community forum. We are gonna sit down and talk about sexual assault in our greater Olympia community and come up with some strategies and plans to address it.

5:30 pm /314 legion way olympia 98501/360 786 8754. repost widely.

The subject of rape (both response to false accusations of rape and actual rapes that don’t get followed up on) has surfaced in a couple of blogs lately. However, neither of those threads was the right place to engage in a deeper discussion of the topic. I was one of those interested in discussing the issues further, so I am creating a place to do so.

I believe in the right of women to choose whether they are willing to have sex or not, who they are willing to have sex with, when, how, etc. I believe in the right of women never to be coerced into a sexual relationship.

Every woman has the right to refuse to become or remain sexually intimate with any man. These rights of women are inalienable. They are not conditioned upon economic means, social standing, or race. In their strictest sense, they are not even conditioned upon the laws of the country in which she lives.

If government has a responsibility to do anything, it is to protect firstly the persons and secondly the property of all those within its jurisdiction.

One of the blogs really brought it to my attention that perhaps we have a big problem of injustice in how the government responds to rape. It was a post by Rob Richards regarding a homeless woman who was repeatedly raped. According to him, the local police refused to investigate the crime.

There are aspects of this issue about which, at this time, I cannot claim to be an expert. I’m just a young college student. I’m fortunate in that I’ve never been the victim of a serious crime. I hope that I never will be. If I am, then I hope that my case will receive the attention it deserves by the police and the legal system.