In NYS, there's no excuse for rape

Imagine going to a party with friends or attending your high school reunion or a wedding. You see a lot of familiar faces, and some new ones. Everyone is having a good time exchanging memories and you drink into the night. By the end, you realize you’ve had too much to drink. Walking doesn’t come as easy, and your words are a bit slurred. No worries. Nothing that others haven’t done before. Surely, you’ll get home safe.

Except you don’t.

Instead, you are sexually assaulted or raped. The evening before was a blur and you can’t quite put the pieces together, but you know something is not right.

You go to the police to file a report, but suddenly, you’re the one being interrogated. Officers start asking you if you had any alcohol or drugs on the night of the attack and in some cases, they will perform a breathalyzer. But that shouldn’t matter. The person committed a crime, regardless of the victim’s state.

In New York State, there is no law in place that protects survivors of sexual assault if they were voluntarily intoxicated during the crime.

It seems absurd that this is not already law in a state as progressive as New York, especially when compared to infamously conservative states like Alabama and South Carolina who have laws in place protecting sexual assault survivors who are voluntarily intoxicated.

The bill before the New York State Assembly (A101) and Senate (S54) sponsored by dozens of elected officials aims to amend the law:

“To allow sex crimes charges to be brought in cases where the victim had become voluntarily intoxicated if a reasonable person in the defendant's position should have known that the victim was incapable of giving consent due to intoxication.” Voluntarily being the operative word.  Those who oppose the law are afraid the language will allow for false accusations involving voluntary intoxication among consenting adults. One field of thought has been that perhaps someone would regret their decisions from the night before and claim they were not within their correct mental state to give consent.  But advocates feel these extreme and uncommon situations dimmish the seriousness of sexual assault and rape, no matter the situation, and have presented cases to support their cause.  In 2017, choreographer Bijan Williams, who worked with high-profile celebrities Beyonce and Jay-Z was arrested on charges of rape and false imprisonment when a 17-year-old girl called 911 and accused him of raping her in a Manhattan hotel. Williams was 34 at the time and both were under the influence of alcohol. Williams pled guilty to a misdemeanor of supplying a minor with alcohol and the rest of the case was dropped.  Williams has a LinkedIn page advertising his choreography.

In 2021, The Washington Post published, " A Minnesota man can't be charged with felony rape because the woman chose to drink beforehand, court rules." The headline stems from a 2017 case where a woman consumed several shots of alcohol and a prescription pill before leaving with an unknown man who invited her to a party, accotding to the article.

She was raped, but because she was intoxicated on her own will, and the state only protected those woh were mentally due to intoxication administered by someone without a person's consent, the man was not charged.  

Victim-blaming is all too common for survivors of sexual assault and rape, and while the scars may be invisible, they run deep.

Survivors of sexual assault are 10 times more likely to attempt suicide, according to 2020 research by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. And suicide is not the only possible outcome resulting from these sexual crimes. Sometimes individuals are plagued with a lifetime of psychological and emotional issues that intervene with their ability to partake in everyday tasks, like holding a steady job.

While criminals walk away with a slap on the wrist, survivors are to suffer the crimes perpetrated against them, and in many cases, they are relegated to carrying the shame afflicted onto them by society.