"When is a Rape Not a Rape" by Carolyn Hinsey

[sivad40]

On Gossip Girl, a character gave up her virginity to a guy that attempted to raped a couple of years ago and another character married her attempted rapist (who was the same person that tried to rape the virgin).

Jada Pinkett's character on Set It Off wasn't raped. She asked her boss for some financial assistance to help her brother. Her wanted to have sex with her in exchanged for giving her the money and she agreed to do it. She was crying and felt bad about doing it but it wasn't rape.

[cassadine1991]

You talking about Jenny Humphrey sleeping with Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf marrying him on Gossip Girl

[SFK]

Again, I'd like a lawyer to chime in on these various circumstances. As an uneducated fan, I can only opine in terms of tone. I vaguely remember an incident from my All About Erica cassette where Erica agreed (begrudgingly) to sleep with Adam for a favor/career advancement, and it clearly wasn't rape, but it wasn't a life or death high stakes situation. The line seems so fine to me. I wish we could get my queen, Judge Judy, to watch these Sami and E.J. scenes. I'd accept her take as gospel.

[sivad40]

Yes I am. He also tried to rape Serena too. He was "redeemed" because of his daddy issues and of EW's chemistry with LM.

[ellabelle]

Perhaps there was more than one occasion where this happened, but hamiltonbernique posted the scenes on YT - when Erica was editor of Tempo, AFTER Adam kidnapped her and threatened to rape her and then tried to kill her and Jeremy both when Jeremy rescued her (Adam was salvaged as a character by having a brain tumor that made him do it), she wrote up a scathing article about the real Adam Chandler and how he was a horrible person and what he did to her. Adam had a controlling ownership stake in Tempo and said he would fire her over the article unless she slept with him. So she told him yes, she would do it in order to buy herself some time, and then she went to Ellen and Ross and to Palmer and convinced them to buy up shares of stock in Tempo/Chandler, and she put together a coalition of support to prevent Adam from firing her, and she did NOT sleep with him. That's one of the many, many reasons I love the character. When she's backed into a corner, she doesn't sit there and cry and give in. She fights back and finds a way around the problem.

The most rape-y situations on AMC that I can recall were, as I said upthread, Dimitri/Corvina and Erica/Jonathan Kinder, but neither victim apparently felt as if he/she had been raped. If Erica had not been dealing with a prescription drug addiction, perhaps she would have felt differently... or perhaps as someone who had suffered an incredibly brutal rape (she testified that he bit her so hard he broke her skin in places), only that level of violence would have equated rape to Erica. It's hard to say. I know some fans feel that the Erica/David scene where they had sex while she was on libidizone was rape, but those scenes are online too, and she knew who she was, who he was, and she was the aggressor. She did say the next day that she felt drugged, and she was pissed because she thought he'd compromised her sobriety, but even months later when she KNEW he'd accidentally drugged her and she confronted him about it in prison, she referred to what they did as "making love."

I'm not a lawyer (I just work with them all day), so I can't speak to the legal definitions of rape vs various degrees of sexual assault in Pennsylvania, where Pine Valley is set, but I do know that there is a huge difference between a rape occurring and a rape being prosecuted. Even when victims do come forward, they often don't seek medical attention right away or they shower away evidence, etc., and the tools the prosecutor needs to make a case are lost, leaving a he said/she said situation where the whole case hinges on who is more believable. Unfortunately the decision to prosecute often comes down to whether the district attorney's office feels they can get a conviction or convince the defendant to accept a plea bargain. As we saw on AMC, even though Bianca was clearly raped, she destroyed the evidence and cleaned up the crime scene, and the judge ruled at the probable cause hearing that there wasn't enough evidence to hold the defendant over for trial. Even her being pregnant would not be sufficient proof of anything until she could prove paternity - and even though she was known in the community as a lesbian, a defense attorney could have argued that Bianca had consensual sex with Michael out of some twisted desire to understand what her apparently bisexual girlfriend Lena saw in him, or that she deliberately slept with Michael to set him up in a cruel revenge scenario over the whole Enchantment/Cambias mess because her mother and sister had already accused him of attempted rape but neither were believable because of a past history of perjury, so Bianca volunteered herself since she'd be a more believable victim. I've seen stranger theories presented in court before, and it all comes down to what a jury finds more compelling.

[JaneAusten]

Ted Bundy also claimed he didn't murder all those women. lol. Does that mean he didn't? I am sure EJ would also claim he wasn't guilty ot rape when he was the mastermind in arranging to have an imposter pose as Sami's husband to control, manipulate, and yes have sex with her. So it shows a pattern of behavior with him.

One additional reason women don't come forward is some of what is being discussed in this thread. That a woman's past history is drug into court and used against her. Sami wasn't against manipulating people for years and she raped someone herself, so I get the feeling that many feel she should have known better or maybe got what she deserved. IMO she just met up with someone who was more sociopathic and diabolical than she was, at least at that moment, who took advantage of a sitation and used manipulation and control to get what he wanted. When I hear "she made a deal" it makes it sound like she prostituted herself and forced her way into the car and said "Hey EJ I'll have sex with you if you help me save Lucas's life". She behaved and reacted like a rape victim and if some want to hold onto the notion she was somehow a very willing participant because she said yes(after saying NO at least 3 times), I guess thats that. But even sexual harrassment laws now show us that a person simply putting up with harrassment doesn't make them a willing participant. One could make the same assessment and say the person "made a deal" to tolerate the deviant behavior to keep a job or to gain a promotion, yet there seems to be less ambiguity these days about what constitutes sexual harrassment than rape?

The movie Jodie Foster was in,The Accused, which I believe was based on a true stroy, showed how someone's past history, how her character's prior sexual conduct, her alleged promiscuity (she was even shown flirting with the men who raped her just before the rape),was being used against her. The DA stood by her but wasn't very confident these men would be convicted. It wasn't until a witness came forward on her behalf that the tide turned in the case.

[ChitHappens]

Does Sami know EJ hired and imposter to manipulate and have sex with her?

[Cheap21]

yes

[ChitHappens]

LAWD! I have never liked Ejami, but I liked EJ and thought he had potential. I have not liked Sami since she was a teen. Seems like when Sami got older, the writers really lost interest in her outside of just having Allison onscreen. EJ became nothing and I just can't stand the sight of him. The pairing ruined him! And she knows he had an imposter in her bed and she still loves him, bore his children and wanted to marry him? Soaps took a wrong turn long ago and never recovered.

[Cheap21]

She found out in the summer and was screwing EJ by November

[Skin]

I don't understand the logic here. You try and frame an argument around EJ's past history and behavior and then want to ignore Sami's past indiscretions in order to make a point about what happened the night in question. That makes no sense.

As to the sexual harassment metaphor you are using, again there is a difference. In sexual harassment cases the person cannot aim to use their body for personal gain and then cry about it to law enforcement in order to cash in on a paycheck. No law would side with a person claiming sexual harassment if they were complicit in engaging in sexual conduct with another person (even a superior) and then when they didn't get what they wanted tried to use the law to extort from said person or place of business. It doesn't work like that. This happened with Brian on QAF, when a guy slept with him to try and land an account and when Brain told him no he cried sexual harassment. That didn't fly.

As to my personal feelings around Sami, I do believe that EJ in so many aspects is Sami's karma for all of the misdeeds she has done. But I do not believe she should be raped because she herself is a rapist. Do I think it's poetic irony in some cases if that was supoosed to happen? Yes. Overall though I don't consider what Sami did to Austin and what Sami and EJ made a deal on is the same situation. That is why I reason and argue against calling what happened between EJ and Sami rape. Sami drugged Austin and raped him without any of his consent. I don't call the EJami deal rape because Sami was complicit in what happened that night, and absolutely nothing would have happened had she made a different choice and said no to EJ in regards to the deal. Can that same thing be said about Sami and Austin? Would she have stopped if Austin told her no? I doubt it. That's why I don't view it as rape. No more, no less. One could argue that EJ took advantage of the situation, no one is arguing against that, but at the same time people don't seem to be seeing the dual side of the coin and acknowledging that Sami did the same thing when she took advantage of the situation and asked EJ to help her save Lucas. Sami was not a victim and she was proactive in the situation. Sami did not have to ask EJ for help and she didn't have to utilize him to save Lucas. Point blank. End of story.

The children were created before the fact. Overall I wouldn't even count the imposter thing as the worst thing EJ did to Sami. I would say that was when he forced her to tell her children she didn't want them and hated them, or some other nonsense like that when they trying to make EJ a cartoon villain for Safe.