If we were to follow the logic of the NYC District Attorney’s office, if you have ever told a lie, even if it is in the face of a system set up to fail you and your family, like say the U.S. immigration system, then your accused rapist deserves to go free. This is the lesson of the recent news surrounding the rape case against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Yesterday, Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest following an announcement by the prosecutor that called into question the “credibility” of the hotel housekeeper who has said that Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her in May. What has made the parties responsible for going after Strauss-Kahn throw the Guinean woman under the bus?
The immigrant mother allegedly knows people who are criminals and details regarding her application for immigration asylum are being called into question, specifically details regarding past sexual assault and genital mutilation.

The take-aways from this are pretty clear and serve as reminders to women and people of color who dare to come forward expecting the criminal justice system to protect/serve them.

1: If you are going to call anyone after you are sexually assaulted because you need support, make sure that person has never done anything remotely criminal or been accused of doing anything remotely criminal. Forget that fact that within the United States, people of color communities are policed hard and prosecuted hard over minor violations and that racial profiling means that walking down your street means handing over your papers at a moment’s notice.

2: Don’t be an immigrant, especially an immigrant woman of color. The fact that the accuser has an immigration record has served to hurt her more than help her. It has created an area of access to further violate her life. The questions that are reopened include why did she come here and does she deserve to be here. She is the one that must prove her worthiness to first even exist in the United States before it’s criminal justice system will grant her the honor of considering her valuable enough to defend.
What if she were a citizen? What if she were a White French tourist? Certainly women in general do not fare well under the current criminal justice system, but to be an immigrant woman of color – well she might as well deserved it.

At a time when one of the main arguments being used by “advocates” against immigration enforcement programs like Secure Communities is the fact that it threatens the safety of immigrant women in terms of how they relate to the police aka community policing (ha) – the treatment of the accuser/survivor is an example that the entire criminal justice system places no value in the reality/lives of working, immigrant, women of color and has no respect for their sexual dignity.

What would justice look like here?