a good discussion about this case.

The reality is that the case was dropped, she doesn't have the privilege of privacy shields anymore and her name and image are going to be disseminated throughout the web thanks to The Smoking Gun. Who do want on top of the searches when people go searching for "accuser + duke + picture" : Little Green Footballs or Amptoons or culturekitchen? I'd rather it be us than them.

One of the things I am writing about right now is my experience with sexual assault/rape --what happened to me I've never described as rape because I don't believe it was. Sexual assault is just too harsh but may well be the best alternative --sexual abuse to me would imply a repeated pattern of sexual aggression and that was not the case with me.

The word "rape" has become a metaphor for sexual violence that does not necessarily describe one act. And that's a problem. Because Ms. Mangum's definition of rape was not good enough for prosecutors.

The question is who is at fault here? Is this an issue of miscommunication where she is using the word as a metaphor yet the prosecutors were using it as a specific act?

I can't imagine that this could somehow be a huge misunderstanding. That she was speaking of a sexual assault, meaning that there was simply a 'pattern of sexual aggression', but that the police and DA somehow completely understood her and thought she meant an actual rape. For one, you can search on the smoking gun site for the very police report and her statement of what occurred. She describes the rape in pretty graphic and unequivocal details. There was no generalities about being assaulted. She actually stated the oral, vaginal, and anal penetration and who did it.

On a sidenote, it looks like 60-minutes is interviewing the AG this weekend and CBS has released a part of the interview ahead of time. Here's part of what he had to say:

"He says contradictions in the accuser’s earlier statements clearly indicated that an attack never occurred, but neither Nifong nor his staff challenged her. “We don’t think that any of these tough questions were asked of her,” says Cooper. What’s more, says Cooper, the accuser’s story continued to change as his investigators talked to her. “We started out knowing we had a problem…and the way it turned out, it was much worse than we thought.” Cooper’s team also thought she was possibly inebriated. “Our investigative team who was to meet her that day believed that she was under the influence of something.”

Among the new stories the accuser told was a fantastic account of the rape in which she contradicts the account she gave Nifong that led to him dropping rape charges back in December. “She was suspended in mid air and was being assaulted by all three of them in the bathroom,” Cooper recalls the accuser saying. “And I’ve been in that bathroom and it was very difficult for me to see how that could have occurred.” Cooper’s investigators were shocked by the situation. “A number of them said to me, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ It was amazing how she could continue to tell different stories.”

After the change again in stories and the revelations of her mental issues, I can understand how she might have believed her statements were true, each of them as she was saying them, and how they were completely disconnected from reality. That would still make her a false accuser IMO. After all, her allegation did not factually occur as she has claimed, even in broad strokes. I mean, think of it another way. If I said that John Edwards was really a spacealien from the planet Mars sent to take over the world using girlscout cookies, wouldn't my accusation be false even if I were psychotic and believed in my heart of hearts that it was true? Surely I would be a false accuser, no? I might not be a knowing liar, but that's a different can of worms.

As I said in an earlier comment, I think this is a case where semantics, aside from the political issues that polluted the case, may have made matters worse.

I think the word "rape" is thrown about in too many discussions about sexual violence to mean all forms of sexual violence. It's become a metaphor for violence involving sex and not the specific act and specific intent it used to have 25 years ago. There seems to be an absolutist stance about the word in this country that no matter what it looks like, all sexual violence is rape.

Having been involved in an abusive relationship in which I was sexually assaulted, I strongly disagree with that line of thinking. I think "rape" is a very distinct act that needs to be set apart from all the shades of grey that are implied in the term "sexual assault".

Unfortunately too many people in this country don't want to delve into the shades of grey. I guess it's that Puritan ethos.