An Ohio judge has ordered teenage sexual-assault victims in four separate cases to undergo polygraph tests, along with the teenage boys who were convicted, before the scheduled sentencing, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
This has the potential to be some old-school victim blaming, and though the judge, Alison Floyd, declined to comment, I can't help but wonder whether it's related to the Hofstra University case in which a video discovery showed that group sex in a club bathroom wasn't exactly gang rape, as the accuser had said. In that case, what happened was disturbing and also not clearly criminal, a gray-area matter the criminal-justice system isn't particularly adept at handling.
But there's no hint that the Ohio cases are similarly ambiguous. A polygraph test is part of an investigation, but the court has already determined guilt. The case should be closed. Moreoever, lie detectors are so unreliable they're often not admitted in court as evidence. And what evidence could the judge get from the accusers?
The prosecutor has said the judge does not have authority over the victims and that requiring them to submit to a lie detector test would violate rape shield laws. I think we can safely bet that the victims won't be forced to go through with it. Let's just hope that this judge is an outlier and not part of a more disturbing trend of officials assuming that rape victims are lying.
-- Monica Potts