RAPE CULTURE MISREPRESENTED

Two Pakistan-born brothers today had their rape sentences increased:

Justice Peter Hidden has today sentenced two Sydney brothers, who can only be known as MSK and MAK, for a range of sexual assaults against two teenage girls at the brothers' home in Ashfield in 2002.

The brothers are already serving lengthy sentences for the gang-rape of two other teenage girls and MSK will now serve up to 28 years in jail, and MAK will serve up to 19 years.

I didn't deem this post-worthy; not until reading this atrocious post from Naomi at Larvatus Prodeo:

One night, when TW was really just a little girl (but didn't think so), she had much too much to drink and went to a house for what she thought was a party. What happened to her that night has been used by tabloid journos and shock jocks to fuel the Sydney Muslim/Lebanese gang rape scare, which fed the Cronulla riots and has caused the hijacking of endless blog posts. So read this, and think again.

It would have been helpful if Naomi had linked to some of this tabloid and shock jock stuff but she didn't, so let's move on:

While the headlines screamed about her plight, the victim, TW, was never allowed to speak out. As she put it to Richard Glover today on ABC Radio 702, she was told to sit down and shut up, to wait it out, before she was allowed to speak.

TW was no doubt obliged to remain silent until the case was disposed of. Anyway, TW is now speaking out with Naomi observing:

But she didn't let the tabloid anger blind her to the real meaning of the hideous events of that night.

"This wasn't about culture, this was about abuse against women and the fact that they had the nerve to bring in culture to begin with just astounds me."

Naomi has taken the TW quote out of context and grossly misrepresented the culture angle. In fact, TW's comment wasn't directed at the tabloids or shock jocks, it was directed at one of the Pakistan-born brothers who tried to blame the rapes on cultural factors:

A New South Wales Supreme Court judge has rejected a claim by a Sydney gang-rapist that his strict Pakistani upbringing meant he did not know his actions were wrong.

MSK claimed his family's strict moral and cultural upbringing in Pakistan explained his offences, which has angered one of his victims, Tegan Wagner.

Did Naomi willfully misrepresent this in an effort to score political points or did she just get it wrong? I'm inclined to believe the former.