April 28th and tonight's SVU

I was really impressed with our guest speaker yesterday. It was fascinating to hear what she had to say about victims, advocates and perpetrators. It also was interesting to hear about CARDV and her experience working there. It seems like it would be a great opportunity to be a part of that organization (they have volunteers!!). I also really appreciated the information she gave us about sexual violence and domestic violence. I am doing my paper on domestic violence and it helped to hear from someone who is directly involved with victim advocation and support.
This episode also dealt with a lot of issues that we have seen in previous episodes about rape. For example, the victim's past was brought forward as a way to discredit her (the first episode we watched it was the victim's reputation for being a flirt and this episode it was the victim's past drug habit). One thing that I noticed wasn't brought up too much was the sort of group mentality that the three younger boys had where the three were keeping quiet or were ganging up on each other to prevent one from telling the truth. That whole idea probably could have been an episode in itself (I think there is an SVU or a regular Law and Order episode(s) that have the group mentality theme). I also thought it was interesting that they added in how the victim's colleagues felt about the victim. They said "She deserved it" or that she got what was coming to her. This is also a similar thread that was in the previous rape episode we saw. Come to think of it, this is a pretty common theme in any rape episode of a crime drama I have watched. It always starts out with how we can blame the victim for being victimized. Whether it was because she was dressed "slutty," that she had been drinking, she had a drug habit, she was where she wasn't supposed to be, etc. It's never, "Let's consider what the MAN was doing?" or "Why was the MAN there?" or "Why did the MAN rape this woman?"
Tonight's SVU looks really really good. It has Robin Williams as a guest star and I think it also supposed to be like the 200th episode of SVU. So tune in tonight!! :)