a win for journalistic freedom but a huge loss for survivors

  • Post last modified:June 28, 2024
  • Reading time:13 mins read


Content warning: this article discusses rape and sexual assault in detail. Reader discretion is advised. 

On Tuesday 25 June, we learned UK authorities had released Julian Assange from Belmarsh Prison on the condition that he pleads guilty to US espionage charges. This is great news for journalistic freedom. However, many people seem to have forgotten that two women accused Assange of rape, sexual assault, and other offences.  

It seems in the reporting of Assange’s release, the majority of the mainstream media have conveniently forgotten about the allegations against him:

One woman accused Assange of rape, and another of sexual assault. He also faced investigations for unlawful coercion and molestation. Obviously, Assange protested his innocence. After losing a high court appeal against his extradition in from the UK to Sweden in 2012, he requested political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.

As always with X, people were quick to point out that eventually, the Swedish prosecution dropped the allegations – so he must be innocent.

However, it is worth noting that at least in the UK, a mere 1.3% of rape cases recorded by the police actually result in them charging a suspect. When you include the number of rapes that go unreported, which is thought to be around 63%, this figure drops substantially more.

In 2015, some of the allegations against Assange were dropped due to the statute of limitations. However, the rape allegation still stood.

According to Amnesty International, in Sweden:

The statute of limitations is 15 years for gross (aggravated) rape and 10 years for rape and “less serious” rape, calculated from the date the crime was committed.

In 2017, Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape case. They claimed it was impossible to proceed while Assange was hiding in the Ecuadorean embassy. They reopened the case in 2019 and shortly after, dropped it again:

At the time, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said:

The reason for this decision is that the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.

I would like to emphasise that the injured party has submitted a credible and reliable version of events.

Believe women

Something that much of social media fails to grasp is that two things can be true at the same time.

Assange exposed brutal war crimes and corruption. His release is a huge win for journalistic freedom. However, when did we stop believing women? All the progress we have made as a society since the #MeToo movement seems to be forgotten as soon as a man who did something good gets accused.

The allegations do not change the win for journalistic freedom. Similarly, his achievements don’t negate the accusations against him.

Stereotypes keep us stuck

This stereotype that abusers are 24/7 ‘bad people’ can prevent people from recognising real life abusive situations. It makes people believe that men who do good things cannot possibly be abusive. 

People tend to have a very specific image in mind when they think of abusive men. They’re often angry, old, and slightly overweight. This image leads people to believe that abusers are easily visible – you can spot them a mile off. It creates a false sense of safety.

In reality, abusive men inhabit all walks of life, often have money, and are highly successful. Usually, they are also kind and thoughtful. It is these traits that allow them to get away with their behaviour – because no one questions the nice guy.

Abusive men know how to manipulate power, and as Jessica Valenti wrote in 2018:

Knee-jerk sympathy for men accused of wrongdoing isn’t new

People find it hard to believe when their favourite TV star or celebrity is accused of sexual violence. The version of them that we see in the media is portrayed purposefully – powerful people want to feel familiar to us, so that we put our trust in them. That is how they get away with being abusive – because the image they have painted of themselves would never do the things they are being accused of.

In reality, that is not them at all.

The prevailing argument for Assange

Writer Caitlyn Johnstone has argued that the allegations were politically motivated – and it is of course important to understand the power dynamics at work. In particular, she has set out how the US used these allegations to try extradite Assange. She argues:

This was never resolved because this was never about rape or justice. It was about extraditing Assange to the United States for his publications.

She continues:

Don’t try to justify what Assange is accused of having done, just point out that there’s no actual evidence that he is guilty and that very powerful people have clearly been pulling some strings behind the scenes of this narrative.

However, these facts aren’t mutually exclusive. The US could have weaponised the allegations to get hold of Assange. At the same time, it doesn’t mean they’re not true.

This whole ‘he says, she says’ argument is where we have been getting stuck for decades.

While Johnstone points out that there is no actual evidence that he is guilty, it is worth pointing out that there is also no actual evidence that he is a) innocent and b) was set up by the US government, as she claims in her article.

Yes, I think it is correct to question why there was such a huge response from Interpol and the UK authorities compared to every other sexual violence accusation, as Naomi Wolf points out. However, that isn’t evidence of a set up as people are claiming.

A 2016 article by Celia Farber argues that:

Was it rape? Was it somewhere in the “grey zone”?

Now, lets get one thing clear. There is no ‘grey zone’ when it comes to rape, sex, and consent. There is consensual sex, and there is rape. I do not go and hit someone over the head with a surfboard and call it surfing. Consent has to be clear, ongoing, and can be withdrawn at any time.

Consent is not complicated

One of the accusations against Assange was that he initiated ‘sex’ whilst the victim was half asleep, and without a condom. Previously, the woman had consented to sex with Assange on the condition a condom was used. Let’s make another thing clear – someone cannot consent to sex if they are unconscious, asleep, or in any way do not have the capacity to make informed decisions. The Guardian reported in 2010 that:

She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. “According to her statement, she said: ‘You better not have HIV’ and he answered: ‘Of course not,’ ” but “she couldn’t be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before.”

I will say it again. A woman who is asleep cannot consent to sex. Not that hard to get your head around, is it? As if that wasn’t bad enough, she had also made it very clear she didn’t consent to sex without a condom. That alone, is also rape. Clearly, some people do not understand the definitions of rape and consent.

Another allegation also specified that Assange tampered with a condom after making it clear he didn’t want to use one. Again, the victim consented to sex on the condition a condom was used. She did not consent to unprotected sex. Therefore, the act of tampering with the condom so it becomes ineffective, changes it from sex, to rape. In the UK at least, this specific crime is called ‘stealthing‘ and someone who carries it out can be prosecuted for rape.

There is no ‘normal’

Johnstone’s article also states:

SW freaked out when she learned the police wanted to charge Assange with rape for the half-asleep incident, and refused to sign any legal documents saying that he had raped her.

No one has even stopped to consider that maybe, the police naming the incident as rape was the first time the woman had considered the severity of what had happened to her. Often, victims are so immersed in denial that they are not able to process what has happened to them, or acknowledge that the experience was in fact rape. Trauma impacts everyone differently and there is no ‘right’ way to respond when something like that happens to you.

Johnstone also commented on the timing of the allegations:

This all occurred just months after Assange enraged the US war machine with the release of the Collateral Murder video, and he was already known to have had US feds hunting for him.

While there are valid questions around this, she fails to recognise one key thing about sexual assault allegations. There was a reason why so many women came forward during the #MeToo movement.

Partly, this was because when the media threw these powerful men into the spotlight, they too were empowered to come forwards. In Assange’s case – the media attention meant that these women might have felt the world would finally listen to them.

Glorification of Assange

The mainstream media ignoring allegations against Assange is one thing – but putting him on a pedestal is a whole other matter. Unintentionally, its true that Assange has become somewhat of a symbol of press freedom. However, the media need to be able to separate the man from the cause. Glorifying Assange as the embodiment of press freedom is unnecessary and actually, in this case it is highly inappropriate.

The message this sends is that as a saviour of journalistic freedom Assange is above the law when it comes to violence against women.

Our freedom of press feels a little bit safer. But lets not forget about the women who have made allegations against him. When other powerful men are accused of similar crimes we don’t sit here and gush over them. The default should not be questioning women’s accusations. That is how powerful men get away with being abusive for far too long. 

Feature image via WWLTV – YouTube





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