Holtzclaw: Revisited

            On February 9^th, 2016 an article came out on KFor.com regarding the Daniel Holtzclaw sexual assault case. As a background, 13 women testified against former Oklahoma City police officer, Daniel Holtzclaw, for cases of sexual assault, battery, and rape. In addition to these 13 public accusers were many other women who spoke to Detective Rocky Gregory who is currently dealing with the case. Recently the 14^th accuser, Shaneice Barksdale, came out saying that she made up her story because she “felt bad” for the first woman to come out, Jannie Ligons.

            I encountered this article because my group had been researching the case for our News Analysis project. While trying to find some extra information on sentencing for the paper portion of the assignment, this article came up and immediately caught my attention. One thing that made this particularly interesting to me was the irony of it all. Holtzclaw had been selecting his victims based on who would be “believable” if they made allegations against him. Thus, he chose women who were prostitutes, felons, and adolescents because these women’s words would not likely be stronger than his if they spoke out against him. Barksdale, unfortunately, perpetuated the ideals behind Holtzclaw’s strategy right -- it perpetuated the idea that women of these classifications cannot be trusted.

 As stated in the article, Barksdale’s false account does take time away from the more important aspects of the investigation, but it also trivializes the case and perpetuates the rape myth that women cry rape for revenge. In saying that Barksdale made up the story because she “felt bad”, it implies that she cried rape in attempt to get Holtzclaw in trouble for what he allegedly did to Ligons. The problem with this, is that it creates suspicion against the other victims who testified against Holtzclaw – if one girl made it all up, who’s to say that the others didn’t do that same thing?

            Fortunately in this case, Holtzclaw had already been sentenced to 263 years in prison by the 13 women who testified against him, and had not been charged for any of the claims made by Barksdale. These charges would have included sexual battery and second degree rape. Since her accounts were not used in court, Holtzclaw will still be imprisoned for the real cases of sexual assault. So, although I find it extremely unfortunate that Barksdale has diminished some of the credibility for women making claims of rape in the future, I think it is good that Holtzclaw’s charges remain and he will still suffer the consequences for his actions.

The article can be found here.

The image can be found here.