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Crime Prevention At Osgood Hall Law School

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Throngs of activists, the bulk of them female, will parade down the streets of Downtown Los Angeles next week. Scantly clad women will conceal their faces with cardboard cut outs inscribed with words like “slut” or “whore”. The signs that they hold up in protest will read “still not asking for it.” It’s called SlutWalk. Almost five years ago, two events ignited this transnational movement. The first one occurred on January 24th in 2011 when Toronto police officer named Michael Sanguitti and his colleagues were speaking about campus crime prevention at Osgood Hall Law School. While addressing the issue of sexual assault on campus, Michael Sanguitti gave the students some not-so-sage advice, saying, “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” Not even a month later, on February 18th, 2011, Justice Robert Dewar convicted a city council employee named Kenneth Rhodes of sexual assault. The prosecution pushed for a prison sentence, but Rhodes cited several reasons for believing his victim consented. These included that she was wearing a tube top, wearing “a lot” of makeup, willingly kissed him, and made it clear she wanted to “party.” In contrast to this “consent,” he admitted she resisted his advances several times and he raped her on the side of the road, and by his own account he said, “It will only hurt for a little while.” His punishment was two years of House arrest, after Justice Dewar described him as a “clumsy Don Juan,” whom had bee mislead

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