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Artist News Legal
Domestic violence charity condemns Oberst’s lawsuit against rape accuser
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 25 February 2014
Domestic violence charity Right To Speak Out has condemned Conor Oberst’s defamation lawsuit against a woman who accused him of raping her. The organisation says that such a lawsuit will only add to the under reporting of violence against women.
As previously reported, Oberst launched the $1 million legal action last week, a spokesperson saying that his accuser had a “history of inventing stories and personalities online in order to gain attention”. They added that the former Bright Eyes frontman would donate any money awarded to him in court to “benefiting the victims of violence against women”.
But in a statement yesterday, Right To Speak Out said: “As an organisation dedicated to mitigating the harm that lawsuits like Oberst’s … amplify, we find this more than ironic. It is offensive to imply that filing such a lawsuit is a respectable way to procure money regardless of what he declares he intends to do with it”.
The charity estimates that in the US only 21% of rapes are reported to police, while only 7% of those reported then result in a conviction, which already discourages women from reporting violence against them. It added that even if the accusations against Oberst were false, “vilifying discussion of sexual assault by filing such a lawsuit only adds to the problem of under-reporting that enables sexual assault to proliferate at alarming rates”.
