Seattle Is Waking Up

A reader compares rape in India to Seattle

A shorter version of this essay originally appeared as a post on X.

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This morning, a user named SoldierBoyTweet saw that my profile on X says I live in Seattle, and underneath one of my recent posts on sexual violence in India, SoldierBoyTweet shared an image of a headline from a 2016 article, “Seattle girls’ rape claims neglected for years,” along with a question, “Mr David, any words?”

SoldierBoyTweet then shared more images of headlines, including an October 2023 report, “Seattle man awaiting sentencing in child rape case arrested for girlfriend’s murder,” and two reports from 2018, “Seattle University’s Systemic Support of Sexual Abuse,” and “In Seattle, A Rapist's Housing Status Overshadows Horrific Crime.”

So to answer the question, yes SoldierBoyTweet, I have words.

If your purpose is to note that rape also exists in Seattle, that isn’t very insightful, SoldierBoyTweet. But the headlines you share also point to a failure of leadership to address the issue. There’s the rape claim that was neglected for years. Or the man who raped a child and then murdered his girlfriend when he should’ve been in jail. There’s the university’s support for sexual abuse. And finally, you have a story about a 24-year-old homeless man who followed a woman into a bathroom at a car dealership, ripped her out of the stall and raped her, and people were apparently more focused on whether it’s okay say he was homeless than the issue of rape in Seattle.

Now that is insightful. Rape in Seattle does not even begin to approach the level of rape in India, nevertheless rape is a problem in Seattle, and for the same reason it is in India. Namely, a depraved leadership that condones rape and sexual abuse as well as a culture, progressivism in this case, that pretends to care about women but does not.

As in India, women in Seattle cannot even go to police at this point. This is because, as Axios reported in 2022, stretched-thin cops are failing to take reports from rape victims. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue is the fourth-wealthiest metropolitan area in the United State by GDP per capita, so how can it possibly be the case that its police departments lack the resources needed to even file a rape report?