All of these men were Catholic Christian. But that fact is never mentioned.
Only when a person is a muslim, is his religion ever mentioned.
Big Dan's tavern - rape case in New Bedford, Massachusetts
National Review
Big Dan's Tavern
FOUR DEFENDANTS have now been sentenced to terms of nine to 12 years for a rape that occurred on a pool table in Big Dan's tavern, now closed, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The trial, which was televised, appears to have been procedurally fair, and no reason has emerged to doubt the jury's verdict of guilty. The jury in fact acquitted two other defendants on grounds of reasonable doubt. The sentences themselves do not seem harsh: For the crime of aggravated rape, the convicted men could have received life in prison, or, as Portuguese aliens, they could have been deported.
Nevertheless, thousands of people have demonstrated locally in support of . . . the convicted rapists. These large demonstrations reflect a moral and cultural conflict that has been surfacing in New Bedford and Fall River and on Boston call-in radio talk shows. In the local Portuguese neighborhoods, which are highly "traditional," it is the woman victim who is widely regarded as guilty. She should have "been at home," it is said. Her very presence in Big Dan's at that time of night to buy cigarettes and a drink, or several drinks, was enough provocation. Local women have been much more severe on the victim than local men: "She should have been hanged." The woman who was raped stepped outside the protective boundaries of locally acceptable behavior.
However imprudent it may have been for her to have been in Big Dan's under those circumstances, however, she had every legal right to be there. Just because you are flashing a large bankroll around Manhattan does not justify your being mugged and robbed. The jury did include members of the local ethnic community, and they did their civic duty, chilling though that obviously has been to local notions of proper female behavior.
No doubt there is some pathos in this clash between local norms and the wider legal and civic culture. But it is difficult not to conclude that the public lionization of the convicted rapists--the two acquitted defendants, who were present in Big Dan's, have been leading the marches--represents a serious corruption of whatever "traditional" values prevail in the New Bedford Portuguese community.
