When a San Diego woman was raped by three men while drunk, the details were understandably “fuzzy.”
After reporting the rape to police immediately, she began hunting for her attackers herself, armed with just one name: Jonas Dick.
Disturbingly, her search led her to an online pick-up artist’s forum where women are referred to by numbers, not names, and where she eventually read about her own rape.
Her findings were critical in bringing the three men to justice. The final man in the case has just been sentenced to eight years, mirroring that of his two “instructors.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Jason Berlin, 28, was learning from Jonas Dick, 28, and Alexander Markham Smith, 27, who were teachers at Efficient Pickup, a ‘boot camp” teaching men how to sleep with as many women as possible, according to its website.
The website has since been shut down.
Berlin’s lawyers argued that as he has recently been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder, he was unable to detect that the act wasn’t consensual.
“He was taught the wrong thing,” defence attorney Vikas Bajaj said. “It’s as simple as that.”
But Judge Jeffrey Fraser ruled against a lesser jail term for Berlin, noting that he had bragged about the rape, and other conquests, online.
“The defendant degraded that woman,” Fraser said. “He made her into a simple sex object… this was the ultimate violation of this woman’s body, mind and spirit.”
The victim read excerpts from the online forums describing her rape in court, saying, “It’s indescribable to explain what it’s like to read about your own rape in journal format.”
Rape by intoxication is notoriously difficult to prove, “but for them bragging and blogging about it online, we probably wouldn’t be here today,” NBC San Diego quotes Deputy District Attorney Lisa Fox as saying.
The victim and her friend were leaving a bar in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter when they were approached by Smith and Dick, who invited them to a nearby apartment where Berlin was waiting.
According to court documents, the victim was separated from her friend and raped by all three men while she was passed out.
