A Philadelphia woman has filed a law suit against Disney after claiming to have been groped by Donald Duck at Disney World in Florida.
April Magolon claims a Disney employee dressed in a Donald Duck costume grabbed her breast and made lewd sexual comments after she approached the character for an autograph at Epcot Centre.
Many are saying the claim is bogus and suggest Mrs. Magolon is simply trying to make some quick cash off Disney. While this certainly could be true, as it was in the case when Tigger was accused of molesting a 13-year old girl – the alleged victim could be telling the truth and we should be listening. Why are we so quick to deny that sexual assault can happen? How are we ever going to get the silent victims of sexual assault to speak up if we are immediately rejecting claims like this one?
What is also concerning are a number of comments made regarding the gender of Donald. As the character is relatively short, many are suggesting a woman is behind that blue hat and beak, including William Saletan, national correspondent at slate.com.
“Some people who’ve worked at Disneyworld say to be Donald you’ve gotta be really short, you’ve gotta be a woman, basically. So it’s highly unlikely that the woman playing Donald was groping this woman at Disneyworld, and I hope Donald is exonerated.”
It’s comments like these that contribute to the alarming number of people who are afraid to talk about their female abusers. According to the Canadian Children’s Right’s Council, 86% of the victims of female sexual predators aren’t believed. Is this because sexual abuse committed by women is rare?
Not at all! In fact, a study suggests that women are responsible for 13% of female and 24% of male sexual assaults. If you consider Canada has a population of approximately 34 million people, and as the 1984 Bagley study suggests, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are sexually assaulted in their lifetime, that means 1.23 million Canadians are sexually assaulted by women – doesn’t seem so unlikely anymore!
Many of us remember the infamous Karla Homolka case which received world-wide media attention after Homulka was convicted of raping and murdering two teenage girls as well as her own sister. Unfortunately there are many more cases where women have been the sexual abuser. This past January a 40 year old female teacher working in Ontario sexually assaulted her former student. Crystal Hendricks of British Columbia stalked, raped and murdered a teenage girl, recording it all on videotape, and in 2004 a babysitter was sentenced for sexually assaulting a 12 year old boy under her care.
Our society has a fixed idea that women are non-violent nurturers, who are incapable of sexual assault. Men who are sexually abused by women are often ridiculed by their peers or told they should feel lucky for such an encounter, and women are just as unlikely to be believed.
Going back to the Disney case, if these accusations are true, does it matter who committed the crime? Sexual assault is sexual assault regardless of whether Donald Duck is a short man or even a woman.
