Legislators continue to call for censure over rape comment
Some Dutchess County legislators still are steaming over Republican Legislator Joseph Incoronato’s comment at a committee meeting in June 2016 suggesting that rape victims who have had alcohol or drugs may have “self-inflicted” the attack.
Legislature Minority Leader Micki Strawinski, D-Red Hook, wasn’t letting go of it during the Legislature’s monthly meeting Tuesday night.
“As minority leader and as a woman who knows more than a few people who have been victims of sexual assault, I’m very, very concerned about the hypocrisy of not censuring Legislator Incoronato, of Wappingers Falls, for his ignorant and disparaging remarks related to alcohol being responsible for behavior that leads to rape,” Strawinski said.
During a June 9, 2016, legislative committee meeting with a coordinator for the county’s Sexual Assault Response Team, Incoronato said that “alcohol or drug intoxication” was “a prime mover of rape,” that drugs and alcohol can lower an individual’s moral standards and that in those instances, the victims themselves “may be a contributing factor, a self-inflicted wound.”
Strawinski on Tuesday noted that Legislator Joel Tyner, D-Rhinebeck, was censured earlier this year for remarks construed as insulting to one person, a Dutchess County official speaking to an open caucus of Democratic legislators. Incoronato’s remarks, she said, insulted every victim of sexual assault.
Legislator Angela Flesland, R-town of Poughkeepsie, concurred with Strawinski and said there still is an opportunity for the Legislature to make a “strong statement.”
“We need to show that this is a problem, that it is never the fault of the victim and that, when someone says, and if someone, God forbid, says that they were sexually assaulted, that we would start by believing, not saying ‘What were you wearing? What were you doing?’... because that is never the reason,” Flesland said.
Incoronato, who was at Tuesday’s meeting, did not respond.