Mbarek Lafrem: Dance with Me or Else!

A cautionary note: This article contains material which may be offensive in nature. Those who choose to read it may understand the spirit in which it is written. To the others, I would say "Please don't shoot the messenger."

AC writer Julia Bodeeb yesterday reported a story about a Pennsylvania construction worker who is charged with violent assault and attempted rape of a Connecticut woman in a New York City nightclub. The previous link points to the full story and the subsequent arrest of Mbarek Lafrem of Norwood, Pennsylvania, a far suburb of Philadelphia. The gist of the story is that Lafrem was rebuffed by the victim when he attempted to cut in on the woman on the dance floor. Angry, Lafrem is accused of following her to the bottom floor bathroom of the three-story nightclub, brutally attacking her in a stall, and then exiting the club when he becomes a star of film-clip history.

Complain about the intrusion of privacy all you want; the placement of video cameras in public venues led to Lafrem's arrest just the day after the assault. Mbarek Lafrem starred in not just one, but two video clips. One clip has him exiting the nightclub, the "Social," at the edge of a touristy section of Manhattan, shaking a hand which appears to have been injured in the attack. Another clip shows Lafrem in a nearby bodega getting a beer. It was those clips which identified Lafrem and prompted the construction workers to call the police who made the arrest after questioning him. Lafrem is reported to have made incriminating statements to police, along the lines of having been drunk and angry at the woman for rejecting him.

One of the people who read Ms. Bodeeb's first article on this vicious attack commented that "violence against women should be classified as a hate crime." Although I'm not in favor of statutes which "specialize" crimes against particular groups, especially to the exclusion of identical crimes involving other groups, I agree with the commenter in both sentiment and principle.

Misogyny had to be a primary motivator for Lafrem to stalk the woman, to fracture her skull, break her nose and crush her eye socket in an unsuccessful rape attempt, merely for being uninterested in him. Mbarek Lafrem was not a cave man attacking another cave man. Being a coward and a weakling, he wouldn't have the nerve.

I wonder what gives a man license to even contemplate such an attack. Where does this misogyny come from? Is it culture? Some cultures do emphasize male superiority as evidenced most obviously in those countries which practice female circumcision and other female repressive measures. Is it upbringing? Upbringing can be viewed as an aspect of culture but sometimes it adds an extra ingredient of instability. Does it stem from a sense of inferiority? As in "You think you're better than me, well, I'll show you, *itch!"

The story of Mbarek Lafrem's attack was covered widely by most of the newspapers in the country-tabloid and otherwise. The story got picked up across the country, in such papers as the Los Angeles Times. A "Google" search on Lafrem's name turns up hundreds of citations, raising the attack to nearly iconic proportions.

I was disturbed and provoked enough by the articles to read comments, not only in the New York Times, but in such tabloids as the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Some remarks leave you thinking that, by comparison, the Age of Chivalry wasn't so bad, patronizing though it may be.

On the New York Daily News website, a commentator who calls himself "danny panther" terms Lafrem an "idiot" but then goes on to say "why did he not wait until she's drunk and all boozed up ,it could have been done willingly under the influence with good sense , why he had to RAPE which is almost never heard off nowadays bcos (sic) its so cool that 2 adults do it willingly..."

It must be difficult for women to hear of such progressive enlightenment. To put things in perspective, however; I should point out that most presumably male commentators on the site beat the drum for swift and merciless justice, vigilante or otherwise.

Unfortunately, condemnation does not equal prevention or leadership. If it did, New York's Governor David Paterson would not be under pressure to resign after participating in the suppression of his top protégé's rampant domestic violence activity. Paterson's dodge and duck prompted sharp criticism by the New York chapter of NOW, an organization which previously touted him as a champion of women's rights. Clearly, too little is being done to protect the victims of misogyny and too much to protect the perpetrators of it.

I should perhaps cynically say "Thanks, Julia, for the memories." While I was reasonably aware of the oppression and abuse of women's rights and freedoms, Ms. Bodeeb's article provoked me to read around to see what other AC writers had to say on the subject. The statistics are appalling. A typical example is a 2006 article titled "Violence Against Women is Still a Global Crisis" by Tanisha Renee. There are plenty of others, too. The enormity of the problem is what strikes me, as well as the inadequacy of the response to it.

Just as disturbing is a case in New York's Brownsville section of Brooklyn, also reported in the New York Daily News on March 12. That story is of the type that occurs unnoticed and ignored in urban ghettoes where life is cheap, violence is studiously ignored, and the merely desperate become victims of the pathologically depraved.

A Brooklyn guy, accused of murdering his girlfriend, tells the police he killed girlfriend Deborah Blount when he caught her in bed with two men. The accused murderer, John Brandon, told police he also killed the two men, chopped up their bodies, and dumped them in New Jersey. Police say the part of his story about the two men is a lie.

Reading the comments which follow upon that story leaves a person with no illusions about the virulence of the woman-hating culture which shows little sign of abating, even in our "enlightened" age. Many comments reflect a "blame the victim" mentality and a callous indifference to violence against women:

A desperate-for-thrills "Swiss86" remarks: "lol wow sorry to laugh while i was reading this one..she has some nerves doing that in the bed she shares with her bf..wow dude went mafia on them!!"

Not to be outdone, "Common Sense" chimes in with another bit of brilliance: "Well that's what you get for hanging out with a sleazy wh0re. I don't (know) about the two guys, but se (sic) got what she deserved, sk@nk!"

Don't you just love the part about "I don't know about the two guys, etc...?" It just goes to show you that even people who aspire to sub-human life are capable of sex differentiation. And isn't it touching that "Common Sense" is disinclined to pass judgment on the "two guys?" I don't know; I've got many questions, but no answers. It seems to me, however, that the first step in improving the world is to take a good hard look at the one we live in.