Chicken Wing

Part of the contract when Pat Robertson sold the original Family Channel. Apparently it's ironclad, they can't get rid of it.

It's almost kind of silly how this whole case, this whole misunderstanding could have been cleared up in five minutes if the girls had just had one conversation, if Kate had told the truth from the start about where exactly she saw Jeanette. The bike thing would have come out immediately. But since Kate couldn't say where she saw Jeanette without revealing the truth about where she herself was, I guess the only way this was ever going to happen was if her own story had gotten busted and she had no choice but to admit being in the living room.

It was June 21, 1994. I too wonder who called the cops to Martin's house, because I agree it seems unlikely it was Jeanette. On the one hand, if she wanted to do the right thing, calling an anonymous tip would avoid her having to admit that she found out by breaking into the man's house. On the other hand, her scared reaction in the first episode when she learned that Kate had been found alive didn't seem like that of a person who had initiated that rescue. I'm glad we got some explanations for things, though. Jeanette's reaction, for one. Now it makes sense why she seemed scared. She did know Kate was there, after all. She didn't see her, but she's terrified that maybe Kate found out that she had been there. Also, the single gunshot vs the media saying Martin was killed in a shootout. Since when does a shootout involving police have just one shot? I'm glad they addressed that and said the media just assumed that's what happened because he'd been shot and police were there. (Although realistically, I think that initial media report would have been cleared up by the police pretty straight away, but whatever, tv.)

Also, I'm not quite sure how the show expects me to feel about Jeanette getting back with the boy who punched her in the face.

Well played, show. Well played. Jeanette was right. She didn't see her that night ... but she did find out she was there. And she looked damn gleeful about it. She is a nutcase, isn't she? Love it.

Boom.

His tombstone said he was born in 1963 so he was 30 at the time, just turned 31 when he was killed.

Quick Wikipedia search -- he did four months for statutory rape. The actual legality of their relationship was never really in question. Everyone knew that it was illegal for this adult man to have sex with the teenage girl, and he rightfully did time for it. But Amy Fisher still got saddled with the "slutty other woman" label even though she was a victim of a predator. At any rate, I bring up the Amy Fisher situation just because this happened around the same time as the events of this story (early 1990s), and so I'm trying to remember what the prevailing attitudes about women and rape and consent were for that time. Buttafuoco was held accountable by the law, but Fisher was by and large not exactly treated as the preyed-upon victim of a sexual predator. At most, people sympathized with her as a troubled young girl who got involved in the wrong kind of relationship and made bad decisions -- the key being, she made her own decisions, had her own agency in the situation when the reality is that, because he was far from being her equal, she didn't. But people didn't really think about it that way and that may have been just how the attitudes were around consent for the time (and even now). Even though 16 and 17 are still below the age of consent in many states, some people kind of view that age as "old enough" to know better and know what they're doing, and therefore they still hold them responsible for their decisions even though they know that, technically, the law says they aren't. No one ever questions the culpability of a predator who takes advantage of an 11- or 12-year-old. That is a straight-up child. But a 16- or 17-year-old? The law says this is still a minor who can't give consent to an adult, but people view them differently. People think these minors are old enough to know what they're doing and it's only wrong because the law simply says it is. They don't view them as victims as easily as they do the 12-year-old. And (bringing the conversation back on topic) from what some have seen on other boards, it looks like people see 16-year-old Kate in this show in that same light -- a minor who is an old enough minor to know what she's doing and be in charge of her own decisions and therefore is a victim only of her own bad judgment.

But what was the attitude/understanding of consent between parties of unequal status? Was it understood that a relationship between a 30-year-old and an underage teenager was rape even if the teenager believed it to be a consensual romance, or did people still subscribe to the idea that rape was only when someone physically forced themselves on you while you kicked and screamed? Someone brought up Amy Fisher earlier in this thread or one of the other episode threads. That happened maybe the year before this story first takes place. Amy Fisher was underage, 17 I think, when she got into a relationship with grown-ass Joey Buttafuoco. People rarely talk about that as a rape situation, as a situation in which Buttafuoco took advantage of a minor who was not legally able to consent to a physical relationship with him. Fisher was branded as some kind of teenage hussy for screwing an older, married man. She kind of still carries that label with some people, I'm sure. And Buttafuoco went down in infamy much more for his role in manipulating Fisher into carrying out a plan to shoot his wife -- not that this part didn't deserve the bulk of the attention -- than about the fact that he manipulated an underage girl into sleeping with him. It was rape. But even by this time, this type of "relationship" still wasn't really considered that way in the public consciousness, even though the letter of the law said it was. People still only thought of rape as sex or a sexual act being forced on you even when you said no.

Well then someone needs to teach that girl about maximizing her luggage space. Why on earth would you pack a party dress and dress shoes to run away from home? (I say this as if there's supposed to be a logical reason instead of the wardrobe and props people just reusing whatever was already on the set.) It still begs to wonder if he bought her other clothes, though. Never leaving the house or not, it's unlikely she packed enough clothes to cycle through for a period of four months, although I guess it's not implausible to wear the same four or five outfits on repeat for months on end. And then there's the matter of toiletries. It's a pretty small town and for some reason everyone knows each other. It would have stood out if this supposedly single man was repeatedly buying feminine hygiene products.

Yes, for a criminal case you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the person had to have done the thing they are accused of. If defamation were a criminal case for some reason it would probably never even make it to trial -- there's no "there" there to either girl's arguments from a purely legal and evidentiary standpoint. It's pretty much a literal she said/she said. But this is a civil case, and here you only need to have a preponderance of evidence that the person simply more likely than not did the thing. Jeanette only needs to bring evidence that it is more likely than not that Kate is lying about her and the false accusation did harm to her reputation/livelihood/whatever. If Jeanette comes out with good proof of all the other things Kate lied about, it helps tip the scale for the jury that it's more likely than not that she is also lying about this. In a perfect world, the easiest way to prove that someone is lying when they said that you were present somewhere would be to prove that you in fact were not there. Obviously Jeanette can't use that, because she was there. She went there multiple times, including the night that Kate claims she saw her. Hard to prove that Kate is lying that she saw her if she was in fact there. With that off the table, Jeanette's only recourse to prove that Kate is lying is to simply prove that Kate is a liar.

Okay, so I rewatched the scene where Jeanette flees the house and Kate watches her leave. These kinds of shows, you really need to watch each episode at least twice to catch all the hints. I totally missed it the first time, but I think I found a major clue that might be It. I will put this in spoilers. The first part of what I'm about to say is just recapping what I more clearly saw after watching the scene again. The latter part is the light bulb that went off as to what is possibly The Answer -- pure speculation, but I will hide it in spoiler tags anyway.

Another thing that we still don't know that may or may not come up in the end and may or may not be important: I don't think we know how Martin ultimately got caught, how the police wound up descending on his house and rescuing Kate.

It was good that these scenes were interspersed with Kate’s therapist providing Cliffs Notes explanations for everything Kate was revealing/we were seeing — breaking down how this moment was Martin grooming her, this feeling was actually manipulated, this decision she thinks was her own was actually forced. I’m sure the younger audience gets the point of the overall story, but some of these scenes taken independently might not resonate with the appropriate understanding for more impressionable viewers who might miss some of the nuances of the predatory behavior. I hope the therapist explaining it all helps make things crystal clear.

I suppose. I mean, the argument isn't (or at least shouldn't be) necessarily about Kate not being a victim. The chatroom logs proving that Kate went to Martin's house willingly ... Kate living in the house and wandering around unguarded even while Martin was out... These all contradict Kate's statements to the police. If she is lying about what exactly happened to her, why should people assume she isn't also lying about Jeanette seeing her? I guess that's the case, but it runs the serious risk of discrediting Kate's entire experience as someone who was in fact held captive and victimized by Martin Harris. Kate lied about how she ended up at the house (do we know what she told the police/her parents about how she wound up there?) and how long she was actually held in the basement, but she did end up held in the basement. Martin did end up locking her in there and wouldn't let her leave. (And that's not even to talk about how none of her above-basement experience at the house was really consensual either.) If Jeanette isn't careful, this could end up with Kate being accused of literally making the whole thing up altogether, and timeline of events aside, she wasn't. Jeanette's case needs to be more "Kate lied about things, believe me when I say she's lying about me" and less "Kate wasn't really a victim, she lived there willingly and could have left anytime but didn't." But putting forth the truth about the things Kate lied about runs the risk of creating that second narrative whether they mean to or not.