Vice President Joseph R. Biden joined in the ongoing White House reach-out to rape victims and executive push to put a halt to acts of sexual violence on college campus — by invoking a graphic scene of the “Deliverance” movie.
The scene he seemed to refer to in the fictional 1972 film, based on a 1970 book, was the male-on-male rape of one of the characters, who was captured in the woods by his attackers.
Mr. Biden, during a Tuesday speech at the White House to draw public attention to the high numbers of rapes that take place at colleges around the nation, said first: “We are never going to solve this epidemic until we get men involved,” CNN reported.
He pressed for men to become part of the solution, not the problem.
“If a man raised his hand to a woman [in my neighborhood where I grew up], you had the job to kick the crap out of him,” Mr. Biden said, CNN reported.
Mr. Biden also said rape victims were frequently pressured or shamed into silence — and that’s when he brought up the film “Deliverance,” CNN said.
He said: “I know what scene you remembered, right? How many of you would walk out of the woods and report ’I’ve been raped?’ “
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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