City Hall Wears Denim, Raises Awareness

West Hollywood was awash with denim Wednesday. Many employees wore blue jeans to work in honor of Denim Day, an annual observance to heighten awareness about sexual violence.

Mayor John Duran reminded the audience during a special presentation that sexual violence is not limited by gender, age or sexual orientation. “It can happen to anyone,” Duran said. “Both victim and perpetrator can be of any gender or any sexual orientation.”

Denim Day grew out of a 1992 Italian case where a man raped an 18-year-old girl. The judge dismissed the case, because the girl was wearing tight blue jeans at the time of the rape.

Duran, who was wearing tight jeans and a tight fitting knit shirt, pointed out that just because a person is dressed “in a very sexual way—tight jeans or a tight shirt, it doesn’t mean that it is OK to make unwanted sexual advances.”

Councilwoman Abbe Land, also wearing very tight jeans, noted the importance of reporting rape to authorities. “When we don’t hear about rape, we think it’s not happening,” Land said. “The reality is, it happens all the time. As horrendous as it is, people have to come in and report it so that we continue to take action.”

Denim Day in Los Angeles was started in 1999 by Peace Over Violence, a 40-year-old non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of sexual violence and prevention. According to their statistics, every 2.5 minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted, 17.7 million women in the US have been victims of attempted rape and 2 million children around the world are forced into prostitution each year.

Leona Smith, director of counseling services at Peace Over Violence, reminded the audience that sexual violence is always unacceptable. She said a bill before the California Assembly (AB 322, introduced by 44th District Assemblymember Anthony Portantino) would require law enforcement agencies to test rape kits within 30 days and eliminate their rape kit backlog by 2014.

Smith also said both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Santa Monica Police Department have recently finished DNA testing of their entire rape kit backlog.

Duran noted that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department does not have a rape kit backlog either, something that brought a smile and a nod from Captain Kelley Fraser, head of the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. Fraser was in the audience wearing blue jeans.

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