Jennifer Levin and the History of Blaming The Victim

Jennifer Levin and the History of Victim Blaming

Jennifer Levin, a beautiful, fresh-faced young woman whose life was cut short on the morning of August 26, 1986 by a evil man Robert Chambers.

AMC and Sundance televised a documentary regarding how media, the courts, and the general public destroyed Jennifer Levins' reputation through slut-shaming, ethnic stereotypes, and misogyny.
That documentary restored her reputation and humanity, thanks to the Levin family and her friends who knew her best.

RIP, Ms. Jennifer Levin.  You will always be missed.

Last month, AMC featured a five-part series on the "Preppy Murder" which, before the controversial 1989 Central Park Jogger case, galvanized NYC, especially the Upper East Side community.  Sensational and tabloid junk was cover on Jennifer Levin and the thug who murdered her.  I'll not going to give that guy any attention other than the fact that he's a drug/alcohol abuser and a criminal.  Let's not glamorize him anymore.  He, along with Brock Turner, William Kennedy Smith, 45, and other privileged white/non black men who got away with crime or were leniently sentenced.  He was placed upon the pedestal by the junk food media more than enough while trashing Jennifer Levin's reputation.  It was worse when the suspect's family hired a defense attorney named Litman.  Litman had a reputation of blaming the victim by trashing their reputation and destroying their dignity.

A very stylish Jennifer Levin, from the still photos of AMC's "Preppy Murder

This series sought to restore Jennifer Levin's dignity and to show what NYC was like in the 80s.  The late Ronald Reagan was president.  Extravagance and conspicuous consumption were the norm during that time.  It is that time when the gap between the rich and the rest have widened. NYCs' Upper East Side was the place to be for the young and wealthy offspring of Wall Street Executives, Corporate titans, etc. 

In the morning hours of August 26, 1986, Chambers, then 19, and Levin walked out of Dorrian’s Red Hand, a very popular preppy hangout on the Upper East Side. At 6-foot-5 and 220 pounds, he was nearly twice her weight, and almost a foot taller.

A few hours later, around sunrise, her body was discovered by a cyclist. It was riddled with cuts, bruises and bite marks.  Chambers remained on the scene, but left as police urged the crowd to thin out. He was tracked down quickly thereafter, once authorities interviewed patrons at Dorrian’s. He was charged with second-degree murder.

Within days after Jennifer Levin's death, Robert's attorney, Jack T. Litman, would lay the groundwork for a “blame the victim” defense that was a hallmark of his technique—insisting that, in this instance, Levin had been the aggressor. Chambers, on video, said the young woman’s death was an accident, and that he was defending himself because she injured him during their rough liaison.  He blamed Jennifer for her death.  How disgusting could one be in doing so.  She was a petite woman.  He was robbing and murdering her.

If Levin’s death had, indeed, been an act of self-defense, then it would have been an aberration—the annals of American crime don’t include a lengthy list of sexual assault against men perpetrated by women. And statistics aside, few were inclined to believe Robert Chambers’ story.

Back in the mid-80s, we struggled with such concepts as acquaintance rape and routine assaults. We knew little about violence against women within our own social circles, other than the occasional notion that certain crimes might somehow be the woman’s fault. Especially when the man and woman are of the same background, the public were more inclined to blamed the victim for the assault.  A form of slut-shaming greeted the news that a young woman in a short skirt who stayed out too late in an Upper East Side Manhattan bar and left with a charming monster wound up half-naked and dead under a tree in the city’s most public place called The Central Park.

Blue Light Buzz and I have discussed how Women of Color suffer rape and sexual harassment at the hands of men throughout the centuries.  Earlier this year, I wrote a very important blog post on how Black female victims of serial murders are disregarded by American society. Police, courts, and society in general tend to be dismissive of claims brought by Women of Color.  Poor, working, lower middle class and immigrant White women don't fare well either.  Media tend to take claims of rape and sexual harassment made by upper middle and upper class White Christian women seriously.  Jennifer Levin was Jewish, her accuser is Irish Catholic. 

Litman and the junk food media created the ethnic/religious polarization by enlisting powerful Catholic clergy to his client's cause and by painting Jennifer as being that aggressive, "pushy" Other.  His parents, his mother in particular, have very anti Semitic views and that played in how her family and friends reaction to the murder of Miss Jennifer Levin.  That's disgusting and very anti- Semitic.  It almost divided NYC along class, religious, and ethnic lines.  Much like the O.J. Simpson trial back in the early 1990s divided people along racial lines nationwide.

Thanks to the anti rape movement, the Me Too movement, not to leave out Anita Hill, whose ordeal with sexual harassment has ignited a tidal wave of women to run for political office around the country from the early 1990s to this day.  Women around the nation shared stories of how powerful men sexually harassed and abused them in work settings, social events, on the street, and in public places.