Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Learning to Love, 20/?

I'm first!

Okay, I'm up giving my house a much needed cleaning while everyone is asleep. I just happened to look and...voila!

Okay...Absolutely brilliant! Snake! Okay, the line gets drawn here. This is hardly a statement for the president to be making. He is definitely in on it! How would the president know all of this if Professor Paul had not told him this or Linda...or even Mayson because I'm still not convinced that she is not involved. Bastard! But we know that Lois and Clark are not going to take this lying down. Ahh, Lois held a trump card! Going through the chain of command of the campus police is how things kept covered up the last times but Lois was a step ahead of him and the president is not happy with that. He wants to know who Henderson is so that he can offer him a deal. I think the president is now playing a strategic game of poker because he realizes that his hand isn't as good as he thought, so he calls a bluff. Ahh, gravy! Lois was right! Paul was too good for it to have been his first time. Lois knows that she has the trump card! I knew there was a tape recorder! Clark is just so loving and supportive of Lois. He's definitely been her rock. I just wish that Lois would start to open up to him. This is a big step for Lois, to share something as personal as her assault. Slowly, she's starting to trust Clark. I think all the above are true. Clark is so in tuned to Lois that he can feel/sense her emotions. Just more proof for Lois of how strong Clark's love is for her.

Very nice, Carol! You're all that and a bag of chips and a glass of sweet tea with lemon-and a slice of blueberry pie. Did I say I love this story?

Absolutely fabulous!

~Sheila

LOL! Okay - I can't get it to let me edit my segment post, so...

This part wasn't due until tomorrow, but we have a bday party for a 3yo and company so... and Sunday's busy too, so part 21 will be Monday.

I *did* however, finish another part today and start another one after that .

Thanks.
Carol

May 17th is my daughter's birthday (Saturday) but we had her cake at school today! She's 8. So my weekend will be tied up catering to whatever "Christina wants" this weekend. LOL!

~Sheila

I'm supposed to be cleaning for said party right now... tis 130 though...

Actually I'm going to bed .
Carol

Brilliant as usual, Carol. And shocking! And, still more shocking, it's not as unheard-of as it absolutely ought to be!

The man you accuse is a man of honour!!! He is beyond reproach! He can't be guilty!

I'm sure you have all heard of Joseph Fritzl, the Austrian man who held his daughter captive in his cellar for twenty-four years and fathered seven children with her, three of whom have spent all their lives in that tiny underground prison. I haven't been posting anything about Jospeh Fritzl because he didn't kill his daughter, and the outright killing of women is always what gets me going the most. But what interests me about the Fritzl case is how the surrounding society treated him. The man was convicted of rape at a time when he had been married for several years and already had four children. That is no small thing, and it wasn't as if Fritzl was a frustrated unmarried young man who couldn't get sex any other way. And yet the Austrian society treated Jospeh Fritzl with an incredible amount of deference and respect. When his young daughter Elizabeth started running away, it was immediately assumed that she was a misbehaving and perhaps slutty teenager who needed to be brought back to her strict but loving parents for her own good. When the girl disappeared at eighteen, society accepted her father's words that his daughter had joined a sect. When some of Elizabeth's children started appearing at Joseph and Rosemarie Fritzl's doorstep, one by one, society accepted the father's words that his daughter was a bad mother who left her children with her parents because she couldn't take care of them herself. Again and again, the Austrian society believed and respected Joseph Fritzl, the convicted rapist. Even after the horrible truth had been revealed, an Austrian police chief described Joseph Fritzl as - if I remember it correctly - a polite and elegant man.

When this Snodgrass person immediately sticks up for Paul Smith and scoffs at Lois, he is doing what Austrian authorities did for Joseph Fritzl, although the magnitude of Paul Smith's crimes can't be compared with Joseph Fritzl's, of course. Interestingly, however, Joseph Fritzl was a convicted rapist, and there had been many allegations of rape against Paul Smith. Snodgrass is just like the Austrian authorities: even though he knows that women have complained about this man before, he supports the perpetrator, not the victim.

Where is the barf gremlin?

Disgusting! Disgusting! The campus police are in Snodgrass's pocket! And Lois is so right, it is none of Snodgrass's business what police officer she and Clark reported the crime to.

The secretary is terrified of talking about this, because it might presumably cost her her job! (By the way, and sorry to bring this up, but that reminds me of something else I read about Austria, probably in the late 1970s. Somebody had tried to find out how the former Austrian Nazis and the former Austrian resistance fighters were doing in then-present day Austria. According to the findings, the former Nazis generally thrived and were respected members of society, while the former resistance fighters were usually disliked, shunned and financially bad off. Yep, no wonder the poor secretary is afraid of becoming a "resistance fighter"!)

I'm so glad that Lois really had her own near-rape on tape, and I was moved by how Clark supported her and was there for her when she listened to it.

This surprised me:

This won't be easy? With that unbelievably damning evidence of the near-rape on tape, coupled with the taped evidence how Snodgrass supported Paul and dismissed Lois, it should be a piece of cake to get Paul convicted and Snodgrass fired. Shouldn't it?

This was absolutely incredibly beautiful. Wonderful! So that's why Clark has been so sure all the time that Lois is the woman for him!

Well, now I want to see Lois and Clark take down Professor Paul together!

Ann

Nope, not in much of the USA. In many states the tape is inadmissible. Oh it will protect the Planet from a lawsuit but it can't be used in a criminal prosecution.


Table of the various states. Hmm, New Troy seems to be missing.

One case

Actually, that depends on the state. In the series, Lois and Clark were able to use a tape to trap that sleazy lawyer in Church of Metropolis. I would think that in New Troy a tape recording might very well be admissible, especially if they have other evidence as well.

Nan

This Snodgrass guy is scum. Just as bad as Paul if he lets this kind of thing happen and then covers it up.

I'm so glad Lois and Clark found the tape, even if poor Lois did have to listen to it all over again. Whether or not the tape is admissible in court, at the very least it clears Lois' reputation. And hopefully, it will be enough to get those other poor scared girls to come forward.

Making things inadmissible in court is to prevent abuse of power by the authorities. Actions by a private party aren't usually covered I think. They can be charged with the crime of taping without permission of course.

Carol, this was wonderful!

As painful as it was for Lois to listen to the tape, it gave us the wonderful opportunity to see what Clark was thinking during that time.

Snodgrass is truly evil. I actually think he may be worse than Paul. While there is a possibility that Paul has some sort of mental illness, or something happened in his past to make him this way, it's hard to believe either of those could be true about Snodgrass. (As a note, I don't think either of those make Paul innocent, just possibly less evil than Snodgrass.) Snodgrass is just someone who doesn't want his reputation tarnished by having these rapes come out.

It reminds of a newspaper article when I was in college (and as much as I hate to date myself, I should say this was about 15 years ago, and I'm sure Brown is very different now). It was about Brown University and while maybe it was just because it was my first year in college, but from my perspective, the issue of acquaintance or date rape was becoming more and more well known as the primary cause of rape (rather than the random man coming out of the bushes stories).

At Brown, there was a women's bathroom where women kept a list of men on campus who had date raped them as a warning for other women. For reasons Brown refused to explain, that bathroom seemed to get cleaned more often than others and particular care was taken to remove "graffiti" which was generally ignored in other bathrooms. The list would reappear a few days later and the whole thing would start again.

This thing with Snodgrass just reminds me of that - I think it was well understood at the time that Brown wanted to keep it's reputation as a college with high academic standards in a nice area of the country and feared that this list made the college seem unsafe, when in fact, it's unlikely date rape happened any more frequently at Brown than anywhere else - what made Brown unsafe at the time was the knowledge that likely there were no repercussions for the perpetrators allowing them to date rape multiple women.

Nan is correct on the law here. It varies by state, and may vary depending on whether it's a criminal case or a civil lawsuit. Quite a few states will admit recordings made as long as ONE party to the conversation was aware it was being done.

[Pick up the U.S. Constitution sometime. Article I, Section 8, clauses 1 through 18 lays out the specific powers of Congress. Anything not on that list is automatically a matter of state law. It's that simple.]

BUT THIS IS FICTION! New Troy can have any set of laws that Carol wants it to have, for heaven's sake. And the tape should certainly do a lot to make the University Administration look stupid (and arrogant, and possibly criminal), and put a little tarnish onto Prof. Paul's "sterling" reputation.

Oh, right, feedback. Sorry for the tangent, there. I'm still loving the story. I love seeing Lois and Clark finally finding their way back to the "you and me against the world" sensibility that they had in the very beginning.

Now I'm very curious about who has been trashing Clark's reputation, and why. My money is on Mayson, motivation wounded pride. But we haven't really met Linda yet, so...

This is a great ride. I hope we're nowhere near the end!!

I came looking for Jenni's story, and stumbled across this first. I haven't read LNC fic in a long time, but something about this just caught me. It's a nice little AU, and I'm looking forward to the next update.

Again, great stuff, Carol. And of course:

WOOOHOOOO on the tape recorder.

And on the funny side note:
Aawwww And Carol, nfic isn't just for smut, it's also for violence
Somebody is going to ge-et it. Somebody is going to ge-et it.


Michael

I finally got caught up on all the posted parts, wow what a story!

I was glad to see Clark explain to Lois about his faith in them and how he knows that they are meant to be.

Really looking forward to the next past.

Still a powerful story. I found I couldn't read the sections from the tape recorder; it was too painful to go through a second time, so I only read Clark's responses to it.

I wasn't surprised at the secretary's reticence to become a whistle-blower. In many ways it isn't just Paul that is the problem here; her boss is knowingly covering up serial crime. However, he is a known entity. It must be frightening to consider what would happen if her workplace is brought down in scandel. Would she even have a job left when the smoke cleared?

Also, even assuming the tape is admissable in court, it still isn't easy. Many women have said that the court proceedings are like being raped all over again. The attorney for the defense is paid to ensure that his client appears innocent, no matter what the cost. So allegations might be made that the tape was doctored to make an innocent conversation appear guilty by a moneyhungry woman and her husband. It is also possible that the evidence is thrown out for other purposes. The smoking gun is always the most fought over piece of evidence in a courtroom. This won't be an easy piece to have admitted.


Elisabeth

ARGH!!!! I was all the way down to Laura and lost it all. Sheesh! Let's see if I can recreate it... [as DH pulls in with dinner... I would have been done!]

Thanks again!

Sheila - I'm glad I could help you procrastinate . I take any excuse I can get. I forget what else I said, except to ask if I could have a Pepsi and birthday cake instead.

Ann - Yes, you mentioned Joseph Fritzl a few segments ago when you compared what he did to Clark not telling Lois about himself for three months. While I'm still not sure the comparison is accurate here, it certainly is much closer. We'll see more from the secretary later. As mentioned in the posts later in the thread, law varies by state about audio evidence. However, as soon as my betas give me the go ahead, I think I've got it worked out. Even in the 80s, audio could be edited and so isn't necessarily a slam dunk.

Framework, Nan, DCarson - thank you for your input on the audio .

Rona - It should at least clear her reputation - you're right about that.

Anon - That's an interesting way to look at those two. That thing at Brown... sad that they kept covering it up. At least the women tried to keep it up.

Carolyn - thank you for your input as well. We will see more of Mayson and Linda in the next few chapters. The ends thing... well, I just finished 19-7 [because chapter 19 was supposed to cover all of this and so the file named chapter 20 picks up... a year from now? Something like that]. There's another... 6? chapters written after that and another one that says something like 'these three things need to happen' [which is strikingly similar to chapter 19 in that sense] and so may take a number of chapters to tell. I'm guessing in the 40 range, but not sure yet, but probably over 35.

Laura - *waves* LTNS!! Thank you! Glad to have you on board!

Michael - interesting . However, we're not actually talking violence here... just thought of it. I can't imagine Clark actually doing any of those things [unless maybe it's the Clark/Dark Clark in Imbroglio or something].

cp33 - Thank you!

Elisabeth - [I said this in response to someone else's post when I did this the first time, but I don't remember who so here it is ]. Originally, this was where Clark found out about the rumors about himself and Mayson and what Lois believed about it. Then the whole thing in Colorado just wrote itself. The secretary will come back soon and we'll find out more about what she thought etc.

Thanks again everyone! Look for the next part tomorrow! [Or maybe very late tonight... we'll see...]
Carol

Snodgrass is positively slimy. Loved L&C's discussion. Hey maybe Clark is right and Mayson contributed something to spread this misunderstanding across the campus, probably not though... She can't be so mean, can she?

Awaiting the next part...

If you could ever make this into a movie, I know how should play the part of Snodgrass. Armin Shimerman. His role in Buffy the Vampire slayer as Principal Snyder would make him perfect!


Yes, even with the tape, entrapment could be brought up, but the things Paul said were pretty incriminating..

James