As a former sex crimes prosecutor, I'm the last person you might expect to come to the defense of the unsavory WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. But the charges that now have him sitting in a British prison reek of opportunism and political expediency, and that does women around the world no good.
That doesn't mean that I think the two women who've accused him of committing sexual offenses last August are lying. One woman said she had consensual sex with Assange, but that the condom broke and he used his body weight to hold her down, presumably to complete the act. She hosted a party for him the next evening. A few days later, Assange had sex with another woman—allegedly while she was asleep—also without wearing a condom. Both women reportedly acknowledged that they freely chose to engage in sex acts with Assange—but that some of his conduct was nonconsensual.
As a general rule, assuming the allegations are true, Assange should be punished because he violated the women's fundamental right to personal autonomy and bodily integrity by acting without their "knowing, intelligent and voluntary" consent.
But just because, in theory, the charges are worth pursuing, doesn't mean we should ignore the context within which the prosecution decision was made.
Put another way, if Assange were any other guy, he would not be sitting in a British jail and there would have been no international manhunt, no matter how many times his condom broke during sex.
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