Public and professional constructions of mental retardation: Glen Ridge and the missing narrative of disability...

In 1989, a group of teenage, male, student athletes in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, was accused of luring a young woman labeled retarded into a basement recreation room in one of their homes and sexually assaulting her. As is customary for sex abuse cases, the name of the victim never appeared in newspaper or television reports. However, her intellectual competence was scrutinized and contested throughout the legal and public discourse of the case. Relying on New York Times news accounts as well as a book length journalistic account and other related documents, we examine implications of being spoken about, of others speaking for the labeled person, and of a labeled person speaking for him or herself, and consider the possibility of an alternative narrative.