Alabamians ought to be used to it by now.

So many laws designed to protect the powerful, at the expense of the powerless.

There are tax laws, of course, that disproportionally take from the poor with a wink and nod to the wealthy. Alabama courts have habitually preyed on and profited from the weak, stringing them along on traffic fines and misdemeanors and tossing them in jail when they can't pay. It all goes back to the big boogeyman, a state constitution predicated on the belief that those with power earned it, and those without need to be sheared like the sheep they are.

Maybe it all seems big, and amorphous, just a bunch of policies and structures too big and cold to get your head around.

Until you look at rape.

The most personal of crimes. The most elemental, intimate display of power and control.

Again Alabama protects the powerful. And shames the powerless.

A story appeared on Buzzfeed last week, a powerful piece about a University of Alabama student who told police she was raped by T.J. Bunn Jr., a wealthy and important Tuscaloosa man. She was dismissed and treated badly by Tuscaloosa police, held to a different standard than the man, and she wound up killing herself.

It was tragic. I can't speak to all the facts of the story. It was clearly reported for a long period of time, and made a compelling case that cops in Tuscaloosa are tougher on victims of rape and sexual assault than they are on attackers.

A captain from the multi-agency task force in Tuscaloosa told reporter Katie J.M. Baker, according to the story, that 27 students at UA reported sexual assaults last year. Only two arrests were made. Which is absurd.

But priorities are a discussion for another day. This one is about the law.

The victim, Megan Rondini, told police she resisted, that she tried to leave, that she turned away when the man kissed her and continued to say she wanted to go home. It wasn't enough. Police said there was nothing they could do because she did not resist more violently.

"Look at it from my side," an officer told Megan. "You never kicked him or hit him or tried to resist him."

Protect and serve what?

Protect and serve who?

The problem is Alabama law - and cops who want to use it as a shield to protect powerful men. It is a ready excuse to tell victims there's nothing they can do.

Alabama is one of the few states where victims still have to prove they "earnestly resisted the sexual act" in order to charge an attacker with first-degree rape. The law does provide some wiggle room. Courts have held a victim doesn't have to resort to physical violence to "earnestly resist," but the language is vague, and gives cops and DAs cover if they don't want to make a case.

Too often they don't understand that victims of rape and sexual assault freeze during the incident, that flight and fight are not the only two instincts, said Meg McGlamery, executive director of Crisis Center Birmingham.

"We tell them (victims) to do what feels safest to them," McGlamery said. "Megan felt she had to comply."

You can't tell a rape victim how to respond to that kind of shock. It is a gross misunderstanding, an assault on the assaulted. It is just another way to blame the victim and ignore the offense of the offense.

No means no. And "I want to go home" means no. Turning away means no.

Just like when the cops said no to Megan, when they turned away.

Rape advocates in Alabama plan to introduce a bill next year to remove the "earnest resistance" from Alabama law.

Keep an eye on the powerful. To see who earnestly resists.