He was selling date rape drugs in three liter quantities. OMG. That’s a lot of raping.
In reading that story I came across another story of a Georgia student who was drugged and raped by her pizza parlor boss after going out for after work drinks. The thing that stands out for me in these, aside from the grossness, is that both guys are older (50s-60s) and easier to blame. In the Georgia case the young woman willing went out (I’m assuming it was not a date) and woke up in her dorm room remembering nothing. It seems easier to blame and convict an older “creeper” than a clean scrubbed college kid with a bright future in front of them. I think it’s easier for people to say that even though she went for drinks she wasn’t culpable in any way and didn’t want or invite this.
In most states drugging someone is criminal.
Did anyone aside from @dstark watch VICE last night? It was very well done.
@CaliCash, this is what made an impression on me…
That first woman at Columbia who talked at a demonstration about getting sexually assaulted the first week of school. Her emotion… If she is lying…she is a better actress than Meryl Streep.
The young woman who was raped in her dorm room…if she is lying…she is a better actress than Meryl Streep.
The woman who said she was prepared if she was attacked. She was going to scream and yell and fight off an attacker. What happened when she was sexually assaulted? She didn’t move. She was frozen. She just cried.
That’s a normal human response.
There were also a lot of men supporting women at the demonstrations. I like that.
@CaliCash, what stood out to you?
Deleted, wrong thread.
@dstark The hearing stood out to me. Particularly when the victim was recounting the events and was saying that she said “no” more times than she ever had in her life. And then that man had the audacity to respond by basically asking her “well, if you didn’t want it, why didn’t you have any bruises?”
"The hearing stood out to me. Particularly when the victim was recounting the events and was saying that she said “no” more times than she ever had in her life. And then that man had the audacity to respond by basically asking her “well, if you didn’t want it, why didn’t you have any bruises?”
As I’ve said so many times before, that’s a proof problem. Not a process problem. As Columbia’s mattress girl tells us the system doesn’t work “because it is so much based on proof that a lot of rape survivors don’t have.”
Lack of proof is an inherent and basically incurable problem with adjudicating rape. Unless you have a suggestion for how to create the kind of proof that usually does not exist, you can’t reduce the incidence of rape by reforming adjudication processes. Even watering down the standard to the 50.1% preponderance still doesn’t work in a classic 50/50 he said/she said.
Better to focus on other things that actually can help.
It’s a proof problem, but not just a proof problem. If she says he raped her and he says he doesn’t, and there is no other evidence, then we can’t convict him, not on any standard. It’s when lack of bruises is used to counteract other actual evidence of rape that we have an education problem. So, for example, if people heard screaming, and she called 911 the instant the incident was over, then “Why don’t you have any bruises?” should not be evidence that she was not raped. But it is.
Anyway, “Why don’t you have any bruises?” should pretty much never be asked of a rape accuser, unless her story included events that should have caused bruising.
“If she says he raped her and he says he doesn’t, and there is no other evidence, then we can’t convict him, not on any standard.”
This is exactly the problem. Which is why focusing on courts and tribunals is doomed to failure. Even if you somehow manage to staff courts and tribunals exclusively with all-knowing, unbiased people (which is also a doomed to failure exercise).
In addition, while recounting her story, she said something along the lines of “I had never said ‘no’ so many time in my life”. Response by interviewer: “So let me clarify, this is something you didn’t want?”
Can we think critically about this for a moment?
If 1 in 5 women are really being raped in college why on earth are parents letting their daughters stay in dorms and go to parties? If I actually believed this statistic I would either move near my daughter’s college and force her to commute or force her to commute to a college near our house.
Why are young girls not petrified of college? If I was a college girl and I believed this statistic I would be a commuter, or lock myself in my dorm and never go out unless I knew for sure it was safe. Instead girls are going to parties where rapists supposedly are prowling around looking for the next victim.
Why is this happening? Because parents trust their daughters and daughters are smart enough to not be raped.
The 1 in 5 number comes from questionable studies. The DOJ study is not perfect either, but isn’t it CRAZY how different the numbers are? I don’t know how often girls are raped on college campuses but I know it’s not 1 in 5. That would mean we are sending our daughters to rape factories and that a HUGE number of college men are rapists as well. I have enough life experience to know how it works.
I definitely think rape happens, I think when it does happen it is evil. I just think that critical thinking is required when we think about it. But I don’t think we really know how often it happens.
When we do our critical thinking, can we also read the thread? Your entire argument has been discussed already at great length in this thread. The first and most obvious comment is that you are assuming that parents (1) always know when their daughters are sexually assaulted and (2) tell other parents. If sexual assault is kept a secret, then parents wouldn’t know that they were sending their daughters to such risky places.
Data10’s message #301 is a good one to check out. Use your critical thinking facilities to explain why the DOJ/BJS numbers are two orders of magnitude lower than all the seven or eight other studies.
Fang – we know you think the DOJ numbers are way low.
But do you think the Syracuse numbers are perhaps way high?
Syracuse study says for the freshman academic year 5.2% forcibly raped; 7.1% incapacitated raped; 15.3% raped or attempted rape.
For comparison sake, studies of the Congo say that 12% of women were raped at least once in their lifetime and 3% raped in the previous one-year period.
So IGL’s question is a good one. None of us parents would send our daughters to the Congo. But we are OK sending them off to college for freshman year? Which (if the stats are to be believed) is riskier than the Congo?
And Syracuse today is riskier than the Congo even though other stats says that sexual assault in the U.S. has declined by 50% over the past 20 years.
Even if you don’t want to rely on the DOJ numbers, there’s plenty of reason to think that the Syracuse study is very unreliable data too.
@IvyGreekLife So your response to campus rape culture is to tell young women to stop going away to college rather than just telling young men to stop raping them?
From an institutional standpoint, any sexual assault that occurs on campus is costly: in terms of trauma to the victim, damage to the college’s reputation, potential for lawsuits, and the use of university resources (faculty, etc.) to administer the disciplinary process.
IMO colleges should undertake a strategic and sustained effort to reduce the number of sexual assaults (and regretted sex/SUI’s) on campus. This effort should begin during orientation and last throughout freshman year. Research should be undertaken in order to assess the efficacy of such measures. And best practices should be publicized and lauded.
apologies if this has already been posted
Alh, thanks for the links. Bearpanther wrote about this program; however alh, your posts add detail.
from one of the links…
@northwesty, You wrote that even if convictions doubled, this wouldn’t make a dent on decreasing sexual assaults.
I wrote to you about a multiplier effect. Because most sexual assaults are committed by repeat offenders, when a person is convicted we aren’t just punishing a person who committed crimes, we are decreasing future sexual assaults.
Just think about it.
@alh, I like this new program of reporting. We are going to need a critical mass of users and schools to be effective. This starts with one person…with one school at a time. 