I’m trying to understand why you so cavalierly throw out the Syracuse numbers, the Princeton numbers, the Erie County numbers, the National Institute of Justice study numbers and the SUNY Geneseo numbers. They’re all reporting numbers in the same ballpark. The Syracuse numbers are not the highest.
Seems like you think that the college women in these studies are lying or misremembering in great numbers. Why do you think this? I’ve provided detailed explanations for why I think we should mistrust the BJS/DOJ numbers, not least because the BJS itself acknowledges they are undercounts. What is your explanation for all the other studies being wrong?
And how wrong do you assert they are? Say they are inflated by 100%, and “only” 2.6% of freshman women are raped every year at Syracuse. That would be shockingly high. In order for the numbers not to be atrocious, they’d have to be high by, say, a factor of ten: “only” .5% of freshman women were raped. Why would I believe the Syracuse, Princeton, Erie County, National Institute of Justice and SUNY Geneseo numbers were all off by a factor of ten in the same direction?
“So here’s my question: Given that there are so many legitimate incidents to choose from, why have so many high-profile cases ultimately fallen apart?”
Balko carefully picks questionable cases and claims they are representative. He reaches back nine years for the Duke lacrosse case, but somehow forgets about the Vanderbilt rapists and the Stanford guy.
And I wouldn’t say that citing a case that went to trial and resulted in an acquittal is a great example of a totally unfounded case. Police and prosecutors don’t send cases to trial without a strong belief that the guy is guilty. Winston was acquitted, as he should have been if the evidence didn’t support guilt, but I don’t find that reason to conclude with certainty that he didn’t do what he was charged with doing, or worse.
The author, Radley Balko, asks why “so many” high profile cases fall apart? He then points to 4 cases where, in his words, at least some questions have been raised.
Throughout the piece, however, he keeps circling back to the acknowledgement that sexual assault is a serious issue on campuses (there are likely thousands of occurrences each year, he writes). I’m not really sure what the point of his opinion piece is, or what (if anything) it really adds to the discourse.
Cardinal Fang, I agree that he left out some cases that didn’t prove his point, like Vanderbilt. But for whatever reason, when I google “vanderbilt rape” I get 509000 hits and when I google “emma sulkowicz” I get a MILLION more hits (1, 509,000).
For whatever reason her case got more coverage, more articles written, more mentions on the internet. Is it because with Vanderbilt there was no doubt as to what happened, and so it was less interesting to the media? Is it because the Vanderbilt victim didn’t give a ton of interviews or go to the State of the Union or drag a mattress around?
I think most here would agree that the Vanderbilt case was pretty cut and dried–it was absolutely horrible what those 4 men did to her and they have been punished for it.
I think most here would also agree that Emma’s case is less cut and dried—we can’t know for sure what happened but doubts have been raised about her story and many (on the internet) flat out call her a liar.
Yet she is the one put forth by senators and rape victim advocates as an example of how horrible the system is, and how it doesn’t work. Maybe the Vanderbilt case didn’t get as much attention because the system worked?
@bearpanther, have you seen the Hunting Ground? I would like all information to be 100 percent accurate.
I would have used a different case.
However, what Winston admitted to doing is rape in the state of Massachusettes. Winston is hardly a poster boy for those who think sexual assault is over hyped as an issue.
I haven’t seen the whole documentary so I have to reserve judgment on how important the Winston case is to the story. I thought the story focused on two other women.
Having said this, how many people heard of this guy Winston? His case is a high profile case? His name wasn’t in the documentary.
Of course, focusing on a few cases is a diversion. Not going to work. The train is moving.
Just a word of caution, @bearpanther: I work in a field where Google searching is often used as a first filter for what’s going on right now in the wild by some of my colleagues, and it’s a known thing that ghits (yes, we’ve come up with an actual term for Google hits, no matter how silly it is) is an utterly unreliable measure—depending on the actual terms themselves and the ways they’re referenced, they can be off by more than an order of magnitude in relation to their actual use.
(Not to mention that, because of the way Google deals in individual tracking, the number of ghits different individuals get for the same term at the same time may differ, ghits the same individual gets for the same term at different times of day may differ, and so on.)
Personally I think it’s because the advocates have pushed the point that women don’t lie and all victims should be believed and they have used that as support for Title IX investigations…so when it’s proven that indeed some women do lie (and they do, not all the time and not never with as fuzzy of statistics as the rape statistics), it’s more newsworthy than a cut and dried case with evidence. Comparing he said/she said cases with cut and dried with evidence cases is weak argument. This is really the heart of why most don’t think colleges should be adjudicating rape cases without police involvement. It allows for remediation short of expulsion for colleges if the criminal systems cannot prove that the accused committed the crime and enables real rapists and assaulters to be punished as it should be through the existing criminal system with expulsion.
At least according to the article, the Hunting Ground misrepresented the encounter and he was never charged with rape. Nor was he charged with drugging anyone’s drink, although that was the accusation made in the Hunting Ground. He was acquitted of most charges and re-instated at the law school. Not a good case for the film.
According to the article, Winston used cocaine (which I believe is a felony), drank too much and admitted raping a girl…fortunately not the girl who made the accusation…so Winston eventually got lucky.
You drink too much and you play with illegal drugs, and you admiit to raping somebody, you are rolling the dice…
Guys…you are playing with fire…
You are not surveying equivalent incidents. The Congo numbers you are referring to are generally physically forced rape by soldiers among women of a wide range (or all) ages, and often both genders. For example, one survey found an average of 4.5 attackers per incident. The numbers generally do not include the typical US college type incidents involving sexual assault by partner/acquaintances. If you start looking at sexual assault by acquaintances, the rates shoot up. For example, one survey found in the Equateur province of the Congo, 42% of women answered yes to the question, “Has your current or past partner ever physically forced you to perform sexual acts against your will”. This high a total is without even considering incapacitated sexual assault, which is often the most commonly reported incident in US surveys. In another survey, 75 percent of married Congolese women said it was acceptable for their husbands to beat them. I’d expect this attitude would lead to underreporting, particularly if the surveyors are strangers from out of the country verbally asking such questions and do not ask the women in a private/safe environment, so it’s likely the actually numbers for acquaintance assault are even higher than what is being reported or what would be reported in the more anonymous/private type questionnaires, like the US studies that found the highest rates.
Yes and agree. Most of these are not “good cases”…I’m not sure why they end up “elevated” to the court of public opinion because certainly someone is going to actually investigate the investigation, you just can’t put this stuff out there without scrutiny. It’s harmful to actual victims of rape. The advocates hate Yoffee…just hate her.
Where does it say he raped anyone? Willingham had the cocaine. He was not tried for (or accused of legally or in THG) of illegal drug use. What is confusing me is that W seems to be accusing him of doing something to the other girl. Did that girl not complain?
A case like Vandy, while awful, does not have media legs as some of those other stories.
There was clear proof the guys did it (which is rare). So the school system and the court system work. Not much more to say.
What people fight/discuss about are the ambiguous cases. Like FSU’s Jameis Winston. Many see that as an example of how the system is so unfair and stacked against women. I see it more as an example of how no system can do much in the absence of reasonable proof (which is usually the case).
No cause benefits from having any of its high profile cases or advocates go completely up in flames. It would be hard to find two worse messengers than UVA Jackie and mattress (now sex tape) girl. Not only do they self-immolate, but they also take down everyone who expresses support for them.
