<p>Interestingly, in the case that you talk about, cptofthehouse, she says she was raped and he… doesn’t deny it, according to your story. He says he got drunk and doesn’t remember how the young woman ended up in his bed. Maybe he grabbed her, pulled her into his room, raped her, threatened her, and then blacked out and forgot everything. Maybe they went into his room and did something sexual to which they both agreed, and then he blacked out and forgot everything. Maybe she sneaked into his room and nothing sexual happened. From his story, we don’t know; she said he raped her and he doesn’t remember what happened.</p>
<p>When two people know each other and both have been drinking, one should be very careful in automatically assuming a rape has occurred. My objection to all of this is that some of the posters seem to have a built-in bias against guys and immediately jump to a conclusion because of their feminist political views as opposed to using common sense. I would like to know if there are any posters here who have sons in college and who also believe the guy is always guilty of rape in situations where consent is disputed because of alcohol or always believe the woman’s recollection of the facts even if contradicted by the guy. It seems to me if a mentally unbalanced girl wants to exact revenge on a guy, she could easily make up a story, and many of the posters would believe her regardless of the guy’s protestations of innocence. </p>
<p>I remember the TV commentator, Nancy Grace, and others like her who immediately declared the Duke lacrosse players guilty because the alleged victim said she was raped. Even when the physical evidence strongly suggested she was lying, these woman were so wedded to their belief system they were unable to change their views to question the highly improbable story of the alleged victim based on the facts and circumstances as they became known. I always thought the most outrageous thing abut this case was not the accusation of rape against these guys, but how so many people, including the Duke faculty and some politicians, were inclined to believe anything this girl said despite the contradictory evidence. To me, that was not only unjust but also very scary.</p>
<p>It was. I am the parent of a S and I have talked to him about not putting himself in those situations (cross fingers). Also about HIS responsibility for birth control and not assuming that a woman who says she is on the pill is actually on it and is taking it consistently. Not to mention STDs. Not to mention discernment in who you spend time with.<br>
So to answer your question I do not believe the guy is always guilty but I do belie ve they have to be leery of the situations they put themselves in.</p>
<p>I don’t think guys are “always guilty” of rape in these circumstances. I also believe it isn’t reported as often as it occurs. Continuing to bring up the travesty in Durham, which had more to do with political aspirations and town/gown issues than with a college co-ed in a dorm room or fraternity house being sexually assualted, isn’t going to change that.</p>
<p>You keep bringing up Duke. The accuser in the Duke case wasn’t a college student.</p>
<p>ETA: I have no sons, only daughters. Like Ebee, I have pointed out to them that they ought to be leery of certain guys and certain situations. I have pointed out that casual sex isn’t all that great for girls, anyway, physically, since surveys have shown guys in a casual situation aren’t very concerned with their partner’s pleasure. If either were to say they were raped. I would believe them.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that there is no proof of any sex having happened even, medically speaking. It is every bit one person levying accusations with no evidence. There is no evidence he assaulted her, hit her hurt her—none. Just what she is saying. That’s not enough.</p>
<p>I don’t see why it matters if the person being accused or is the accuser is a college student or not.</p>
<p>Believing someone’s story personally, and for the story to hold up in court are two completely different things.</p>
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<p>Agreed.</p>
<p>A rape kit is essential. But, you know, to be honest, I find this conversation is a little strange. Girls are raped on campuses all the time. The things the parents of daughters have to tell them when they leave for school are truly sad. Don’t go to fraternity parties without a group of friends. Never put your drink down. Never accept a drink from someone else. If you put your drink down don’t ever pick it up. Don’t go to a guys room. blah, blah, blah. </p>
<p>Sad.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang, I agree with the distinctions you draw in post #120.</p>
<p>It’s just not clear to me that that is the standard being applied here. It seems to me that it is implied that if she is very drunk–not drunk enough to be unconscious–that she STILL is assumed to be too drunk to give consent and the guy is STILL assumed to be a rapist, even if he was as impaired as she was.</p>
<p>It is easy to say “let the jury decide.” What about the damage to his life in such a case?</p>
<p>There was a kid from a nearby town who had a HS girl visit him at college his freshman year. She stayed with him in his dorm room for several days. Apparently there was underage drinking going on. (Surprise, surprise. And NOT in a frat house.) Several weeks after she returned home, she suddenly accused him of raping her, presumably while drunk. According to the local scuttlebutt, this was a case of the parent finding out that she had had sex, and cornering her into making the accusation to escape parental ire. The parent then demanded that the accusation be made to the legal authorities. The boy was indicted on several counts of sexual assault and withdrew from college. His name and the accusation was broadcast on the local TV station and in the college newspaper. If you google his name, those articles still appear today. Nowhere can it be found that the case completely fell apart and the charges were dropped. Nowhere can the fact that the charges were dropped be found. Nowhere can the defense of his character mounted by people who knew him well–including his HS girlfriend, who flew back from the west coast to be a character witness–be found. </p>
<p>She remains anonymous.</p>
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<p>You’re confusing two things. First, is the accuser telling the truth? We have no way of knowing. No physical evidence exists, but often in actual cases of rape no physical evidence exists. Reprehensible women sometimes lie about rape. Then again, a lot of rapes happen, so mostly when a woman says she was raped, she was raped. In this situation, I’d tend to believe the accuser absent a reason to disbelieve her.</p>
<p>Second, if we were on a jury and heard these facts, should we convict the alleged rapist? I wouldn’t, not without something else to convince me beyond a reasonable doubt.</p>
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<p>Not implied by me, though. If she is very drunk, and chooses to have sex in her befuddled state, that’s not rape.</p>
<p>But it seems to me that a lot of people here are focussing on the small number of men who are unjustly accused of rape, while ignoring the very very very much larger number of women who are actually raped.</p>
<p>Probably no one who is reading these words is a man unjustly accused of rape. Probably quite a few women who are reading this have been raped. Rape happens a lot! For every guy whose life is ruined by an unjust accusation of rape, there are probably at least twenty women whose life is ruined by an actual rape.</p>
<p>I worked for two years at a domestic violence and rape crisis clinic. One of my jobs was to train “companions” who went to the hospitals and police stations with clinics. I also got the law changed in my county so rape kits were on hand in hospitals (and did not have to go through a chain of command from the police) and that rape victims could report rapes in their own precincts and did not have to report in the precinct where the rape occurred as the law read. This was important because most rape victims want to get HOME as soon as possible.</p>
<p>I can say, without equivocation, that for many of the young woman I personally worked with the legal system traumatized the woman more than the original act. I find that the saddest thing about the situation.</p>
<p>Only one in ten rapes is reported, and of those reported only one in ten gets a conviction, for all the problems above. </p>
<p>With serial rapists there is definitely a social obligation to report; for date rape I found myself telling the young women to think carefully about whether or not they wanted to go through the demands of a trial. I broke with agency policy to do so. Women are lied to; they are told they can back out if they wish. This is not true, of course. If the DA’s office decides to bring a charge a rape victim can not opt out of the proceedings. For some women, exposing intimate details of their life is more unrecoverable from than the original act.</p>
<p>I have a son and a daughter. I adore them both, so I <em>do</em> see protecting men from false accusations as an issue, but not that strong an issue. Sure, some demented, sociopathic woman may use a rape charge for revenge, but statistically this is much less common than rape.</p>
<p>One of the things I found important was that looking at gender attitudes and attitudes toward sex in society in general helps reduced rape, as does a culture of zero tolerance. By this I mean that traveling from Bejing to Tokyo one discovers that the Chinese don’t tolerate rape (the man’s friends and family come to the jail to condemn him) whereas the situation in Tokyo is very similar to here – wink wink, nod nod. Judges blaming women’s clothing. The whole crazy mess.</p>
<p>I also think women can’t expect men to take care of them. We would not get drunk and cross the street; so should we not get drunk and party. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold young men accountable; it just means that women have more control of our destinies than we sometimes experience.</p>
<p>Ironically, I think if we accepted female sexuality more we would see less date rape. As long as we see sex as something men want from women, “getting sex” from an unwilling partner will be part of the equation. I was shocked that my daughter and her friends see girls with multiple partners as sluts and don’t initiate sex. Is that what I fought for in the sixties/seventies? No. We didn’t see sex as slutty. We proudly wore t-shirts that said: women say yes to guys who say no.</p>
<p>Masters and Johnson have established beyond the shadow of doubt that women experience more sexual pleasure than men. Hey, let’s crow about it. The male sex drive is more urgent (more sexual recombination serves nature, although some feminists would argue it is all social role, I would not), so perhaps more insistent. I think all this could be worked out in a much less fraught way if we told all the truth there is to be told about sex.</p>
<p>My son had the experience of a drunk girl getting in his bed frosh year. She entered his room without knocking and just climbed in. He suggested she go back to her room. She asked if she could use the bathroom (just down the hall), and he, of course, said yes. However, on her way out she grabbed two of his Latin books. Just outside the door, she laid them on the carpet and peed right next to them. He found them in the morning.</p>
<p>On a light note, I refused to buy more books until he at least looked at them, which he didn’t want to do. They were fine. He spent the next Saturday night with her so she wouldn’t drink because she didn’t remember what happened, and he felt if she was already having blackouts time for an intervention.</p>
<p>Other mothers told me I was crazy because I hadn’t trained him to call security. He could have been accused, arrested, goodness knows what else.</p>
<p>My daughter routine came home from frat parties alone from Columbia to Barnard. She said there were hundreds of people on Broadway at 2 in the morning. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t lean too heavily on the issue either.</p>
<p>I know some people consider me an irresponsible parent. I felt as much damage could be done with precautions and worries to their views and experiences of the world as could be done by possible problems.</p>
<p>I’ve been lucky that nothing happened to either one of them, and they are both through college, my son to graduate in a week.</p>
<p>I didn’t put V-chips on the computer either, or stress the dangers of talking to people on line. I discussed all these things, casually, and left them to be sensible. I hope they were.</p>
<p>I am very proud of my son’s compassion for the girl and love of his Latin books. I felt pleased when my D asked for wristlet so she didn’t have to put her purse down at a frat party – her idea.</p>
<p>They are exposed to the world and all its manifold dangers.</p>
<p>I can say, without equivocation, that for many of the young woman I personally worked with the legal system traumatized the woman more than the original act. I find that the saddest thing about the situation.</p>
<p>I was raped twice as a young woman- I didn’t report either case as reading articles about how the victims were treated in court & by the police discouraged me.</p>
<p>For both the men & women involved I would say- not getting so out of control that you don’t know what you are doing seems to be the obvious solution. ( not that, that was my situation- I was flatout overpowered)</p>
<p>I also can see the situation of a young woman getting into bed with a young man who " is passed out/asleep" & possibly calling rape later, although I expect that is rare.
( Did happen to my boyfriend when I was living with him though, when I was elsewhere- I came home to find someone else on my side of the bed! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>While I hope that we take victims stories more seriously than we did in the 1970s, I still have the general feeling that society still views the victims to be at fault in someway, & so I think that while some stories of false accusations make alot of headlines, many women still don’t report rape.</p>
<p>emerald: I am so sorry for those experiences. And as I said, the statistic on reported rapes is one in ten. On a bizarrely pop culture note, I do think Law and Order, Special Victims Unit, is having a subtle effect on the perception of sex crimes in society. It has been the most highly rated of the Law and Order franchise. This may be from the sensational nature of the crimes (I hope not), the charisma of the stars (not an issue here) or its true social agenda, giving voice to the victims.</p>
<p>In the case of the young man, he certainly behaved shamefully to the young woman as to what he admits he said to her and still says about her. That, I feel was instrumental in the rape accusation which may or may not have been true. In his case, the rape kit and immediate police involvement is what cleared him. Ironically, had there been signs of consensual sex, he might have ended up in trouble. In his case there was no evidence of any sex what so ever. In his case, the roommate entered the room and awakened the two of them. Young man very nastily told the girl to leave, and said a bunch of other hurtful things as well. She left angrily and in tears at what he said, and within the half hour the police were dispatched and the room and young man were searched as well as the woman examined with the rape kit. Though he was taken into custody by the police, he was released with no charges as there was insufficient evidence. The parents immediately hired an attorney, and I don’t know what the lawyer did. </p>
<p>The entire situation was a nightmare for the young man and family, and I believe the same for the young woman involved. Who knows what really happened? Both were drinking–he was legal in that regard, she was not. She also came up with other substances in the drug screen–he did not. </p>
<p>Mythmom, I have no idea what the right thing to do would have been with the young woman and your son. The way things turned out, calling security was not needed. Had she jumped out the window after going down the hall, or later gotten an epiphany that he raped her when he told her what she did, that he did not call security would have been an issue. Ironically, the charge the university levied against the young man I’ve discussed is that he did not report the intrusion in his room as he claimed he did not invite the woman in there. There is some clause in the dorm contract that requires this. I agree with you that your D should not be walking alone at night, and that she is setting herself up for a problem. </p>
<p>Though women may experience more pleasure from sex, it is also well documented that they suffer more pyschological and emotionally damage from casual sexual encounters. More females will take leaves of absence from college due to relationships gone wrong. Also, society still looks differently at females who have had a lot of casual sex wtih a lot of partners than it does upon males in the same situation. Personally, I think both have some issues that live that way, and it is not an area where the females should catch up with males. Just like with cigarette smoking and drinking and other pitfalls that men used to suffer more, women can end up with the disadvantages and the ugly side of being sexually promiscuous. There is also the problem for females, that the average male is much stronger physically, and that males have a much higher chance being physically violent. A promiscuous male out looking for partners has less dangers because of that than a woman who doing the same. Getting any kind of justice in date rape may be difficult, but if you are picking up stangers, getting a handle on them can be impossible. </p>
<p>The positive thing about the increase of date rape being reported and discussed despite the fact that a legal justice cannot be achieved in too many cases, is that it has become a dangerous issue for males too. They need to be more careful now because it is possible to have to go through a very nasty experience even if not charged with anything. I can assure you that this particular family that I have discussed is truly traumatized by what happened and does not want their son back at that school. He has the burden of causing this trauma along with any ignonomy that the levied accusations have brought. No winners here, as I am sure the girl is hurt too.</p>
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<br>
<p>In March 2006 Crystal Gail Mangum, an African American student at
North Carolina Central University[1][2] who …</p>
<p>– Wikipedia</p>
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<p>So there was an arrest record that may or may not have been erased.</p>
<p>Sounds like the police listened to his story and decided to wait on
the evidence before filing charges - good for them in using their
discretion. But his name could still end up in the local police
blotter which, if on the internet, is forever.</p>
<p>ANY time you are arrested, there is likely some record somewhere, Yes, it will be something that can surface someday, and depending on context a problem. No winners here.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse: I think I may have been misunderstood. Although I was uncomfortable with what my D was doing, there were so many kids walking from Columbia to Barnard at night, in fact, she WAS perfectly safe.</p>
<p>I am glad I didn’t jump in there with dangerous scenarios.</p>
<p>I think my feelings are different from yours a bit, though that’s nothing new for me – I’m usually an outlier. </p>
<p>I am saying that we are creating a culture of mistrust, fear, and misunderstanding around adolescents and sex.</p>
<p>And getting law enforcement involved makes things worse in many cases.</p>
<p>If a crime is committed, than yes, but all means call the police. In retrospect, it seems obvious that he should have informed his JA (junior advisor – unpaid RA sort of, just for students, not administration snitch.) That way he could have protected himself without giving the young woman a record, which she would have the minute the incident was reported. Not a criminal record, obviously, but underaged drinking is obviously an infraction of college rules.</p>
<p>He trusted his friendly relationship with her, not always a good thing as some of these stories show.</p>
<p>Still, I prefer to tune down the volume of fear and accusation.</p>
<p>In cases of rape clearly that policy makes no sense.</p>
<p>And when I spoke of life’s manifold dangers I meant lurking bacteria, cars, cancer cells, terrorist attacks. The whole nine yards. </p>
<p>My D went to college in 2005. Many friends felt NYC was too vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and that I shouldn’t have let her go to school there. I thought this a really ridiculous position.</p>
<p>So, I do understand your postings and am in sympathy with the situation(s) you present, but I have slightly different perspective.</p>
<p>I would be uncomfortable too, and mine are males. No one is perfectly safe anywhere and that you were uncomfortable is a sign that it may not have been so perfect. I am very familiar with the Harlem area as I have a kid who lives some blocks from there. You do have to be aware and the incidences of confrontational incidences are higher there than around other campuses that are not in the city. NYC does have its dangers. To avoid it in fear, in my opinion, is unreasonable too, but when walking around the city, taking the subways, being out at night, one should be very aware of where you are and the risks thereof. My son’s friend has had a number of scary approaches in the Columbia area where and she is a lifetime Manhattanite. She is taking courses at the Manhattan School of Music. It is a different scene than the upper west and east side neighborhoods, she will be quick to tell you, but these are risks that she is willing to take.</p>
<p>I don’t think you are such an outlier about that. Columbia was the most selective school this year in admissions after Harvard. That it is in the Harlem area certainly is not hurting it in terms of where folks are willing to pay for their kids to go.</p>
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<p>In the Duke Lacrosse case, there was no prosecution for a false report to the police and the false accuser later went on to commit murder.</p>
<p>In the Hofstra case, the punishment was very light (no jail time).</p>
<p>I have only seen moderate punishment to false accusers when the false accuser was found to do it multiple times (don’t remember the exact case but the woman caused a lot of trouble for a few men). KC Johnson, History Professor at Brooklyn, has a piece on the power of false accusations at his Durham in Wonderland blog. In that particular case, it was a 12-year-old student with a false accusation against a teacher. He was cleared but his reputation has been damaged and his work relation with his school district has been limited. The media generally doesn’t identify the accuser but usually identifies the accused. How do you repair the reputation of the falsely accused? Once it’s in the hands of the police, everything is public. Prosecutors usually just ask for a slap on the wrist for those that have made false reports.</p>
<p>There are, undoubtedly, some false rape accusations. Of course, there are tons of unreported rapes, simply because the process for a true rape victim can be incredibly brutal. Many choose not to report.</p>
<p>I think in the case of the press reporting the names of the accused? This is a matter of media irresponsibility. You can’t say that every rape report which ends with no conviction is a “false” accusation. To prove rape, in the absence of physical evidence and witnesses, can be difficult. I believe in innocent until proven guilty, but for every time there is a non conviction, there is not a false accusation. (though there are false accusations, to be sure.)</p>
<p>There are also many cases where a woman comes forward and then other women come forward who were assaulted. </p>
<p>So, probably the best solution would be to only report the names of the convicted. But, yeah, that’s a problem with the way the media operates. So, good luck with that.</p>