Having had a daughter who was mugged and robbed on a city street corner at 3pm, I understand and can comprehend the residuals of that. She suffered a broken nose and a concussion as a result physically, not to mention the significant emotional stress, anxiety, and loss of opportunity to dance in the performance she spent the semester working on. But she recovered, both physically and emotionally. Wasting no time getting her into a session with her trusted psychologist professor headed off extended PTSD.
But are you fearful that your son may become a rape victim? Parents of daughters are. The residuals of being the target of that crime is much more devastating and long-reaching. Just read Emily Poe’s statement. Do you fear your son may experience anything like that when you warn him to be aware while riding his bike?
Honestly, it is the vulnerability of being raped and the emotional consequences thereof that drives the drumbeat of these warnings to our girls. Of course, we don’t want them to be victims of robbery or bike accidents or motor vehicle/bike collisions or any other crime. But it is the possibility of rape that is foremost in my mind when giving these warnings.
The judge knew the survivor wanted a harsher sentence than the probation report stated.
There are so many lies.
The judge, the bs probation report…this case is disturbing.
Maybe Brock will get a longer sentence for underage drinking and a false id. A different case is pending. It wouldn’t take much. (I looked it up. Brock can get 6 months in county jail for carrying that fake id if he received the maximum sentence).
“But do young men routinely get cautioned to not go to campus parties alone, to not travel alone on foot, and to never leave your buddy at a party, e.g.?”
I don’t have kids, but if one is at greater risk, I think I’d tell them they’re at greater risk. If you have a black son and a white son, they are not at equal risk of police aggression. If you have a gay son and a straight son, they are not at equal risk of hate crimes. We’re not living in a fair world yet.
That said, both men and women, gay and straight, tend to underestimate the risk of men and boys being raped. It happens a lot.
“The residuals of being the target of that crime is much more devastating and long-reaching.”
I question the way we state this kind of thing as a general truth. Survivors have a huge range of experiences. The kind of crippling emotional fallout that Turner’s victim is experiencing is not universal – and no one knows how she will feel in a year or five years. Surviving assault is similar to a combat tour or losing a loved one; it always causes pain, but some people have long-term psychological injury and some don’t. We shouldn’t be telling survivors that they are doomed to a lifetime of suffering or that they’re doing it wrong if they have a more stoic reaction. There’s no right way to grieve.
I agree with Hanna that the reactions of rape survivors are quite varied. Some do have long-lasting PTSD (i.e., more than two years, despite therapy) and others don’t. We shouldn’t be telling survivors that they are doomed to a lifetime of suffering–though in several cases of which I am aware, the after-effects lasted 60+ years. But we also should not be telling those who have PTSD that there is something intrinsically wrong with them, or that they are simply weak, and should be “more stoic.” They may have had a more traumatic experience. They may have been put in fear for their lives by the actions of the rapist. They may simply have different neurological genetics.
What I would like to see is more research on how to help rape survivors rise above their experience, and heal.
Greenwitch: “Here are ALL the documents concerning the Stanford rapist. The prosecution’s recommendation for sentencing is 28 pages long! It’s very thorough and it reminded my that Brock ran once before when caught in the act - he ran from the police who ordered him to halt when they saw him with alcohol.”
YES - thank you
That really colored my thinking back when I first read it. Already he had had a wake-up call. It made no impression. And he has a history of running in an effort to avoid the consequences of his actions. And these are incidents we know about.
There are a whole lot of documents to read, but it is extremely helpful to me to read them and compare to media reports. imho.
JHS wrote some posts on another thread about not defining a rape survivor’s experience for her. I hope I’m not mischaracterizing what he wrote and meant.
ETA: I had to edit to add “rape” to my post. Even though I’m making an effort to use the word, it is extremely difficult for me to do so. Forcing myself to write rape, over and over, has been an interesting exercise.
"But are you fearful that your son may become a rape victim? Parents of daughters are. The residuals of being the target of that crime is much more devastating and long-reaching. Just read Emily Poe’s statement. Do you fear your son may experience anything like that when you warn him to be aware while riding his bike?
Honestly, it is the vulnerability of being raped and the emotional consequences thereof that drives the drumbeat of these warnings to our girls. Of course, we don’t want them to be victims of robbery or bike accidents or motor vehicle/bike collisions or any other crime. But it is the possibility of rape that is foremost in my mind when giving these warnings."
Honestly, again as a mother of both a boy and a girl, I worry about their personal safety equally. I can’t really compare and contrast, since on a scale of 1- 10, I go to 11 on both kids
I definitely wouldn’t want to predict a bad long-term outcome for a victim of any crime. However, my understanding of the data is that rape survivors as a group fare pretty poorly - 1 out of 3 rape victims develop PTSD at some point in their lifetime, 30% experience at least one major depressive episode (as compared with 10% for those not a victim of a violent crime)/ one-third have thought seriously about suicide and they are 13 times more likely to have attempted suicide than those who have never been crime victims; higher rates of drug and alcohol problems . . .
I guess I’m not seeing the point you want me to agree with.
Am I more concerned that my D would be a rape victim than my S? Yes. Am I more concerned that my S will wind up in a bar fight than my D? Yes (not because I think he’s going to be IN a bar fight, but that’s more of a “male thing” than a “female thing”).
Either way, what difference does it make – insofar as I’m going to give (unsolicited and repeated) personal safety advice to both of them. Because they can’t control bad people, but they can at least help keep themselves out of harm’s way. That means avoiding dark alleys, not walking around at night “buried” in a cell phone, being with a buddy wherever possible, and yes, not drinking beyond a drink or two.
There are different kinds of risks for different people. I notice how certain men look at my daughters; I noticed many years ago how certain people (both men and women) looked at my sister, her then husband, and their son. My sister is white and her ex-husband is black; their son is mixed race. I’m sure my sister worries about her son in certain settings in which I would not worry about my daughters.
I hope that this victim becomes a survivor and is able to go on to have a beautiful life, however she chooses to live it. I hope that the outpouring of support on social media and in the press and the condemnation of the rapist and his short sentence help her heal. Even with the statistics given in 1288, 2 out of 3 do not experience PTSD, 70% do not fall into a major depression. Not every victim copes or grieves in the same way, which is not meant to minimize or be unsympathetic to those that do develop PTSD or depression or cannot live a happy life after being a victim.
mom2and, I think it may be partly the circumstances of the rape that influence whether the victim experiences PTSD or not, and whether or not the victim becomes depressed or suicidal. It is definitely fortunate for those who do not suffer long-term consequences.
I hope that qualified people will investigate what it is that can help a victim heal, especially for the 1 in 3 (roughly) who do experience PTSD, and the 30% (roughly) who become seriously depressed. There may be other after-effects also, such as a serious loss of trust in men who would like to invite the woman out, if the rape was an case of date rape.
Of the cases that are very familiar to me personally, I can say unequivocally that alcohol was not a factor (at least for the victim) in 4 of the 8 cases. The remaining 4 are just uncertain; but no one was passed out or blacked out in any of the cases.
I definitely think that the presence of witnesses helped secure the conviction, in the Turner case.
^^^^^Well, we know that there are countries where rape is an all too commonplace occurrence at the same time that there is relatively little alcohol consumption and women are not engaging in “risky behavior” such as drinking, wearing “immodest clothing,” and “putting themselves at risk.” This is a human problem-victims are men and women, but clearly, women bear the brunt of it in terms of statistics. Victims rarely just get over it-the effects are usually devastating, and range from PTSD to eating disorders to anxiety and depression, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, and on and on.
I was surprised (but not very) to read the Washington Post stories of college men who experienced sexual assault by women. Also noted woman-on-woman sex misconduct. This is the link to the Washington Post’s big project on campus sex assault. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/sexual-assault/
@treemaven: “Apparently, I am being quite inarticulate herein.”
Not at all.
Where it seems some can be tone deaf to the psychosocial truths that have come to undergird the way we socialize boys and girls, at base it is really just a difference in how you and other posters choose to undertake this particular approach to the signs we tell our differently gendered kids to look for when out in the world.
I think the signs which indicate ‘warning,’ or ‘danger’ are there for each, but that the moment it becomes critical to heed the signs may be understood to be different.
Perhaps we more fervently emphasize to our girls that the blinking yellow is closer to a solid red. Where the blinking yellow is an internal alarm, equating it to a full stop says ‘Get out of there.’
@Nrdsb4 : Sir/Madam, I thought this bore repeating.
"The rapist deserves no slack simply because he had the fortune of coming upon a more vulnerable victim than we would have her be. If he had come upon a woman unconscious because she was in a diabetic coma, the outrage would be tenfold for certain posters, when in fact it should not be one iota different from the outrage expressed for a rapist who victimizes a woman who is unconscious because she was intoxicated.
Comments about how to prevent a rape are fine until failure to do so is viewed and/or expressed as a mitigating factor for the guilt or sentence of a convicted rapist."
