<p>ABS, my point is, until they actually try enforcement, to say it won’t work it nonsensicle. Its like saying, lets not enforce civil rights laws, because people dont want to.</p>
<p>The study mentions the difficulty of bringing date rape cases. Please tell me how difficult it is to bring sexual assualt and child pornography cases, where the defendants admit to everyting, including taking pictures and their cameras/phones are in evidence. If the DOJ doesnt want to push for this case, seems to me they dont care about crimes agaisnt women.</p>
No they don’t. Read them again, and you’ll see.</p>
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It seems to me that this assumes certain things about sexual activity that may not be the case. Are you suggesting, though, that if the woman actively participates in the sexual activity, that there’s no rape? I don’t think that’s what you mean, but maybe it is.</p>
<p>Umm, please show me data indicating that enforcement, as a whole (not in this isolated case) has not been tried. And also my point was that with any problem of this magnitude prevention is a much, much more useful place to start. I’d much rather police officers and community organizations band together to try to keep such attacks from happening (or to minimize their frequency) than to focus on punishment after the damage has been done.</p>
<p>Right. Kayf, you keep trying to say that anything said about Savannah Dietrich means that we are excusing F&Z. Look, F&Z are completely in the wrong here for their actions - regardless of whether they were drunk or stone cold sober, regardless of whether Ms. Dietrich was drunk or sober, regardless of whether she was the town virgin who dressed in turtlenecks or the town slut who walked around in a bikini.</p>
<p>ABS, but how do you know that enforcement wouldnt be a deterrent? I see commericals all the time about enhanced DUI enforcement, but I never see any about enforcement of sexting?</p>
<p>To be honest, kayf, I don’t know. I quoted what the author said in the context of a long report detailing the scope (large) and complexity of the problem of acquaintance rape. (I don’t think the report addressed sexting.) The pervasive nature of the problem suggests to me (as it did to the criminal justice expert who wrote this report) that a much better way to get at the root of the problem is through prevention.</p>
<p>ABS, no the report only addressed date rape. The Frey/Zehnder situation seemed to me to have less difficulty to prosecution. If enforcement doesnt act as a deterrent, why all the emphasis on DWI enforcement?</p>
<p>“It seems to me that this assumes certain things about sexual activity that may not be the case. Are you suggesting, though, that if the woman actively participates in the sexual activity, that there’s no rape? I don’t think that’s what you mean, but maybe it is.”</p>
<p>In my state, it’s not a matter of what “I mean” or what “I suggest”. It is the law that if she is drunk (as determined in a court of law), she can’t give consent. It doesn’t matter what she does. Now a prosecutor has plenty of discretion to decide whether or not to charge on that basis (or, as most often happens, have the charges pled down to sexual assault, or even a misdemeanor of simple assault), but the law says she can’t give consent.</p>
<p>Enforcement works just fine. After expelling four students, and suspending quite a few others, there won’t be anywhere near the number of oncampus rapes this year as there were two years ago. Now mind you, as far as I am aware, none of those four students were charged criminally. I imagine the college presented them with a choice - leave (without sueing), or have the cases turned over to the local prosecutor. (I don’t know that for a fact; but I am sure the college had the benefit of the best counsel they could buy.)</p>
<p>With regard to the effectiveness of law enforcement, please note that the quote was, “Law enforcement responses alone are seldom effective in reducing or solving the problem.” (Emphasis added.) I am not advocating leniency on enforcement but simply suggesting that prevention ought to be a huge focus within high schools and colleges. According to the report I cited, “researchers believe that rape is not the product of psychopathic behavior; rather it is the product of mainstream beliefs about women’s role in sexual situations.” If you believe that this is true (the report makes a cogent case), and if you accept that the scope of this problem is huge (large numbers reported and many more not reported), wouldn’t you want to look at efforts that tackle the deranged mindset?</p>
<p>With regard to your example above, mini, I gather you are predicting based on a recent case (I lost track of where these expulsions took place). Or are you referring to an actual change in the number of reported rapes on a particular campus one year after students were expelled? If it’s a prediction, let’s hope you’re right.</p>
<p>The Williams College president reported that (based on a survey that he and the administration found credible) 41 women had been raped (there were more than 41 rapes, that’s just the number of individual women raped; there were cases of men who were raped as well); four students were expelled, and a larger number suspended. </p>
<p>Enforcement works, but not because it (simply) removes rapists. Rather it sends a prevention message that rape and sexual assault are unacceptable. It is a very serious form of prevention. As a prevention strategy, on high school and college campuses, for the most part it hasn’t ever been tried.</p>
<p>It’s kind of depressing that of the 41 women who were raped, and only four of their rapists were expelled. I’m not even blaming Williams College for that dismal statistic: many women don’t report rapes, and Williams is right to have a strict standard of proof before expelling a student. But still. Forty one women were raped, and 37 of them (or however many were raped by fellow students) have to see their rapist walking around campus either immediately or when the rapist returns from suspension.</p>
<p>My guess is that more than four rape victims ended up withdrawing from school, like the freshman at Michigan whose mother posted the other thread here.</p>
<p>Fair enough, mini. But I don’t think prevention through enforcement ought to be the alpha and omega here. Education programs designed to tackle the deranged beliefs and values that make acquaintance rape possible are also necessary. And I mean serious, not BS programs, that really confront the culture that allows these behaviors to go on. Mind you, I don’t think anyone should need a program to know that sexually violating someone who is unconscious is beyond the pale. But other points may not be so obvious. For instance, I did not know that in some states a women cannot consent if she is drunk.</p>
<p>Cardinal— One can only surmise that of the 41, maybe more than one was a victim of these four. And, yes, I believe women leave campus all over the US because of this failure to enforce, and, in fact, a willful self-protection on the part of many campuses.</p>
<p>In fact, a woman should always go to the local police and NOT campus security in the case of sexual assault. Actually, all students should be aware that they should go to the local police in the case of any crime. Campus security, as we saw in the Sandusky case, has a primary mission to protect the school, then the student. The police have a different job.</p>
<p>At any rate, I respect what Williams did. Hopefully more will follow suit.</p>
<p>“Fair enough, mini. But I don’t think prevention through enforcement ought to be the alpha and omega here. Education programs designed to tackle the deranged beliefs and values that make acquaintance rape possible are also necessary. And I mean serious, not BS programs, that really confront the culture that allows these behaviors to go on.”</p>
<p>No argument there!</p>
<p>I think most colleges have this buddy-buddy relationship with local police. In most places, if local police dealt with the actual volume of campus criminality, they’d barely be able to do anything else. In some sense, they depend on people not reporting crimes to them.</p>
<p>Note that the numbers I cited from my alma mater were for rapes; usually, for every actual rape (“unwanted sexual penetration”), there are 10 sexual assaults. Imagine how many students should properly be placed on the sex offender registry in just this one little town.</p>
<p>I read through that DOJ report. Scary stuff.</p>
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<p>Other info: once you’ve been raped, you’re more likely to be raped again. 22% of female college rape victims have been raped before. </p>
<p>In the drinking and rape scenario…
When a male and female had been drinking and he raped her, male college students viewed the fact she’d been drinking as making the woman more culpable for the rape and the fact the guy had been drinking as making him less culpable.</p>
<p>I am not certain what being the alpha and omega means, BUT enforcement needs to be stepped up. To say that legal “responses” do not stop rapes when the courts give 50 hours community service for sexual assualt and voyerism (which was really child pornography), well duh. Of course 50 hours of community service wont stop anything. What happens when the next kid who is not headed toward an ivy school does this? Does he get the same 50 hour deal? Or do we have one set of justice for the private school/lacrosse/ivy bound kid and one set for the poor kid in the public school?</p>
<p>Why is enforcement, and publicity around enforcement (like what we are seeing re DWI enforcement) not stepped up? I see public service announcements all the time, dont drink and drive, you will get caught, and there will be significant penalties. Not 50 hours of community service.</p>
<p>As to education – when I suggested that parents make sons aware of what is illegal, not just immoral, some disagreed, saying that they would have failed if they have to rely on laws. I would suggest that if large numbers of college men say they would rape if they could get away with it, we need BOTH more enforcement and MORE education as to the law.</p>
<p>How about making sons aware of both moral and legal behavior, and tie them together. This is illegal because it is immoral, and it directly impacts another member of society. </p>
<p>We need to step up enforcement, but we also do need to educate both young men and young women. Part of prevention should be women being aware of their surroundings, men being responsible for their own behavior, and both being aware of what is happening with others around them. In this particular case, it wasn’t even the sexual assault that was at issue - it probably would never have been reported if the photos hadn’t been shared. </p>
<p>What would have happened if the first person Frey shared the photos with had told him it wasn’t funny, and he should get rid of them? Every person who didn’t react in a negative way encouraged him to share them further, and contributed to this situation. Not unlike the Sandusky situation, where nobody seemed to step in and tell him what he was doing was wrong - maybe in both cases they didn’t have enough of a moral compass to understand it was wrong, but somebody should have told them flat out that it was wrong.</p>
<p>Create a culture where the vast majority understand that this behavior is unacceptable, and let that majority deal with the few that don’t get it. Hold everyone accountable for the part they play. If you hear a friend brag that he took advantage of a young woman who didn’t really have the capacity to consent, tell him he was wrong. If you see a young woman likely to end up a victim, take her home, or find someone trustworthy to do so. If you find your son has done something morally corrupt, help him face the appropriate consequences, and don’t make things worse for his victim.</p>
<p>CT, IMHO (and looking at the number of college boys/men who said they would rape if they could get away with it), relying on the message that acts are immoral is not sufficient. It isnt working. We need more. We have laws for a reason - to protect people. YOU are free to tell your kids what is immoral, but I want the protection of laws for my daughter and myself. If all people want to rely on is immorality and self-protection, why would any laws be necessary?</p>