Or maybe, the drinking…
I didn’t get the impression from the book that it was a hippie culture, but actually having spent time in Montana, I found that Missoula seemed like a liberal place. I can believe the heavy drinking, though, based on the Montanans I know.
“During the alleged rape, she remained silent and still, even though there were other people, her friends, within earshot. She didn’t make enough of a fuss so that her friend in the next room could hear anything.”
If you make a fuss, the attack may be stopped. Also nearby help may come running. Also, the nearby help may be able to serve as witnesses for what happen.
If you don’t make a fuss, then there’s probably not going to be any evidence. Which means he said/she said, which means the perp goes free. The biggest hurdle to deciding cases in favor of the victim is the frequent lack of evidence.
If help is nearby (and it often is in campus situations), call for help. Common sense.
@Northwesty. Yes she was aware that her friend was just outside the door when she was being raped, yet she did NOT call out or make a fuss at all. This meet SEEM counterintuitive and not what you would expect of a “common sense” response, but the point Krakauer made in the book was that frequently this is what happens. The other young lady in the book was raped by her good friend on the couch while other people were just upstairs, yet she too put up with it, frightened about what violence might befall her if she called out. Rape, especially non-stranger assault, is tricky in many ways.
@northwesty, Are we now at the stage where you are scolding victims of a violent assault which for many women will lead to PTSD? I doubt that any woman who has been raped is in the mood to hear your tips on how to be a better rape victim.
Sounds like good advice, but if you have any knowledge whatsoever of how people work and what they actually do in stressful situations, you might understand things are often more confused than that, particularly for a victim.
Read the book and pay attention to the small part dealing with this or look up some of the pertinent research.
northwesty is making a point that clearly makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and is obviously very frustrating: acquaintance rape cases are very, very difficult to prove. They are almost impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, which is why (in my opinion) prosecutors don’t like to take them. Prosecutors want to win cases.
It may be that an accuser’s failure to cry out or call for help isn’t really evidence that she wasn’t raped. But it’s certainly not evidence that she was raped, either. If the accused’s claims of consent are at all plausible, that pretty much means you have to acquit in a criminal case.
As I’ve pointed out lots of times before, sexual assault, especially among people who know each other, is very similar to consensual activity that takes place all the time. This sets it apart from most other crimes, and is part of what makes it difficult to prove. Even if we could magically remove all sexism from the situation, this would still be true. If A says the crime happened, and B says it didn’t, then you don’t get a conviction unless you have some pretty good evidence beyond their words.
Personally, I don’t see a way around this fundamental problem that doesn’t involve punishing more innocent people by making the standard of proof easier in this kind of case.
Just one thing to add: somebody noted above that the prevalence of false rape claims is only 2 to 8 per cent. In my opinion, 8% is a lot. It’s certainly enough for us to be concerned about due process.
@Hunt, We know acquaintance rape is difficult to prove.
What makes some of us uncomfortable is reading how victims should act during an attack.
@JustOneDad, @CF and others are correct.
What makes some of us uncomfortable? Victims aren’t believed. Investigative work is shoddy. Prosecuters don’t want to take cases that have a chance. Prosecuters get the facts wrong. Football players are protected. Victims are considered sluts.
I was talking to a couple of women about the book. I asked them who would lie and go through a rape kit? They said they don’t know anybody who would go through a rape kit and lie about an assault.
Victims sometimes have a hard time realizing they have been raped, acting doubtful and uncertain about what happened. In the book, the young lady raped by the football player in her room texted her friend and said “I think I was raped”. That does not go over well in the court system.
I think it would be hard to admit to yourself that you are being raped, that you have been raped. What a horrible reality that is.
So do you think willingness on the part of the accuser to go through a rape kit should be sufficient to convict the accused of rape?
No…I think an accuser’s willingness to go through a rape kit means a case should be looked at carefully and investigated. The odds of her lying are very low. Doesn’t mean the accuser will win in court.
Some detectives think they can figure out who is lying. Are they deluding themselves?
If 8 percent of the accusers lie, won’t most of the liars be figured out along the investigative trail? So…when cases are not pursued, is it really because the cases are not handled properly, and or difficult to prove, and not because 8 percent of the accusers lie?
It is very insulting to victims to equate the lack of success in prosecuting cases with lying.
Most cases aren’t pursued because of lying.
@hunt, did you read the book?
I would say that willingness to go through a rape kit shows an enormous amount about what the person was thinking shortly following an assault. I would also say that it makes sense to tell kids, male and female, not to get so drunk they can’t get home or back to their rooms and sleep in their own beds. The takeaway I got from the book is that we must have a reporting to the police as I don’t think the one guy would have ended up in jail if there hadn’t been that second accusation lurking in the past. If that woman had not mustered up the courage to report I doubt he would have gone to jail.
I wasn’t responding to you specifically–I appreciate your post. 
I was just trying to explain why some of the general responses to the book–her and elsewhere–led me to wanting to defend my alma marter, even though I think that they should definitely be publicly called out on the events Krauker describes and totally support him in calling out these issues at UM or anywhere else. It’s the scapegoating of UM from people who only take a passing glance at the book that bother me, because as you, I, and Kauker have all said, the same book could, sadly, be written about any number of schools. That doesn’t make what happened at UM any less horrible, of course.
@madamecrabster, UM is both a football school and a hippie school! Missoula is very much the “Austin of Montana”–a very blue, progressive city in a state that is largely conservative, and Missoula is littered with quirky boutiques, independent restaurants, slackliners (sooo many slackliners), outdoor supply stores, and protests about any number of social issues. It has, or at least did, the largest number of non-profits per capita. Because Montana has no national professional sport teams, Griz and Cat (MSU) football essentially take their place in Missoula and Bozeman, leading to the (unfortunate, IMO) status of football players.
I sincerely suggest you rework that notion somewhere along the way. It’s just not going to help much. People either have a difference of opinion or sometimes just “remember it from a different point of view”.
@JustOneDad, I understand.
Your examples aren’t examples of lying.
That sentence you referred to is correct
@Hunt, to be sure acquaintance rape can be hard to prove. There might not be any evidence other than the alleged victim’s story. But there might be evidence, and the police are not going to find that evidence if they don’t look for it because they reflexively disbelieve the accuser before investigating.
Hmmmm… I have to think about this sentence…
Most cases aren’t pursued because of lying.
It can be read more than one way.
Lying is not the reason most cases are dropped.
I hope that works better.