<p>momofthreeboys, If you are talking to ME, no I am not addressing any comment to you. We cross-posted.</p>
<p>Sheesh - have none of you heard the harrowing tales of how rape victims are treated by the criminal justice system?? You can’t understand why so many rape victims don’t report the crime?
Are you REALLY that amazingly ignorant?</p>
<p>“GO TO THE POLICE, FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!”</p>
<p>As I’ve noted, she is likely to be treated less well, with less attention to the case, less likelihood of a positive outcome than if she goes to the school. I already gave you the data for Williamstown - exactly two officers trained in dealing with sex crimes - 44 women raped (likely more than 44 rapes) in one year, with hundreds of sexual assaults, some of them violent. The two current officers are, I’m sure, up to their eyeballs dealing with their community (or they wouldn’t have jobs), the prosecutors are already overburdened, and there is no more money to be founded. The entire Williamstown budget is a blip on the Williams College annual budget. But even in a big city, it isn’t like the police are just waiting for thousands of college-attending women to report their sexual assaults, expecting action to happen.</p>
<p>A couple of things I like about this conversation: 1. We are attempting to figure out ways that victims of rape can find their voice and find re-empowerment. 2. We are assuming that they will have the wherewithal after an incredibly depersonalizing experience to pick themselves up and “do something about it.”</p>
<p>A couple of things I find rather misguided: 1. The failure to acknowledge that when a rape victim finds her voice and does speak up, she is still being critiqued for WHEN. 2. The failure to understand that rape victims need personal support to actually do some of these things we are asking them to do, and if they turn to the person next to them for help in going to the hospital or the police and are asked a bunch of blaming and shaming questions, they might not actually be able to do so. 3. The idea that going to the police even a year after the fact is useless. The fact is that many offenders are repeat offenders, and many who do go to prison eventually only go to prison because so many women come forward to accuse them. </p>
<p>So, much like in cases of child molestation, going to the police with the name of the assailant is never a wasted action. It may not be your case which gets the perpetrator, but it may be one of many cases. ALL WOMEN REGARDLESS OF WHEN THEY REPORT SHOULD REPORT.</p>
<p>I once went through the process of obtaining a restraining order against a threatening young man with a young woman. It took months and months of gathering evidence, with the help of police advice, to get the requisite amount for prosecution and successful implementation of the order. The police can help with many things in this situation. More than you might imagine.</p>
<p>More than one rapist has been put in prison based on the testimony of many young women coming forward over time. </p>
<p>Finally, if a system is not supportive of a woman’s right to speak and tell her story, there is a reason they want her to keep quiet. And it’s not “for her own good,” no matter what they might say.</p>
<p>The T-Shirt sickens me to the core. Do these boys have mothers or sisters? IMO this is just another example of the insidious effort to undermine respect for women that seems to permeate our country. We have female leaders, like the President of Amherst, already in place. Women need to be more vocal in their demands that these women in positions of power address these types of situations swiftly and without mercy. Remaining silent is not the answer, nor is condemning those who find the courage to speak out.</p>
<p>If you have any doubt that women are being de-valued, see the link below where a 19 year old Colorado father was just sentenced to 3 MONTHS in jail for murdering his 5 month old daughter because she would not stop crying. Yep, 3 MONTHS.</p>
<p>ttp://<a href=“Fury after father, 19, who killed his baby daughter is given just 90 days in jail . . . because judge feels prison only 'creates repeat offenders' | Daily Mail Online”>www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211824/Fury-father-19-killed-baby-daughter-given-just-90-days-jail----judge-feels-prison-creates-repeat-offenders.html</a></p>
<p>Another attempt at posting link.</p>
<p>[The</a> Cortez Journal 09/27/2012 | Kuhn draws 90-day sentence](<a href=“http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20120927/NEWS01/709279961/-1/news/Kuhn-draws-90-day-sentence]The”>http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20120927/NEWS01/709279961/-1/news/Kuhn-draws-90-day-sentence)</p>
<p>Let them wear the t-shirts. It’s like a scarlet letter for d-bags. And don’t kid yourselves, there are girls who love these guys. They’re known as laxtitutes.</p>
<p>When I googled the story to see what new had surfaced, I got sites about the school’s policy, compliance and local rape crisis center. Title IX expects the school to have trained support in place, take steps to prevent an alleged victim from the fears or feelings of continued harrassment that can hamper her (or his, depending,) access to education (one of the things Angie’s account relates,) investigate and come to some conclusions, per the T IX standards/reccs. Whether or not a victim chooses to contact local police, per Title IX the U still has an obligation to respond. (Even if local police are involved, the U has to take action.) It also includes the possibility of moving a victim to a new room, concerns about protecting privacy, etc. But, something has to trigger these actions, on the part of the U. Our daughters should keep that in mind, for themselves and their friends.</p>
<p>I think what’s hard is that time elapsed. How does someone fault a U that was not informed, at the time? And, with so little info, at this point? But, that’s not enough to diss Angie, either</p>
<p>I am not, “amazingly ignorant,” MomCat2. I get why many women do not report rape. I do not, however, see a better alternative for bringing rapists to justice.</p>
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<p>Yes, poetgrl, you are right. Given that it is so difficult for rape victims to come forward, a rape victim should not be criticized for her timing if she comes forward months or even years after the crime occurred. Having said that, I was also struck by the following quote from Ms. Epifano’s story, which comes after she recounts that personnel at the counseling center discouraged her from requesting a disciplinary hearing: </p>
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<p>In other words, her account is that the counseling center didn’t encourage her to request a start of disciplinary proceedings but ALSO that she wouldn’t have been able to handle it anyway. So, echoing momofthreeboys in post #118, what would she have wanted to happen? </p>
<p>I also agree with momofthreeboys that accusations of rape are serious, with serious consequences for the accused and the accuser (see post #117). As a matter of principle, I decline to rush to judgment when I have limited information at my disposal. Some people on this thread seem to have complete faith in the adjudicative power of CC. I am very glad Amherst College is looking into this case, and I hope it inspires a deep cleaning in the culture if that’s what is called for.</p>
<p>So… while Amherst hasn’t released the data, Amherst students took the same survey that Williams students did. The average liberal arts college student body, taking the same survey, found that 3.2% of female students reported being raped in the previous 12 months. (There were likely more rapes than that, but that’s the percentage of women reporting being raped at least once.) That figure does not count the number of violent sexual assaults, sexual assaults, etc., which would number (at Amherst) in the hundreds each year. What that means is that roughly 25 Amherst women report that they were raped last year, and multiply that by four years and it would mean that more than one of every eight Amherst women will be raped during their four years. That doesn’t count sexual assaults, etc.</p>
<p>Now, from these numbers, and the fact that only one Amherst student has been expelled for rape in its entire almost-200-year history, one can only conclude that either 1) Amherst women, like Williams women, lie; or 2) Cases like Angie’s are probably not even particularly unusual, though the particulars in each case will certainly differ.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of work to do, and an awful lot of rapists roaming the campus.</p>
<p>It’s hard to fathom why the schools want to keep sexual predators on the campus, and do not simply expel them. They don’t need the money. They can fill the seat. Maybe I’m just naive.</p>
<p>Williams statistics, to me, are shocking. I know at my school it was nothing like this. What does this say about the culture of the school and who they let in? It baffles me.</p>
<p>I’m wondering how many of these incidents are caused by repeat offenders. It’s too bad they couldn’t have asked the respondents for their attackers initials, just to see how many we’re the same. Of course this wouldn’t happen, just saying.</p>
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<p>I too find these numbers shocking and a little hard to believe.
This is a small college town, population 8K, with nearly one rape per week?
I wonder what percentage of these rapes are inside v. outside the college community?</p>
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<p>I wasn’t attacking anyone. Certainly didn’t mena to. I find it illuminating that it is much easier to condemn the T-shirt. When it comes to rape, if the victim hesitates to do the right thing in the first few minutes screaming and kicking possibly out of shock, embarrasement or shame, they almost become an accomplice in their own vitimization.</p>
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<p>In what other crime are consequences serious for the ACCUSER? Not a lot. Not any that I can think of, in fact. and don’t think that girls don’t know this. They know.</p>
<p>But, I’m not going to get hung up on this. Look, I treat too many PTSD victims. And, other than soldiers, combat soldiers, there is not one thing that more reliably produces PTSD than rape. Aquantance rape, street rape, marital rape. All of them produce PTSD symptoms, which last a lifetime. Would you ask a soldier with PTSD to go into a room with another enemy combatant and someone they vaguely trusted in order to confront them? No. The whole system is rigged to protect the rapists.</p>
<p>The judicial system does a good job of protecting them, and the university system does an even better job of not even bothering to put them on trial until AFTER they’ve tried the victim.</p>
<p>In what other crime, mugging, murder, burglary, car jacking, is the question of the veracity of the report gone over in such great detail. If someone is carjacked, nobody says, “He came from a troubled background. Clearly he’s exaggerating.”</p>
<p>It’s really just gross, to me, in many ways. Put a woman on a spit and it’s disgusting. A woman gets raped. “She needed to report this sooner.” What? Why? So that you would believe her? No wonder Amherst never bothered to revamp their code. No wonder only one man has ever been expelled for rape, when every one of us knows there is no way on planet earth they only ever harbored one rapist preying on your daughters.</p>
<p>I meant the statistics Williams itself published. This was probably linked to already, but here it is again. Worth a look if you havent already. They really do need to ask themselves why their numbers are so much worse than at other schools. This would give me pause before sending my child here, despite the school’s academic reputation.</p>
<p>[College</a> reports stats on sexual assault ? The Williams Record](<a href=“http://williamsrecord.com/2012/02/22/college-reports-stats-on-sexual-assault/]College”>http://williamsrecord.com/2012/02/22/college-reports-stats-on-sexual-assault/)</p>
<p>“I wonder what percentage of these rapes are inside v. outside the college community?”</p>
<p>All, or virtually all, inside. And either the numbers are true, or the students are liars. There were also hundreds of sexual assaults and violent sexual assaults. I’m sure there were many repeat offenders. But it would still take several dozen perpetrators for all the crimes committed. </p>
<p>“This is a small college town, population 8K, with nearly one rape per week?”</p>
<p>Actually, it is more than one a week during the school terms. And maybe 5-8 sexual assaults. Imagine them all reported to the two - repeat, two - police officers in town trained to deal with sex crimes. </p>
<p>The Williams numbers (actually cited by the College President) are 37.5% higher than the comparable numbers for all liberal arts colleges in the survey. For Amherst, I simply used the average.</p>
<p>I find ALL the numbers shocking. But I am not going to fall into the trap of calling Williams and Amherst women liars.</p>
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<p>Harrowing tales? Unfortunately it’s comments like these that might cause women to postpone or set aside exercising their rights. When you call other intelligent women unintelligent you again do nothing that helps or furthers a cause.</p>
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<p>And redpoint you think that a business has a right to fire someone or a college has a right to expel someone simply on the basis of one person’s accusation? Even Title IX has some teeth regarding investigating the situation. In the stories cited the person who WAS charged was expelled. We are fortunate we live in a country where we have systems in place for justice. And redpoint, if the women in Mini’s comment REPORTED their rape to the college, then I imagine the colleges know who the accused are. My guess is that some of the women in Mini’s comment either did not report the crime to the police or they did nothing but “reported” the rape on survey.</p>
<p>I don’t often disagree with you Poetgrl but in my mind any crime has serious consequences for the accused and unless someone is caught red-handed there is an investigation with questions asked of the accused and the accuser and anyone with potential information.</p>
<p>I’m sure it’s the case that hundreds of the sexual assaults (let alone rapes) were not reported directly to the administration each year. But I think it very telling that the college president believes the numbers. </p>
<p>The colleges do NOT have to wait for a conviction to expel a student. Students get expelled all the time for behavior ‘not conducive to educational atmosphere’ of the institution. Of course, the student can then sue. The college has lawyers, and the student’s behavior will then be introduced as evidence (something few expelled students would ever want to see happen.)</p>
<p>You’re right, poetgrl, about the following:</p>
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<p>I appreciate your perspective and thank you for sharing. </p>
<p>My reason for expressing horror at the woman on a spit is that I could see that someone had drawn a picture of a woman roasting on a spit. That picture ipso facto is incontrovertible evidence of heinous insensitivity and, were I in a position to do so, I would take every step to see that the people behind this atrocity were punished to the greatest extent possible. I would, if it were possible, revoke this organization’s right to bear the Amherst logo and derive any benefits from association with the college. I believe the perpetrators are part of an off-campus frat and I’m not sure of the level of involvement of this organization with the school; whatever involvement it has, I would take steps to sever the ties. </p>
<p>I find rape to be equally horrifying. Actually, more so. But, notwithstanding the likelihood that Ms. Epifano was raped, that has not been proven. It is exactly because the crime is so heinous that I am withholding my ultimate judgment in this case because I simply do not have the facts.</p>