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<p>That was my thought as well. If your friend comes to you bleeding and sobbing and tells you she has been gangraped at that frat over there, and you tell her not to report the rape because you want to pledge a frat and you don’t want to mess up your chances, you have just had your Honor Code test. You failed. If you tell her not to go to the hospital because it will mean you become a social pariah, you just had your Honor Code test. You failed.</p>
<p>The thing is, I don’t think most schools have Honor Codes, but man, they go after cheaters like crazy. Some real witch hunts as to who knew about the cheating and didn’t say. </p>
<p>As for reporting a rape, there is no school rule about having to report an injury either. Most college students are adults and if they refuse to report what has been done to them, how ill they are, and any number of things, those are their choices. But it seems to me that university officials who get wind of this happening should call the police and let LE make the determination that there is or isn’t a case. For all some of these folks know, the police could be looking for someone fitting that pattern. There could be a serial rapist on the loose and LE might have some clues but need more. Jonri states that these serial rapists can get 8 victims before reported. Some may be getting more. The thing is, even if there is not enough evidence for LE to go after one’s victims, that’s info given to them. It may help on past cases and future ones. Bad as it is that those young adult friends did not report the alleged incident and even discourage reporting it, it’s worse than university officials pretty much did the same. </p>
<p>A lot of what is happening today on campuses, more rape awareness, counseling, people coming out with their stories, MSM attention will help IMO. Though “jackie” featured in RSM may not have enough evidence to ever go after her perps for her rape, they are being made very uncomfortable and afraid from the story hitting national news. So good for Jackie about this. Naming names, might be going too far and be inviting a law suit and retaliation. so in some ways that the story was released the way it was has made impact on the rapists, I’m sure. </p>
<p>I am troubled with what seems to be a more cavalier outlook on students who are soused, out of it, or at night wandering alone. I’m an older woman, and I can tell you when I was in college, that rarely happened. We didn’t let our friends get “hit on” dangerously, or go off alone. We traveled together. I remember going to some "fraternity row parties freshman year. We always stayed together. </p>
<p>Sadly, there were gang rapes then, not of any of the women I knew at our college but of some of the local women, and those of other colleges in the area–take it back; there was a woman I know who I heard that this happened. The thing is, I heard this from any number of male classmates and none would ID who partook, just denied that they did. I had a lot of male friends those days, so I did pick up a lot of what was going on in that area. So this is not new. I believe now, that I should have reported the stories. Though we women stuck together more physically when going places, we did not in reporting this sort of thing. It did not even occur to me to do so those days. </p>
<p>The police couldn’t profile DNA from samples when we were in college. Now they can. That means that it is now possible to prove sexual contact to a degree impossible at that time. We also didn’t leave all the electronic trails college students now routinely provide. In theory, it should be possible to prove that an accused person was a) present, and b) had sexual contact with a victim. It’s also possible to exclude accused people. </p>
<p>I keep thinking of the man who has been accused of Hannah Graham’s murder. Look at the timeline in this news report: <a href=“http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jesse-matthew-suspect-hannah-graham-case-has-history-bad-acts-n230451[/url]”>http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jesse-matthew-suspect-hannah-graham-case-has-history-bad-acts-n230451</a> He was accused of sexual assault twice as a college student, in 2002 and 2003.</p>
<p>At that time, he was a football player.</p>
<p>It is possible that he is a serial killer. Had he been convicted of either of the earlier incidents, lives could have been saved.</p>
<p>Exactly. But the backlog of rape kits, the refusal to bring charges or even investigate when there ARE rape kits makes the old, “if women would report” a bit tired. </p>
<p>We know this. </p>
<p>Ditto exactly. Although the complicated cases lately are those where no-one denies a sexual encounter. Instead, they’re usually arguing about the rules of consent. And, the two girls involved in the Jesse Mathew college cases did refuse to bring charges but DNA from a dead girl eventually tied him to DNA from a reported rape and Hannah Graham. </p>
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<p>The depressing conclusion is that catching and punishing actual rapists around colleges without a lot of “collateral damage” tends to be unlikely because:</p>
<ul>
<li>Victims often do not report crimes in a timely fashion (to preserve evidence and memories), and may not be able to give good testimony due to being drunk or drugged (sometimes involuntarily).</li>
<li>Witnesses may not exist, or may be unreliable due to their own drunkenness.</li>
<li>Police in some areas may be unwilling or incompetent to investigate rapes.</li>
<li>University administrations, untrained in criminal investigations and trials, are likely to make errors in their conclusions, and, in the case where an actual rapist is punished, the maximum punishment is far short of the prison sentence that an actual rapist deserves.</li>
</ul>
<p>Bengalmom, remember that you are talking to women on here who themselves may have been sexually molested and / or raped.</p>
<p>In response: Look I know that. I also have been part a victim albeit not rape and I can tell you the last thing I ever want to do is be involved in litigation. It doesn’t matter how victimized I was I lost the battle and it wasn’t because there was a lack of evidence. You can’t change the pain you endured and legal battles prolong it and at certain point the victim is entitled to the right to make the decision as to whether to report and pursue the crime or not to. What may seem illogical to others is logical for the individual and people have to respect that. </p>
<p>"Within hours of Rolling Stone publishing Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s harrowing report, “A Rape on Campus,” the article went viral and the outpouring of comments from women, both UVA students and alumni as well as others, who shared their own stories of campus sexual assault was stunning. Below is a selection of those comments that further illuminate the chilling frequency with which sexual assault on campus occurs.</p>
<p><a href=“Rape at UVA: Readers Say Jackie Wasn’t Alone – Rolling Stone”>Rape at UVA: Readers Say Jackie Wasn’t Alone – Rolling Stone; </p>
<p>This is an interesting piece by Emily Renda that appeared in the Cav Daily last year. I think it provides a good overview of the issues confronting universities when dealing with rape cases. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2013/10/renda-sexual-violence-and-the-law-what-you-need-to-know”>RENDA: Sexual violence and the law: what you need to know - The Cavalier Daily - University of Virginia's Student Newspaper;
<p>That is a very well written discussion of the differences. I, too, agree that there is void between what legally universities can do and our criminal system. The bottom line in my opinion is that sometimes women ‘give up’ the ability to use the criminal system as intended and weaken their legal position by not doing so not realizing that the person they are accusing can still avail themselves of the civil system if they feel aggrieved by the outcome of the college tribunals and that the universities must protect themselves against future violation of the accused civil rights. This is a positive for someone accused who has a financial wherewithal to protect their own civil rights, but it’s a lose, lose for the women. They are NOT equal choices - choosing the criminal system vs. letting a university adjudicate a criminal activity and i really don’t think young women totally understand this. Title IX is about protecting one gender or class free from harassment from another gender or class so a college must be very careful not to discriminate in favor of one or the another…a very tough position indeed. The majority of cases the colleges are losing, they are losing on procedural issues or civil rights. </p>
<p>It’s not either/or. Young women who have been raped or assaulted need to pursue both avenues. It is simply not either or. That is a false choice. It isn’t the issue. </p>
<p>But poetgirl that is the choice they are making. That’s what bothers me about al of this. This “Jackie” story and so many others are all about how awfully they were treated by the system but they never even attempted to use the real system for fear it would be unpleasant. That is their right, of course. It’s just that the fact that they didn’t get satisfaction from a school system is so predictable and unsurprising and the best that it could ever do is woefully inadequate. </p>
<p>"I keep thinking of the man who has been accused of Hannah Graham’s murder. Look at the timeline in this news report: <a href=“Jesse Matthew, Suspect in Hannah Graham Case, Has History of Bad Acts”>http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jesse-matthew-suspect-hannah-graham-case-has-history-bad-acts-n230451</a> He was accused of sexual assault twice as a college student, in 2002 and 2003.</p>
<p>At that time, he was a football player.</p>
<p>It is possible that he is a serial killer. Had he been convicted of either of the earlier incidents, lives could have been saved. "</p>
<p>Periwinkle, JM, who was expelled from Liberty University and Christopher Newport University, both due, in part, for accusation of rape, did not deny that he had had sex with this accusers. He claimed that it was consensual. Neither victim filed charges, but there were enough infractions of disciplinary codes from the incidents that he was expelled from each school. At Liberty, sex is not permitted at all, so admitting to that was enough to get him thrown out. But the cases never made it to the police, for whatever reason, though the information about the case was fully filed within the disciplinary records of the colleges themselves. Had the schools contacted the law enforcement agencies, there would have also been a record of such a complaint, even if the victims chose not to press charges, probably because there was insufficient evidence to uphold a rape charge. But it never went into police records as a complaint, much less as a charge.</p>
<p>I wish that such cases were immediately called into LE, and that DNA buccal swabs be taken from anyone so accused, so that they are on record regardless of the outcome of the complaint. That was a failing of the schools, not to call LE, and there is no system at the present to require DNA samples upon being accused. One has to be charged with certain crimes before giving up such samples is required. </p>
<p>Had JM’s DNA samples been in the files, he would have been picked up for that Fairfax county rape case when those samples were run. He was not in the system as he had never been charged with any case that required the giving up of DNA. Several years after that, that same DNA from the Fairfax rape was linked to the murder of Morgan Harrington, a Virginia Tech coed whose body was found in the Charlottesville outlying areas after she disappeared. But JM still had remained clear of the law in any cases requiring him to give up samples. It wasn’t until the Hannah Graham disappearance this year that charges were pressed that required him to give it up–the buccal swab that matched the Fairfax case and is linked to the MH case. </p>
<p>But JM was aeons away from being charged for rape, in the college cases. However, when his name came up in the Hannah Graham case, a background check showed that he had been involved not just once, but twice in rape allegation cases in his past. That the schools had this in their records did make LE more confident that they had their perp. </p>
<p>So schools should call in the accused, report to LE, even if the situation does not have sufficient evidence for a criminal charge, much less any change of a conviction. It is not up to the college to make that determination. It at least starts a paper trail. You see that this person was so accused. The same with disciplinary records at the school. There should be an investigation, even if it is clear that the case is not going to be won, that the evidence is not there. And the importance of all of this should be emphasized to the victim, with support and counseling given every step of the way. It means lodging a complaint even if it is going to be dismissed and all know it, so that the record is there for the next victim if there is one. Perhaps the perp will stick to the straight and narrow afterwards, maybe the accusation was frivolous and a lie. In such cases, anyone so accused has to be more careful about such thing s with such a thing in his background, even though it ends up dismissed. Rack up a bunch of those, and it can be a pattern that is useful for a case in the future. Immediate gratification for the victim is not always possible, but it can be a start.</p>
<p>Agree poet it is not either/or, but when women don’t use the legal system the societal perception is not that they are saying “I’m afraid to use the legal system”, the perception by society as a large is they are saying “I’m not certain that I was criminally victimized.” I fail to understand why women don’t understand this. I think if all the campus activists would concentrate their energy on getting these women to file charges in a timely manner and weak-willed prosecutors and less time railing against men in general or universities which are not there to prosecute criminal activity, the message would change. I also “get” that a victimized woman is probably not mentally healthy, but i don’t hear these activists railing against colleges and communities for better counseling services either. The most egregious thing in my opinion is some of these activists are just annoying strong feminists like me and I have no desire to support them. Dragging a mattress around campus - give me a break. Blech. Jezebel called it “poignant”, I call it stupid PR that probably hurt them more than it helped them.</p>
<p>These are 18 year old girls away from home for the first time, brutally raped. Are you serious?!</p>
<p>Read the Hobart smith case and the others with rape kits. Read the fsu cases. These women did everything right. </p>
<p>Investigate the reported rapes and there will be more reports. Read the other cases. This is one more way to act as if the girls are responsible for this. The matter of fact “go to the police” isn’t the solution. Go to both. </p>
<p>If your daughter is raped get her an attorney too. </p>
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<p>The most egregious thing in MY opinion is that any woman our age would point to the behavior of an 18 year old rape survivor and be “annoyed” by HER behavior.</p>
<p>They will be fine without your support, whatever you think that would “look like” anyway.</p>
<p>Bengalmom, I agree that the victims cannot be MADE to report, testify, press charges. However, the current infrastructure and atmosphere is such that they are discouraged to do so. What can be changed is how all of this is treated. Support be given to report, is what I’d like to see, even when there isn’t a chance of a conviction or any official consequences.</p>
<p>Had Jackie told the UVA officials that she had been witness to an assault on someone that night, possible murder, those folks would have picked up the phone to call LE so fast, it would make your head spin. Or if she said she saw the bunch of guys overtly cheating, a phone call and action would have started, again so fast. That it was a gang rape, …oh, well. Get thee to the psych social work services, my dear girl Something wrong here. </p>
<p>And all of the agencies so involved should encourage reporting, even without a chance of a conviction for the paper work alone. </p>
<p>Clearly, had LE been called into the case of Jackie’s, what could they do? It was tantamount to reporting she was beat up a year ago by a bunch of guys, (and really that’s what it was) and what could be done? No marks, injuries any more. No semen. What kind of case is this in terms of charges. Zip. But it should have started an investigation, put the stuff on paper, so that those men involved were put on notice. They would know that another such complaint would get them in deep trouble even though they dodged the bullet on Jackie’s due to her late reporting. </p>
<p>Had she called LE immediately, with multiple semen samples, the party scene, the fact that she immediately called would have been the basis for a case. Tough for a bunch of guys to convince a jury that this young woman willingly let them all have at her. Also there would marks of restraint where they held her. They would have had a tough go of it in court and possibly be convicted. I think they would have been, And the frat, the university would have certainly thrown down sanctions as well. But she did not do this. Yes, the victim is to blame here. Sometimes there are. Knowing myself pretty well at this age, I guarantee you that I would have immediately reported being gang raped like that as a young woman. Where I would likely not report a rape, is the classic date rape. I would not have had the nerve to do so. But what Jackie, endured, I 'd have called in an instant, and had I been one of those friends, would have called the police right then and there. Actually anyone saying a rape just happened in such a situation, gang or not, I’d have called it in. The next day…, umm, I’d have called the college officials, but not likely the police. These days, I’d call LE regardless. Not up to me to make the decision as to whether there is a case or not. But to this day, I don’t know if I could be a young woman to report a date rape when intoxicated or confused. </p>
<p>Back when mini used to post, he always had gobs of research at the tip of his fingers to support his comments about rape. IIRC, he said that the majority of campus rapes are committed by a relatively small number of serial rapists who are not having drunk sex, but who are cunning and target their victims carefully. Alcohol or drugs are often a tool used by these rapists, but the statistics showed a surprising number of the victims had not been drinking any alcohol at all, much less were they drunk. </p>
<p>Mini hasn’t posted in a long time, so I don’t know if these trends are changing or not.</p>
<p>Poet you know this is one of the few things you and i do quite totally see eye to eye on. I appreciate your point of view and do agree on several points but I also think these women are not getting good counsel on so many levels including their interaction with the media. I do think they are young and naive but I also think at times they aren’t listening and that does annoy me. </p>
<p>I really do understand we don’t agree. I actually tried to avoid this thread for that reason, but the tenor of it was just too much. </p>
<p>These are girls we are talking about. Not 25 year old women. Some of them were virgins. What the hell do we want from them? </p>
<p>Then in the cases where they do go to the police it’s still mishandled. It’s not as if they are to “blame”. </p>
<p>Yeah, these threads are addicting and probably not in a good healthy way :-(</p>