<p>One more thing – If you did all of this or even some of this, the serial predators who join a frat for the purposes of engaging in rape would no longer find this a conducive setting and would no longer join.</p>
<p>The Lisak found that only about 6 percent of the men surveyed had attempted or successfully raped someone. While some of them only tried once, most of the rapists were repeat offenders. The 6 percent of men who were rapists were generally violent men, as well.</p>
<p>So we go on a witch-hunt against all fraternities? Against all men? There are over 9500 men on the UvA campus and not all men belong to fraternities. I think we’re a smart enough society that we can figure this out without spy equipment. </p>
<p>Eh. No reason to hunt down the witches. Lots of reasons to root out the rapists. :-S </p>
<p>I am just reading along and appreciating how the focus becomes more sharply defined with each thread, but continue to be struck by how the conversation always comes back to concern about the boys. This, for me, has become the definition of “rape culture.”</p>
<p>alh wrote: "I am just reading along and appreciating how the focus becomes more sharply defined with each thread, but continue to be struck by how the conversation always comes back to concern about the boys. This, for me, has become the definition of “rape culture.”</p>
<p>My first thought was 'dang right!" Then I started thinking more about it and now I am not so sure I agree. I think it may be a case of worrying that an innocent person isn’t railroaded. Is it better to let a thousand guilty people (in this case men) go free than wrongly imprison one, or is it better to have a thousand innocent men found guilty than to let one guilty man go free? </p>
<p>Because the men in this case are the accused it becomes “rape culture” to worry about the rights of the men. I’m not so sure it is that simple. </p>
<p>^Well, once again, the focus is on the men - not on women who have been raped. I feel like the clouds are sort of clearing in my head after reading all these threads and with much thanks to poetgrl and cardinal fang among others.</p>
<p>@TV4caster. </p>
<p>I think what is really becoming clear at this point is that nothing at all is being done to get rapists off of campus, and, in fact, what we have at university after university is a culture of cover up and a huge lack of investigation.</p>
<p>The courts will likely not send too many innocent rapists to prison, and I abhor the idea of even one being imprisoned. </p>
<p>I think it is a false argument we keep being presented with, the idea that trying to find a solution to the issue of rape and the safety of our daughters on college campuses in the face of serial sex offenders is the same as trying to send an innocent young man to prison.</p>
<p>Conflating these two things keeps us from the issues which are important like, for example, why are these rapes not being investigated by police at all? Why are so many cases said to be he said/she said when, in fact, there has been no real police work or real investigation done. Why do police, school administrators, and all manner of authority figures refuse to pursue even the few rapes which are reported, when it is obvious from study after study that the false reports are at or around 2-8%? It doesn’t add up. Protecting the rights of the accused is one thing, refusing to even look into the rape claims is a whole other story.</p>
<p>All that said, your protections as an accused individual in a civil case are different than in a criminal proceeding with good reason. </p>
<p>There is a middle ground here. And even the middle ground will be an improvement, because the truth is that the concern has always been to protect these young rapists from the consequences of their sexual crimes and not to find a way to keep women safe. </p>
<p>UVA has never expelled even one man for rape or sexual assault. Not one.</p>
<p>The investigator they originally named to look into this gang rape was a former prosecutor and a judge in Virginia who happens to have also been a member of the named fraternity house. Just the fact that they thought THAT was appropriate tells you how wrong they have this, frankly. But think about if this rape case had come across his desk as a prosecutor. Do you think he would have thought it valid? Do you believe he would have pursued prison for his “brothers?” </p>
<p>The system itself has a lot of problems, start to finish. And none of them favor the survivors.</p>
<p>@Poetgrl- I completely agree with you. I am 100% outraged and feel like not only that something needs to be done, but that I need to get up there and start confronting some of these idiots who are hurling insults at people who are marching for change, or vandalizing memorials to the victims. </p>
<p>I was just saying that I am not sure it is ‘rape culture’ when someone expresses concern about anyone other than the victim in these cases (and I haven’t been one of those either btw). Just like I wouldn’t call it ‘murder culture’ when people say that they want to ensure that the accused gets a fair trial in a homicide case.</p>
<p>I can’t applaud UVA too much for suspending the fraternities NOW when the RS article came out, because they knew about this for quite some time. I also find it interesting that some commenters on the RS article seem to feel the woman who counsels the victims is unfairly portrayed and has been very comforting to victims. Unfortunately, however, she seems to have done little to address the problem.</p>
<p>Clearly, more needs to be done to protect and believe young women in these situations. While I understand that young women do not want to report, nothing can change without some reporting. In an individual case there may be nothing done, but if the serial rapist hypothesis is true or if certain frats support this behavior, at some point the accusations will begin to add up. If 9 out of 10 don’t report, however, the evidence is much weaker. </p>
<p>I am one who has a problem with expelling a young man when there is no evidence beyond the word of the young woman. However, there are penalties other than expulsion which can be used in those cases. If the college uses the preponderance of the evidence to throw a kid off a team (or other activity), suspend him for a semester or a year, or throw him out of a fraternity or a dorm, that would seem to be justified. It seems that many think being expelled for an accusation of rape is no big deal, and we have to accept that some men will be falsely punished. However, I can’t imagine how a young man would get accepted into another college (especially one of the caliber of UVA) if expelled for rape or sexual misconduct. That is a pretty big price to pay if he is in fact not guilty. Just like in a plea bargain, the weaker the case against the accused the less onerous the penalty offered should be. Yet being suspended or off the team may be enough to change things. </p>
<p>More research is needed on the subject of serial rapists and how prevalent they are. As far as I know, the statistics often cited are all from the Lisak study at one urban campus with a population of students that included some much older than the 18-22 yo typical at residential colleges. </p>
<p>Some men I know are rethinking rape culture after reading the Rolling Stone article, since it was an example of an extreme event, where a reasonable person probably couldn’t find a way to excuse the behavior, and they finally understood these extreme events are not unusual. This is leading them to rethink the whole subject. It was an interesting weekend listening them: “How is it possible this has been going on and no one has intervened?” Their immediate reaction was they needed to get involved in a positive way and some will be writing letters today. I hope we are about to see a turning point. Again, “our” children lead the way. This only happens, as far as I can tell, because of a few extremely brave young women. We should have been protecting them all along. </p>
<p>adding: I don’t really care that much what we call it as long as we change it. Labels are useful to me in understanding. Others are way beyond needing that.</p>
<p>I am also curious about the statistic that UVA has never kicked anyone out for rape or assault. I am sure that is true but I wonder how that compares to other schools. I am not talking about someone being convicted of rape and sent to prison, but simply expulsion. Someone put up a link to an article written a year ago by Emily Renda who was the UVA rape victim that was also named in the RS article. In her article she talks about how federal laws make it almost impossible to kick someone out of school for an offense like this. </p>
<p>So my question is this: if Renda’s argument is true then how are other schools managing to kick kids out? or are they?</p>
<p>@TV4caster. </p>
<p>Yes. I’m actually not really referring to you, though I was answering your post. There are individuals who believe the greatest danger in the new attempt to figure out a solution to the massive rape issue we have on our college campuses in the US is to some imaginary young man who might drunkenly, accidentally have sex with a willing drunk girl and then be accused of rape. What most of us know from the research is that this is not really what’s going on. What is going on is that women are being raped on college campuses by serial predators who gravitate to certain university subcultures where they can easily use intoxicants on new college freshman and hide out. </p>
<p>Look, this isn’t a UVA problem, though they seem to be particularly egregious in this regard, all schools are grappling with this right now. And you know what? It’s about damn time.</p>
<p>@mom2and.</p>
<p>I don’t think anybody is advocating for young men to be expelled on no evidence other than an accusation. What we are saying is that there needs to be a real investigation, witnesses need to be offered protection from retaliation by the accused, and a good faith effort to assist young women in getting to the hospital for the rape kit, getting to the police station to file a report WITH an advocate, needs to be made. The schools need to take some responsibility.</p>
<p>if there are three reports of rapes at one fraternity house in the course of a year? What the hell are you doing not looking into it? I don’t care if the girls don’t press charges. YOU as the university have a responsibility to do something about it. Jeez, you’d do something about cafeteria food poisoning. Rape is not a special situation where the university should be hands off.</p>
<p>People pay up to a quarter of a million dollars a year to send their kids these places, the least they can do is take a look at why girls keep saying they’ve been raped.</p>
<p>One thing that came up on the weekend was why there isn’t mandatory reporting to police when a college women reports a sexual assault of any kind. Don’t we have mandatory reporting of child abuse and elder abuse? Why is this different?</p>
<p>Since we have all been reading these threads, how many college women have been raped? How many college men have been falsely accused? Where does our focus belong? And why can’t we keep it there till we have solved the problem? Maybe we have to be able to see what is happening before we can fix it. I believe our kids do see.</p>
<p>adding: another suggestion was that if it was necessary to get rid of fraternities and athletics teams to solve the problem, that just needed to happen. The sooner the better. There was recognition this was extreme but also that the problem needed to be fixed. immediately. whatever it took.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While only the rapist is guilty of rape, it is perhaps realistic to say that inaction by numerous other people creates an environment where rapists can commit crimes with low risk of being caught.</p>
<p>The problem, which won’t be solved by most of the things proposed in this thread, is that the prevailing culture around that campus (and probably many others) does not take rape seriously. If there is a combination of:</p>
<ul>
<li>Victim not reporting promptly, making it more difficult to investigate and prosecute the crime (and also perhaps making the report “stale” in terms of timeliness for other students who could be warned).</li>
<li>Other students discouraging the victim from reporting promptly.</li>
<li>Bystanders not trying to stop or report the crime.</li>
<li>Police not doing investigating reported crimes.</li>
<li>University administration preferring to sweep crimes under the rug.</li>
</ul>
<p>then there is low likelihood of success of any proposed remedy like university administrative sanctions against accused rapists (if the university administration tends to want to sweep the crime under the rug, what makes anyone think that it will want to investigate and pass judgement “fairly”, by whatever standard – not even considering whether the university administration has competence in investigating and judging whether someone is guilty of a criminal act).</p>
<p>Changing the prevailing culture is probably much harder than anything else. Of course, as noted previously, some of the cultural problems are vicious cycle type of problems (e.g. victims do not report promptly because police are seen as not being willing to investigate, which may be due to getting many delayed reports where the evidence is no longer sufficient, etc.). Cultural issues may also be related to alcohol consumption – people who may otherwise have better judgement as bystanders may not when they are drunk, for example.</p>
<p>Well, yes and no. They don’t seem to do much timely investigating of even the timely reports. There are at least three cases cited on this thread alone where girls got rape kits and went to the police and no investigation was undertaken, inspite of visible bruising, semen, and evidence of trauma. </p>
<p>Women who come in with visible evidence of trauma and dna evidence are STILL told that it’s “he said it was consensual.” The standard of proof is too high. It’s completely ridiculous to act as if a woman who is actually injured when she comes in to report a rape has not proven rape. No other crime is like this, and no other crime requires that the victim get her own attorney. </p>
<p>Do you think college women do not KNOW this? </p>
<p>Just even start there. </p>
<p>If that is what you think @poetgirl, then I agree and is what I said in my post and several pages ago. Colleges need to do a much better job of supporting young women and helping them make their case. Why didn’t UVA take action against this fraternity when Jackie made the accusation? Even if they couldn’t prove her accusation, there was a way to investigate or close it down. If there is a rape kit and witnesses to either the event or to the fact that the girl was too drunk to consent, or that she came forward directly after it happened, then that would seem to be sufficient evidence in most cases to get beyond reasonable doubt. In many cases, there are no witnesses or any evidence and it does become he said she consented and was enthusiastic and she say she didn’t and wasn’t. </p>
<p>But some in this thread have said that they don’t care about punishment of men who aren’t guilty because this is such a small number (8% is not that small) and false positives are acceptable in order t ogive voice to the victims who haven’t been believed for so long. That is fine in the abstract, but certainly not fair to an individual guy who is not guilty. </p>
<p>And I don’t think anyone on this thread is saying the greatest danger is to young men as you put it:</p>
<p><<here are="" individuals="" who="" believe="" the="" greatest="" danger="" in="" new="" attempt="" to="" figure="" out="" a="" solution="" massive="" rape="" issue="" we="" have="" on="" our="" college="" campuses="" us="" is="" some="" imaginary="" young="" man="" might="" drunkenly,="" accidentally="" sex="" with="" willing="" drunk="" girl="" and="" then="" be="" accused="" of="" rape.="">></here></p>
<p>Everyone agrees that the biggest problem is the crime of rape and how to stop it and how to end the rape culture. However, some also are saying that the answer is to find and punish the truly guilty, not to throw away constitutional rights for the accused in order to right a past wrong. Many crime victims in general are frustrated by the fact that prosecutors don’t find enough evidence to make a case even if they know a crime was committed. That doesn’t mean we lower the standards of evidence to get more convictions. </p>
<p>@alh.</p>
<p>My husband who is his fraternity’s alumni adviser actually said that he thinks if they don’t get this under control soon that there will eventually be no more fraternity system. He requires his guys to do a lot of rape education, etc… It’s a very safe house. But, as he said, if the only way to make this go away is to shut it down, we are going to have to shut it down. This can’t continue.</p>
<p>I think ucb is absolutely right the culture has to change to solve the problem of campus rape. Dstark and cardinal fang gave examples upthread about why and how reactions need to change for anything positive to happen. Which is why labeling it is useful to me, if not to others.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps we look for some of that evidence, which we are not.</p>
<p>Look, we know that witnesses against any kind of gang or mob always require a certain assurance of protection from retaliation. They may have nice hair cuts and a clean pair of khakis and broadcloth shirt. But they are behaving like gangs and mobsters, and to get the evidence, we may need to start to help the witnesses.</p>
<p>The way we are investigating rape needs to change. Let’s start with, oh, I don’t know, investigating it.</p>