<p>Good point, Hunt, and one that would tend to be supported by the epidemic of filming the rapes and disseminating the pictures.</p>
<p>“He said, she said” cases almost never make it to court. The state has to prove rape beyond reasonable doubt. It is rare that the consent issue (however defined) makes it into a case that is actually litigated. Most of the time it is either pled down, or not prosecuted at all. It makes for very interesting armchair discussions, but is mostly irrelevant.</p>
<p>As to false accusations? See the graph I previously posetd.</p>
<p>Hunt, I don’t know where you live but is there no statutory rape statute in your state? “Mentally incapacitated” refers generally to anyone who lacks capacity to form legal consent and would include underage girls. I’m sure there is a specific definition in the statute. You’ve only included an excerpt from the entire statute so I have no idea how this fits into a comprehensive penal code in which there may be different degrees of sexual assault or different codes and in which the definitions are clearly laid out. The scenario I laid out is the general one.</p>
<p>Frankly, a statute that requires knowledge on the part of the perpetrator as well as incapacity of the victim scares me. It’s hard enough for women to prevail in cases even where there is no gray area. The legal system hasn’t exactly worked against perpetrators so I guess I’m less worried about innocent people being incarcerated than I am about guilty ones not serving time and the message out there being that there’s no real consequence to rape unless you are a woman.</p>
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<p>So are the rapists, in most cases. They are guys who can - based on looks and athletic prowess and social status - fairly easily have consensual sex with one or more partners.</p>
<p>
I live in Maryland. It has statutory rape provisions for underage victims–with no knowledge requirement–but does have a knowledge requirement for mental incapacity and the other things mentioned above. It includes this in all the degrees of rape (except for first degree rape, which is forcible).
And perhaps they do. That may serve as camouflage for the occasions in which the sex isn’t consensual.</p>
<p>Here’s the law in Connecticut, which is where my daughter is in college:
[Chapter</a> 952 - Penal Code: Offenses](<a href=“http://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_952.htm#sec_53a-70]Chapter”>http://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_952.htm#sec_53a-70)
If I’m reading it correctly, it makes sex a crime if it is with a person who is so mentally incapacitated that they can’t form consent. But it makes lack of knowledge an affirmative defense. And, it defines mentally incapacitated by alcohol or drugs to only apply if the drugs or alcohol were taken without the person’s knowledge. So in CT, it appears (unless case law has changed it), that a person who has sex with a drunk person who can still express consent is not guilty of a crime if the drunk person voluntarily drank. Obviously, this makes he said/she said cases very unlikely to be prosecuted in the state courts.</p>
<p>It is interesting to read responses all over the web to the original article. Yoffe herself wrote a rebuttal essay on Slate to all her critics. </p>
<p>[Rape</a> culture and binge drinking: Emily Yoffe responds to her critics.](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/10/18/rape_culture_and_binge_drinking_emily_yoffe_responds_to_her_critics.html]Rape”>Rape culture and binge drinking: Emily Yoffe responds to her critics.)</p>
<p>Not sure she does herself a lot of good with this. </p>
<p>The main criticisms seem to be 1) this is blaming the victim; 2) she should ONLY write about how to catch the men doing this; and 3) well duh, we all know drinking too much is bad so why is she bothering to write this. </p>
<p>As is typical with comment sections, many do not appear to have read the original article with a critical eye but only from their own perspective.</p>
<p>One of the response blogs suggested that women, especially in sororities are taking steps to minimize the potential for attacks on women that drink too much by having some sisters agree to stay sober and watch out for the very drunk friends. Not sure this is widespread, however. Also, said that colleges are making this point in their orientation sessions or mandatory alcohol avoidance training. </p>
<p>The issue of consent and what it “too drunk to consent” seems more difficult to determine in practice, and makes it very difficult to prosecute these cases in court on at a college disciplinary hearing. </p>
<p>Interesting to read some of the web frenzy on this. Unfortunately, I think that some important information is getting lost in the rhetoric. Clearly, stopping the men who perpetrate these crimes is the ultimate goal, until that happens (which in all likelihood is never no matter how much effort is put forth), learning how to minimize becoming a victim is critical. I certainly wish this was not so, but that is the reality.</p>
<p>I thought Yoffe’s response was good, but it probably won’t convince anybody who didn’t like the original article.</p>
<p>It does occur to me, though, that Yoffe’s advice will not necessarily reduce the number of rape victims. It may simply change who they are, just as my installation of a burgler alarm may not reduce burglaries, but just make it more likely that somebody else will get robbed. That doesn’t mean that her advice, or putting in an alarm system, is bad–it just means that it doesn’t really solve the problem–which she recognizes, of course.</p>
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<p>I agree. If x number of women avoid being raped by avoiding getting drunk, then x number of women are also drunk but less desirable victims for whatever reason may be raped instead.</p>
<p>What I wonder is, if NO women get drunk enough to rape in this “I might get away with rape because this woman was drunk” thinking of the predator, what would a predator like that do with no drunk women to rape? Move on to sober women or stop raping?</p>
<p>No evidence that serial rapists target the drunk ones.</p>
<p>Non-serial rapists?</p>
<p>The one study I’ve seen indicates that 45% of college women raped hadn’t been drinking at all, and a large proportion of others who had taken a drink were not intoxicated.</p>
<p>(I’ve seen no study parceling out this cases to serial v. non-serial rapists. For one thing, the woman raped has no way of knowing which is which.)</p>
<p>So if that is the case Yoffe’s advice might be useful for less than half of college rape victims?</p>
<p>I’m still curious about this:</p>
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<p>…but that is a question for those who think not getting drunk reduces the chance of being raped.</p>
<p>The Lisak and Miller study found that 80% of the “undetected rapists” raped women who were incapacitate by alcohol or drugs. More of the serial rapists in the study reported doing this than one-time rapists, but there was not a statistically significant difference. So, it seems to me, this is evidence that serial rapists (as well as one-time rapists) do target intoxicated victims.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wcsap.org/sites/www.wcsap.org/files/uploads/webinars/SV%20on%20Campus/Repeat%20Rape.pdf[/url]”>http://www.wcsap.org/sites/www.wcsap.org/files/uploads/webinars/SV%20on%20Campus/Repeat%20Rape.pdf</a></p>
<p>And here’s a Harvard study, involving over a hundred colleges, that found that rapes were more common at colleges with a lot of binge drinking, and that 72% of rapes happened when the woman was so intoxicated that she couldn’t consent or refuse.</p>
<p><a href=“Archive-It - Center for the History of Medicine”>Archive-It - Center for the History of Medicine;
<p>So unless somebody has some evidence to the contrary, can we stop hearing that there’s no evidence that rapists target drunk victims?</p>
<p>Mini: Lisak who conducted the major study on campus serial predators so often quoted states that 80% used alchold as a weapon. He and others clearly state that serial predators target women who are the most drunk in a bar or at a party as those women make better targets. They say that serial predators need no other weapon, because alcohol is all the weapon they need.</p>
<p>Not sure where you are finding that this is not a tool used by serial rapists.</p>
<p>Hunt: Posted at the same time. Thanks for posting the links. This is also noted in the NPR interview linked to earlier.</p>
<p>So let’s look at the data reported in the front of the Harvard study:
Koss (1988) reported that 74%
of the perpetrators and 55% of the victims of rape in her
nationally representative sample of college students had been
drinking alcohol. Muehlenhard and Linton (1987) found
that alcohol was consumed by 55% of the men and 53% of
the women who reported sexual assault on a date. They
also found that sexually assaultive dates were more likely
than nonassaultive dates to involve heavy alcohol consumption
by both men and women. Harrington and Leitenberg
(1994) also found that 55% of the sexual assaults reported
by college women involved alcohol consumption.</p>
<p>Three studies, all in a row.
- Study #1 says 45% of the women raped hadn’t been drinking AT ALL. (Of the rest, we don’t know how many were incapacitated at the time).
- Study #2 says 47% of the women who were sexually assaulted (not raped, just assaulted) had not consumed any alcohol on the “date” on which they were assaulted (I don’t know how they define "date’). Of those who consumed at all, we don’t know how many were incapacitated.
- Study #3 says 45% of sexual assaults (not rapes) reported by women did not involve alcohol consumption. </p>
<p>What is clear, however, is that rape is indeed associated with COLLEGES where there is heavy episodic (i.e. binge) drinking. (We’ve already gone over the characteristics of those.</p>
<p>OK, but for serial predators, which some on this board have indicated are the key perpatrators in campus sexual assault, Lisak reports 80% used alcohol as a weapon. </p>
<p>Certainly, there are many women that are victims who are not drinking, but clearly more than half of the woman have been. And more recent studies suggest this has become a bigger problem. 1987-1988 were 25+ years ago and not sure that binge drinking was quite as acceptable as it is today.</p>
<p>What is clear (it would seem) is that certain colleges attract more serial rapists than others.</p>
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<p>So again I wonder…if no women are drunk, do they just not rape anyone or do they move on to sober women?</p>