Adopting Multiple Children Who Have Severe Needs

“Rape is unique. No other violent crime is so fraught with controversy, so enmeshed in dispute and in the politics of gender and sexuality… And within the domain of rape, the most highly charged area of debate concerns the issue of false allegations. For centuries, it has been asserted and assumed that women “cry rape,” that a large proportion of rape allegations are maliciously concocted for purposes of revenge or other motives.”

Frustratingly, these days, some people still treat sexual assault as an “okay” thing, making comments such as “she was asking for it” and that she was “equally responsible” for the situation. This is exactly the sort of mindset that is contributing to the startling statistics today.

America stands by traditional notions where rape culture is the norm and revolves around society. In particular, when a woman is raped, their actions prior to the incident are usually accounted for their fate of being sexually assaulted. Lately in America, there has been a controversy over women being victim blamed by legal authority in rape cases. These women are slut shammed for allegedly “asking for it” by being intoxicated and having the intention to “have fun”. Because of these accusations of allegedly seeking to engage sexually, rape victims are blamed for initiating the sexual act. An ongoing controversial rape case is the Stanford rape trial of Brock Turner, where the victim was sexually assaulted while unconscious near a dumpster. Turner was convicted for sexual assault, however was only incarcerated for three months. This has recently caused uproar due to justice and retribution not being equally served. The incident occurred near a university campus party; where alcohol was involved and memory loss was present. In addition, she was rushed to the hospital as a rape victim and was examined. Despite complying to use a rape kit and be evaluated, the victim’s accountability is undermined by the leniency of treatment in rape charges. When examining linguistic features of both parties’ written statements, several factors can be analyzed such as each participant’s stance and the credibility of their accounts. In addition, when dissecting a victim’s written account,

There are different notions that the society has towards both Brock Turner and the victim, but whether good or bad, this case has sparked many new perspectives and conversations about situations such as this. The article proposes that this is only the first step to developing a culture that does not tolerate sexual violence in any form and a judicial system that deals appropriately with cases that involve sexual assault.

Before discussing the sexual assault crisis on college campuses, it is important to disprove some misconceptions. When someone reports a sexual assault, society tends to immediately deny the assault happened, claiming false accusation, but, according to Stanford’s “Men Against Abuse Now” report, only two percent of allegations are false, a

Sexual assault is a big problem in the eyes of the media and towards the public. Rape is the commonly known name for sexual assault but it is more publicly appropriate for it now to be called sexual assault as influenced by the media. The media always presents a sexual assault story to the public as soon as they occur, most rape cases that we hear of from the media is the same similar story. Majority of cases involve 2 major crimes, at the least, rape then murder or even can included abduction as a woman is walking home late at night. Feminists seemed to draw the attention to sexual assault around the 1970’s and it grasped the definition of a crime committed by men attacking women in dark alley ways, homes, and work places (AIC, 2001). The media gives an idea to the public that the crime rate for sexual assault is high and making the Gold Coast a highly dangerous place for someone to live, especially for parents with children. The statistics for the Gold coast are not widely different from other

Sexual assault has been a pandemic spreading like a wild fire in our nation. It is a ramped act that is plaguing our communities. Our society tends to view the perspective of the victim, however in the recent study Justifying Sexual Assault: Anonymous Perpetrators Speak Out Online gives another outlook. A team of researchers sought out to find the reasoning of why these sexual assaulters did what they did. By all means, the researchers do no attempt to defend these assaulters but merely try to understand their motives for their actions. The way they went about their research was doing a content analysis on, “stories about a controversial Reddit.com thread, which asked users to share their motivations for perpetrating sexual assault and whether

Rape culture creates myths that victim blame the survivors of sexual violence. For example, a victim of a crime may be asked a question by police that suggests the victim was too drunk or wearing revealing clothing that provoked the perpetrator and resulted in the sexual violence against the victim. Rape culture silences victims who feel that law enforcement and the judicial system do not protect them or hold the perpetrators accountable for their actions. The stigma of sexual violence continues to silence students who choose to not report incidences because they are in fear of stepping forward or believe the judicial system will fail them when they

Rape has always been a problem in the world, but recently rape has become a bigger problem with the effect social media is playing into it. Above all the media has been known for years to take the statements given by the sufferer and play with it to make it seem as though it’s their fault for getting assaulted (Pennington).

“In the United States, rape is the most frequently committed but least reported violent crime” (Newman 205). According to the FBI, rape is defined as “unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will” (Futter, Mebane V). Seeing as though the legal definition of rape is limited, it makes it difficult for victims to prove that there was in fact a crime committed. In turn, this causes an influx of victims, as well as attackers. Society has distorted the true image of rape and made it into a social construct, per say. The issues of rape that need to be addressed are victim blaming, the frequency of the crime, and the way that America has made rape humorous.

In light of the recent Brock Turner case which caused international outrage over the light sentencing and blatant protection of the Stanford student rapist, action is being demanded. Reflection and criticism of not only our justice system, but our society as a whole, has allowed for new surges of feminism and activist movements to take hold. This case gave a unique foothold for the furthering of the feminist movement, and has significantly boosted national attention to one of the movements most debated issues: the existence of rape culture. Although rape culture is a very large and overarching issue critiquing many different facets of American culture, one thing is certain: rape culture is very real, and it can no longer be ignored.

How the media covers sexual assaults creates serious implications for how society responds to sexual assault. Because individuals both receive and interpret knowledge from the media, the messages media shape help the public create informed opinions on social issues. Due to society taking mainstream news coverage to be objective and truthful, the messages society learns from news coverage of sexual assault have serious effects on survivors. These effects include how likely a survivor is to come forward with his or her assault, what people’s attitudes are about sexual assault and how the public

Of all the controversial topics circulating through the media recently - abortion, suicide, teen pregnancy, Kim Kardashian’s newest nude photoset - nothing spurs more debate than when someone utters that ugly word: rape. Even more so when we add “culture” to the end of it, because all of a sudden “culture” (defined by FreeDictionary: “the totality of socially transmitted behaviour patterns…beliefs…and all other products of human work and thought.”) becomes something that we as a society are involved in as a whole. This means that we can’t talk about it as if it was simply a horrible event that happened to someone we know, or even something that happened to a friend of a friend. When we refer to it as “rape culture” it holds all of us responsible and, in return, puts all of us on the chopping block, instead of just the person who committed the rape. Rape culture is the normalization of rape in society, to the extent that rape is now condoned and even romanticized everywhere; in the media and even coming out of our own mouths. Rape culture exists because we, as a society, are prone to victim-blaming; it exists because, even though our judicial system is generally ahead of the curve in comparison to other countries, we are somehow lackadaisical in our prosecution of rapists; it exists because, in our “advanced” education, not once in the curriculum do we use the words “consent” or “sexual assault” (Kane, 2013). Rape culture exists because we allow it to, because the idea that

Rape myths are an extremely active concept in society. Over time, the same rape myths have been recurrently applied when the concept of sexual assault arises. In John Hamlin’s (2001) study he defines rape myths as prejudicial outlooks on sexual assault which effectively downplay its severity and discredits the complainant. Hamlin states that “[rape] myths exist for many historic reasons which include inherited structural conditions, gender role expectations, and the fundamental exercise of power in a patriarchal society” (Hamlin, 2001). Rape myths are put on display in the Supreme Court case of R. v. Ewanchuk (1999), as the case revolves around several assumptions and misconceptions regarding sexual assault. This paper will illustrate how rape myths are extremely negative by analyzing the Ewanchuk case along with R. v. Ghomeshi (2016), racism in societal assumptions regarding women who are raped, and the notion of masculinity.

These past two weeks, we have focused on the prevalent rape culture in the United States and how that affects society. We found that sexual violence has become somewhat of a norm in the U.S., and that it is no longer broadcasted in the media like the atrocity it is. This, along with the inherent gender stereotypes within society, contributes to rape culture, which is defined by the Oxford Living Dictionary as “a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse.” Our society bombards us with acts of sexual violence, through music and visual media. It is treated like a despicable act that must not be tolerated, one where the perpetrators must be held accountable. Yet, at the same time, it is tolerated, and the perpetrators are often allowed to roam free without punishment, while their victims are tortured with what happened to them for the rest of their lives. This is rape culture, and although the term is circulating more and more, the populous does not regard it as a serious issue, but as a problem made up “hysterical feminists” (Rape Culture is When, Maxwell).