Larry Nassar: The Cause Of Sexual Assault

The problem: Sexual assault has become one of the forefront issues of our day. There has been an increasing rate of sexual assaults in our society and specifically on college campuses.

On August 16, 1963, a criminal was born. Larry Nassar. For over roughly 30 years he abused 150+ children in USA Gymnastics. The question of how this went on so long without being detected has lingered, but the answer is clear. It didn’t. It was detected, but covered up. Yet, the people least expected to know about it did. USA Gymnastics, an organization meant to protect gymnasts knew. They knew and because of that, it is brutally clear that USA Gymnastics is involved with the Larry Nassar Cases because they covered up the abuse experienced by those gymnasts, many of the board members resigned, and there were many missed opportunities to protect these girls.

Is that the future athletes are ruining their athletic career before they are even out of college. In 2010 The University of Waterloo was having their football team investigated for the use of sport enhancing steroids. This all came about after the Warriors wide receiver Nathan Zettler was taken into custody by Waterloo regional police for selling and taking steroids. After this devastating event the University of Waterloo's whole football team was ordered to be tested for drug use. When the Canadian Center for Ethics in sport conducted the testing found something was would sure let the whole team down. The Canadian Center of Ethics in sport found are investigating nine athletes. These nine include three positive tests, one who declined drug testing and four admissions of use. The three athletes who tested positive for Illegal performance enhancing drugs are. Nathan Zettler who was in his final year at Waterloo. Zettler's position was wide receiver and was suspended for four years. Jordan Meredith was in his second year at Waterloo and plaid linebacker. Meredith was suspended for two years. Then finally the third player of the Warriors was Joe Surgenor who played linebacker as well and was in his first year at Waterloo, he was also suspended for two years. The Canadian Center of Ethics in sports came to a decision to

Unfortunately, the universal connotation of sexual assault is negative. Females often don’t want to be associated with sexual assault because they might be considered weak, shameful, or

Last week, the White House released a short, celebrity packed, 60-second public service announcement (PSA) on the topic of sexual assault. 1 is 2 Many addressed those who are in control of preventing sexual assault as its intended audience was those who can put a stop to sexual violence: the perpetrators or would-be offenders. Although this one minute announcement completed the task of bringing sexual assault to the forefront of discussion, it failed to encompass the central issues concerning the culture of sexual assault: societal misperceptions, the victims, and the justice system. Sexual assault is a phenomenon that has been around for centuries; the culture of sexual assault is rooted in both legal practices and societal perceptions.

University of Tennessee Knoxville was recently involved in a lawsuit for enabling athletes to sexually assault women by silencing the victims and failing to provide disciplinary actions or even investigation onto the accused. While this is a recent case, this is not the first time this sort of behavior involving a school has been brought into light. One in four women will be sexually assaulted by the end of their undergraduate career (Posluszny). Sexual assault happens throughout society no matter what the gender or age, seeming to be in increasing epidemic over the last few years. While the idea of sexual assault is largely met with public hostility in theory, actions often contradict this. This contradiction lies heavily in a culture that is unwelcoming to the victims and often leads to the perpetrators being tolerated. The existence of rape culture in western society occurs due to the preservation of violent media, patriarchal standards, and the state of the criminal justice system. This culture cannot be improved until we confront each of these problems to their roots.

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.

The FBI had stated that after conducting an investigation that these senior officials had known about Sandusky’s actions as early as 1998 and had failed to disclose this information to authorities. On October 9, 2012, Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years and a maximum of 60 years in prison. Spanier, Curley, and Schultz have been charged with grand jury perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and child endangerment in association with the scandal. Paterno and McQueary never had any charges pressed on them because they did what they were obligated to do. McQueary had reported the incident to his superior which is Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno also reported the incident to his superior who is Curley and Schultz. This whole situation caused a huge reaction nationwide.

Sexual assault policy in the United States as it stands is clearly inadequate for protecting the physical wellbeing of men and women from sexual assault. Layering of policy serves a s a Band-Aid on a social wound much too large to be contained and the rise of sexual assault as a public problem reiterates the need for greater legislation and policy to protect everyone from becoming prey to the crime of sexual assault. While eyes focus on the (disproven) rise of violence in the United States, and turn to gun control, other violent crimes are forgotten. Sexual Assault has seen several cases of policy failure that actors have tried to salvage through the act of policy layering and have not significantly resolved the problem.

The article introduces sexual assault to readers as a problem that is in line with other forms of violence such as domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. It gives a figure of 19% undergraduate women who have reported a complete or attempted sexual assault while in campus and worth noting is that in most of the incidences, the victims knew the perpetrators, who also feature in other related crimes.

The topic of sexual assault has always been a tough subject to discuss because it is a heinous crime that can and has happened to men, women, young and old. It is a topic that is disturbing and heart wrenching, especially when involving children. In the past few years, our media outlets have captured the images and stories on sexual assault, focusing mainly on College Institutions and how sexual assault cases have been handled within those institutions. Sexual assault is a very important topic to discuss, since this can happen to anyone you know, man or woman, adult or child, or yourself. This paper will touch on the different types of sexual assault, stigma of sexual assault, treatment of sexual assault, and understanding the perpetrator. There will be a brief discussion of the current social issue of college campus sexual assault. Sexual assault is such a wide topic with many areas to discuss, but this paper will outline the basic understanding of sexual assault and what can be done to overcome this stigma of sexual assault and how we can help the victims/survivors.

I choose this topic because sexual assault is one of the most offensive crimes committed in our society. Not only is it a threat to the community, but it has a physically and psychologically effect on the victim in many ways. For the last couple of decades, sexual assault, rape, and child molestation has become the focal point of public concerns today. According to a 1993 National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, about 500,000 rapes or sexual assaults occur each year (Statistics, March 2010). The Department of Justice states that, “rape crimes have risen nearly three times as fast as the total crime rate”, although other studies have shown statistics that are in

Social Media and local news coverage of high profile famous cases of sexual assault can give a misleading perceptions of the actual cause of the problem. Some of these articles talk about the stereotype with ‘stranger danger’ sexual assault and how it is actually not true.Most people who experience sexual assault are assaulted by someone who they actually

A major perpetuating factor in misinformation regarding sexual assault and rape culture is the media. Confusion about what constitutes rape leads many students to question whether or not they were a "real victim". Rape isn't always a violent crime committed by a stranger down some dark alley. It can

College-age adults are known to be high risk for sexual violence and most studies show that one in three women have experiences some type of sexual assault whether it was through physical force or harassment. These statics are known by most women on college campuses to ensure that women know and understand that this could happen to them. The issue is more than ensuring that women are aware of how protect themselves and know how to avoid these situations because it shouldn’t even be happening. When women are taught that they should know how to defend themselves we are saying that this type of behavior is normal and inevitable. We should shift from this dynamic and start teaching both men and women that this behavior is completely unacceptable and that sexually assaulting or harassing someone is NOT normal. This paper will mostly focus on incidents of rape and sexual assault on college campuses and what the outcome and reactions of these incidents were.