When Sam*, KHS student, was raped two years ago he did not tell the police. He did not tell his parents. In fact, he told no one.
During the final months of his eighth grade year, when most students were getting excited for the upcoming spring break, Sam was raped by his girlfriend at a park while they were on their second date. After keeping how he felt about the assault bottled up inside of him for eight months, he slowly began to open up. He got many supportive responses from his friends, but others were not as sympathetic. Classmates took to calling him a slut and one went of out the way to tell Sam that he deserved what happened, that it was his fault he was raped. At first, Sam blamed himself for the assault.
“Afterward, I thought, ‘what did I do wrong?’ I mean we were dating and [sex] is a part of dating, so maybe it was my fault,” Sam said. “I thought, ‘why did this happen to me?’ I feel like there’s a part of me missing [since my girlfriend was] never prosecuted, but proving to the system that [sexual assault] happened is very difficult.”
When a sexual assault occurs, the victim has the opportunity to participate in a forensic exam to preserve possible DNA evidence and receive medical care, and all evidence from the exam is stored in a box called a rape kit. While rape kits can last for years and be a crucial part of prosecuting a rapist, getting one can be a lengthy and difficult procedure. The exam can take up to four hours, the victim has to receive the exam
Jade does not receive adequate treatment from her counselor when reporting a recent sexual assault. Her integrity is questioned, and the counselor advises her to forget the incident ever happened. The rapist receives no punishment or consequences for his actions. Cases similar to this hypothetical situation occur regularly. Victims of sexual assault often resort to dropping their cases due to the lack of support and services offered by the college. Students continue to fight for the fair treatment of everyone on campus. The problem with reporting sexual assault during college lies in the unfair treatment of the victims and the limited consequences and punishment for the rapist. Colleges have attempted to lower
During the spring of 2014, a 15 year old girl at St. Paul’s School had been raped by then senior, Owen Labrie Jess Bidgood and Motoko Rich, from The New York Times, state in their article, “Rape Case Puts Focus on Culture of Elite St. Paul’s School” that the senior had pre- planned his “senior salute”, a school ritual in which older students make sexual advances towards the younger ones. With the evidence of a handwritten list, prosecutors concluded that Labrie had the intentions of “scoring” the most girls, with the victim’s name in capital letters. Prosecutors said that the young girl did not feel comfortable with his advances at first, but after some persuasion from a mutual friend, she decided to go along with it. However, Labrie’s plans
In 1993, an unknown assailant raped, sodomized, and robbed at gunpoint Natasha Alexenko, a 20-year-old college student living in New York City, while she walked to her apartment. After the assault, Alexenko went to her apartment and waited for an ambulance to take her to the hospital. At the hospital, Alexenko had a rape kit collected. The New York City Police Department exhausted all leads, however they could not identify Alexenko’s attacker. Alexenko’s rape kit remained in an NYPD property office for nearly a decade.
In the article “Athletic club weekend turns into a nightmare for college freshman” by Carol smith and Lee Van Der Voo, Emily Lorenzen shares her story of being a rape victim. Emily shares her account because she wants to help to prevent rape from happening to anyone else. After interviewing Emily the authors shared a statement expressing that “Emily lorenzen believes that if people hear her story, they will be more comfortable confronting the issue of sexual assault on campus. She wants more conversation, so that men get a clearer definition of rape, face stiffer penalties if they ignore it and administrators learn to reach out to women like her and show compassion. She especially wants bystanders to step up and protect people who are vulnerable.” Rape victims need support to not feel guilty or ashamed, and that is exactly what Emily and her father desire. On this topic, Shipman an influential contributor of the Spokane sexual assault
Andrea, a Cuban America, who was a student at University of North Carolina (UNC) was sexually assaulted at an on-campus party. She recalls her head being banged up against the wall. Talking with friends, she found out that many other people were raped the same weekend she was. She did not want to talk about it, or admit that it happened. She had nightmares frequently.
Hannah is a lot like myself, and I believed nothing like this would ever happen to one of us. We were top tier athletes, students, and spent all our free time sleeping or eating rather than partying. I learned that it is never up to the victim and the strongest of people can be taken advantage of. Hannah was tricked into trying a drink that was drugged when no one was watching. Talking to the guy, trying to be nice because he was a friend of a friend. I had engaged in a fundamental attribution error by making judgements on similar situations without knowing all the details. Now, sexual assault victims look very different.
One in four college-aged women has experienced rape or attempted rape, although 95% of attacks go unreported.” According to a survey from the American Association of University Women, the results showed that there are 3% of women in the colleges across the country have been raped or have suffered attempted rape. While only 2% of incapacitated rape survivors report assault. There are several reasons why many women do not report being raped or sexually assaulted. Many female college students buy into myths about rape and sexual assault causing them to believe that it was their fault and that they were somewhat responsible for what happened. Most victims usually blame themselves, so they choose not to come forward, some others are scared that law enforcement won’t believe them, while others are simply embarrassed, or they might be afraid their attacker might retaliate. A friend of my friend, she has been sexually assaulted after deinking, but sadly as a victim of a rape, she was too scared to step forward and she didn’t even report the rape to the law enforcement because she thought it was her fault to drink alcohol. She was also too embarrassed and uncomfortable to talk about the rape and answer any questions. Even she chose to drink alcohol, what happened is not her fault. Because whatever the reason is, no woman should blame herself for being raped or sexually
A stressed college student, Margot, is walking back to her dorm late at night when suddenly she feels a tap on her shoulder. When she turns around, she sees a seemingly kind face of a peer. He offers to walk her to her dorm and asks to come inside. The next day she is still in shock from the night before, she never said no when he came onto her, but she never said yes either. She doesn’t want to cry rape in fear of what people might think. This is the harsh reality for college students all across the United States today. Nobody wants to believe that their child or friend could be guilty of such a harsh, but common crime. The truth is, these crimes happen on a daily basis. Sexual assault has been an issue on college campuses since the early
They may feel anxious about running into their perpetrators. Afraid of walking across the dark school alone. Embarrassed that people may find out what happened. Campuses need different types of counseling services specifically for victims of sexual crimes. Individual or group counseling, peer counseling, rape crisis centers, and other forms of assistance need to be readily available and advertised so that victims can get the help that they need. Counselors need to help victims realize that the event or events that took place was not their fault and help them recover not only physically but also emotionally and psychologically. These individuals need to be available because a rape or sexual assault can happen at any time of any day. While this can cost campuses a lot of money and resources, they have a moral obligation to at least offer minimal counseling and other resources for their students. However, many victims do not report the incident and will not seek counseling. Students are more likely to tell their friends what has occurred (Daigle et al., 2008). As a result, campuses need to use this angle to educate students about how to help a person that has experienced something as traumatic as being
Rape victim Heather Jurey speaks out about her rape. She says she was at a bar when a guy came up and asked her if she would like a drink. She replies, “Sure that will be fine” after a few hours her body began to feel funny. She knew she had only had 3 drinks over the course of several hours and knew she had been drugged. Heather said she was pushed into the car and then blacked out. She woke up to the man who had asked her if she would like a drink. He was on top of her raping her, with two other guys around watching. Heather pushed them away and grabbed her belongings and began to run while running she called her friend, once her friend picked up, Heather began explaining everything to her. Molly advised her to go to the hospital. Heather believed that she was sexually assaulted by 3 different men; all she wanted to do was go home and take a shower, because she felt disgusted. Heather speaks out in hopes to inform women and men to “Never accept drinks from strangers, and if so go to the bar with them. Never go out alone make sure you have a friend.”(Anderson, 2012) Those ae great rules to go by to ensure or reduce the chances of being drugged that can later result in being raped.
Rape defined is forcing sexual intercourse upon someone without his or her consent. This isn’t just a girls’ problem, boys have to deal with this too. According to the American Psychological Association, nearly one in ten girls and one in twenty boys say they have been raped or experienced some form of sexual assault (Atlanta Journal, 1). Almost more than half of rape victims know their attacker; they don’t report it or tell anybody. In most date rape cases, the attacker and victim have known each other for at least a year or even longer. Only about 10 percent of rapes are reported, less than that go to court. According to data taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one forcible rape is reported to the police every six minutes, on
The youth in our society need to know most about rape culture. If children are our future, then the subjects of ending rape culture should start with them. The human mindsets start with children's experiences from family education and school education. By including this important issue with school education, would open doors for children to have a conversation with parents, which could ultimately make the issue of sexual assault easier topic of discussion. Although, I believe the issues of rape culture should be discussed in school, I don’t believe teachers should teach the issues. I think having a guest speaker, would be a better fit in this situation because they would have the information clearer, than having to re-teach an entire group of teachers, and keep them up to date surrounding the issue. The cost of this would not be a problem because a lot of organization have guest speakers go to schools and educate our youth for free. This would be a great addition in our youth required health classes.
The topic that we talked about in the class, Sex Crimes and the Law that really interested me was the topic of rape. After having the guest speaker that was a Temple student really bothered me and I thought about it for days. For starters, I think it is absolutely scary that she was rapped on Temple University’s campus, to be exact in Peabody hall and absolutely nothing was done to help her. This is bothering me the most because I am a Temple student, this happened in her own room, no one helped her, and her rapist is still out there. I feel horrible that no one even tried to help and most people even made it seem like it was her fault by saying things such as “you know you wanted it”. No one wants to be rapped and the victim should never be to blame. This poor girl tried to kill herself multiple times. I believe that no one should go through this trauma alone or even go through it at all. Since our guest speaker, I have gone on a binge of watching Law & Order: SVU and even through about becoming a special victim unit detective for my career. Another reason that the topic of rapped bothered me was because just recently one of my friends came out and said that she was raped by her boyfriend. No one even knew this happened until she made it public on Facebook. For the longest time she was drawn back and really did not hang out with the group and now I know why. The guest speaker really helped me to understand, just to be there for her. When she wants to talk she will and not
This literature review provides a brief overview of six scholarly articles and other facts about sexual assault .This review will first define sexual assault as it is defined in these articles. It will analyze the strengths and limitations of the definition used and will discuss the occurrence of sexual assault in the general population.This review will also illustrate the protective factors, barriers to recovery , impact of development and the specific sexual assault population that are absent in these articles. Sexual assault is a societal issue that impacts men and women at every age in their life, it’s much more highly reported among college aged women. The majority of women who are victims of rape are
Rape is a topic that has been well discussed in today’s society, as well as throughout history. Rape tends to be defined or categorized as many different things. Campus rape is an increasingly apparent issue, in which there have been several different methods of action taken to help reduce the risk. Even though rape is one of those things that we will never be able to be put to an end to completely, there are ways to fight it and bring awareness to it. A great example of campus rape I will use in this paper would be Emma Sulkowicz, a student that was attending Columbia University, and was raped on the first day of her sophomore year, and the campaign she started, the “Mattress Performance (Carry the Weight),” in order to bring awareness to her case and campus rape in general.