Rape Sexual Assault

On a college campus, a young female slowly returns to her dormitory a few hours before sunrise. She is a college freshman and she is embarrassed and confused. Late last night, she attended a party where alcohol flowed freely, the music blared and young men and women unabashedly flirted through the night. She vaguely remembers a young man guiding her up the stairs to a secluded room. She begins to cry as she reassures herself that she said the word no multiple times and physically attempted to stop the young man from stripping the clothes from her body and sexually assaulting her. She questions how she let this happen. After all, only months ago she was attending her high school graduation and weeks ago her parents were helping her move her

“One in five women are sexually assaulted while in college” (Not Alone, 2014). In our class of twenty women that means that possibly five women have been sexually assaulted. Out of the five women that I stated could have been sexually assaulted they may have known the perpetrator and often will not report what has happened. According to the spring count of students completed by West Chester University, 9,211 of those students were females (“Headcount Enrollment”, 2014). If I go by the statistic mentioned earlier that one in five women is assaulted that would mean that 1,842 women have been sexually assaulted while enrolled at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Out of 1,842 possible assaults only four were reported last year. Two of which the victims knew prior to the assault. Rankin and Associates consulting conducted a Climate Assessment on West Chester University in September of 2010, a section of the results focused on sexual assault on students. According to the report seven people who reported a sexual assault to the university described their reactions to the universities response. Two students shared the way they felt the response was inappropriate or poor. One described that they felt the suspension for one semester was not an appropriate response to an admitted rape, that public safety lost the victims statement, judicial affairs painted the victim offender as innocent, and that the registrar protected the offender putting the victim in harm’s way and everyone

“Among undergraduate students, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault” (RAINN). Rape is a threat virtually anywhere people go, but no place has a higher risk for sexual assault than college campuses. However, many of these occurrences go without penalties against the attacker, and even more are not reported at all. The lack of consequences for the accused indirectly suggests that rape and other forms of sexual assault are allowable and create further problems for the victims of the horrendous actions. Harsher punishments need to be given out for sexual assault on campus, as the current rulings are biased and immoral.

“I thought it was a progressive school. I thought the resources they advertised from the beginning were real resources I could count on. I felt even more betrayed when they failed me and then refused to acknowledge my earnest desires and pleas for them to evaluate what was happening to me” said Emma Sulkowicz, a student at Columbia University who was sexually assaulted and protested the lack of punishment the man who attacked her received by carrying around a 50 pound mattress, of her frustrations and disappointments towards her university (qtd. in Kim). The FBI says that rape is the second most serious crime, after murder (Mantel). Sadly, about twenty to twenty five percent of women will experience some form of sexual assault during the time

It is said that 88 percent of women sexually assaulted on campus do not report. (Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation 2015). Four to five percent of victims report but not to the police, nine to ten percent thought police would not to anything to help, ten to fourteen percent did not want to get the culprit in to trouble, twelve to nineteen percent thought that it wasn’t important enough to turn in, twenty percent were afraid of reprisal, and twenty three to twenty six percent thought it to be a personal matter (RAINN). The percentage of sexual assault claims that turn out to be false range from two to eight percent. When people are focused on those small numbers they forget to keep in mind how majority of the cases that go reported for sexual assault, turn out to be true.Then there are the cases that do get reported, and with these brings along the perpetrators who rarely get serious punishments. The majority of them will not go to jail or prison.

Sexual violence is a significant social and cultural problem within America and all over the world. Within the United States nearly 1 in 5 women – or nearly 22 million – have been raped in their lifetimes. Arrest rates for sexual assault cases are low as they are hard to investigate because of the effects of the trauma itself. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, approximately 12% of the 283,200 annual rape or sexual assault victimizations from year 2005-2010 resulted in an arrest at the scene or during a follow-up investigation. Findings from the same survey revealed that more than one-third of women reported experiencing a sexual assault at some point during their lifetime. Within American society, rape constitutes an experience

Sexual assault and rape are serious social and public health issues in the United States and throughout the rest of the world. In particular sexual assault on college campus are prevalent at an alarming rate and leaves serious effects on the victims. This essay will focus on statistics and the prevalence and effects amongst college students, through examining a number of reasons why women fail to report sexual assault and rape. This essay will also cover sexual assault prevention and things that can be done to mitigate the risk of becoming a victim to such matter.

‘Sexual Violence is more than just a crime against individuals. It threatens our families; it threatens our communities. Ultimately, it threatens the entire country’ (qtd. in Burleigh pg. 2). In the article, “Confronting Campus Rape” written by Nina Burleigh; a writer, journalist, and professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, describes what students are doing to force universities to take a stronger stand against campus sexual assault. Moreover Burleigh describes what the government is doing to make a difference on the issue. This includes laws that have created consequences for the assaulter and laws that protect the victim. According to Burleigh, a young woman called Laura Dunn was sexually assaulted on campus. Dunn was a student of UW. On April 4th, 2014, Dunn lost her virginity to two UW athletes. That night, Dunn was attending a party at the university. Dunn was enjoying the party and lost count of her alcohol intake. Dunn remembers being led out by two older teammates, who she knew. Dunn was very intoxicated, enough to stumble on her way back to what she thought would be another campus party, as one of the athletes helped her walk. The athletes led Dunn to one of their apartments where she found herself on a bed with both of them on top of her. Dunn was so intoxicated that she couldn’t help but to drift in and out of conscious leaving her unable to stop the two men. Dunn began to feel sick and was led to the bathroom by one of the athletes, where he penetrated her from behind while she was throwing up. That was a date Dunn would never forget. Dunn like many other women at the UW have been sexually abused by other students. Although Dun’s incident is shocking, it is not uncommon for women to be sexually assaulted on campus. A woman at the  university of Wisconsin is more prone to being sexually assaulted than any other woman in the country because of alcohol intoxication; this is a problem that must be resolved.

Despite having hundreds of sexual assault cases each year, most colleges take little action to resolve these cases. In fact, only 20% of female sexual assault survivors report cases, the rest believing that it was too personal to share, or that if they did, the police wouldn’t listen to them. If they did report, often times it was to the local police rather than the campus police in fear that they would be shamed or turned away by the universities.

Wait let me rephrase that. Rape is not sex. Repeat after me, RAPE IS NOT SEX. If you still think rape is still considered sex, please read a book. Sex is a wonderful thing that happens when both parties are consenting. Do you what that makes Rape? Violence. How many times do feminists need to make this clear? Take a minute and think about what Rape means to you. To a victim, Rape means abuse: emotional and physical abuse. Rape means "I can never go back. This is going to haunt me for the rest of my life."

The alarming increase in sexual assault among male and female students is a source of concern. Despite improvements in the general statistics on rape cases, the college setting remains to be the hot bed of sexual assault, especially among the female counterparts (Allen, 2007). A victim, regardless being a male or a female, never feel safe in their life as something precious was taken from them once. Statistics show that 17.6% of women are likely to be victims of rape in their entire lifetime while only 0.3% of males are estimated to be the victims of sexual assault. According to the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS), the most critical ages men and females are likely to be engaged in sexual abuse is when they are children or adolescents (Gonzales, Schofield & Schmitt, 2006).

Sexual assault and rape are on-going issues plaguing college campuses all across the nation. In part, I believe this is due to a lack of education on what sexual assault actually is. All too often, victims are leaving these situations feeling confused about something that they will forever deem "a weird night". It often isn't until much later that they realize what happened to them was a violation of their body and of their rights.

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.

An ongoing problem that has become normalized within college institutions is sexual assault/rape. Colleges are afraid to ruin their reputation with the ugly truth of high statistics of rape, frats and sororities lead to over drinking, and also people not taking a stand and remaining a bystander. Many colleges and students have proposed possible solutions in order to eliminate this injustice like creating groups that educate the importance of consent, protests, and the elimination of alcohol on campuses. Sexual assault is continuing to happen because of the lack of action from adults because they blame the victim instead of the perpetrator for what happened and they also ignore the fact that that person was sexually assaulted.

The problem of sexual assault continues to face women across the world to date. Victims of sexual assault experience various challenges including stigmatization, victimization, and majority of them end up being traumatized for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, the vice has become widespread and is no longer an issue facing women only but even men are also victims. Majority of the reported cases indicate that the perpetrators of the rape cases have been left to go scot free while some of the victims end up committing suicide because of the trauma. This paper looks into an analysis of the film “The Hunting Ground”, which shows the prevalence of sexual assault cases that have been on the rise across all the universities in the United States of America with little or absolutely no action being taken against the perpetrators. Women on campus are increasingly becoming more vulnerable while at the universities, with the majority of them falling victims to their friends and athletes.