The Link Between Alcohol And Sexual Assault

There is presently much controversy regarding acquaintance rape victims and their level of culpability. Benevolent sexists promote the belief that these individuals can actually be blamed for their experiences because they adopted behaviors that were sexually immoral and that influenced the perpetrators to go through with their plans. Barbara Masser, Kate Lee, and Blake M. McKimmie's article "Bad Woman, Bad Victim? Disentangling the Effects of Victim Stereotypicality, Gender Stereotypicality and Benevolent Sexism on Acquaintance Rape Victim Blame" attempts to provide more information in regard to how particular factors might influence acquaintance rape victims.

There is a definite correlation between alcohol and sexual assault. A sexual assault can be defined as a sexual act occurring without verbal consent, or when force is used in a sexual encounter against the other person's will. Of all the men who admit to committing sexual assault, 55% report being under the influence of alcohol at the time, with 26% of the men being drunk (Stanford University, 1999). Of all the women who report being sexually assaulted, 53% of them report being under the influence of alcohol, with 21% of these women being drunk (Stanford University, 1999). These facts suggest that alcohol is a major factor in sexual assaults. Crimes such as these could be greatly reduced if

“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.”

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.

On January 17th, 2015, Brock Turner, a 20-year-old Stanford freshman, sexually assaulted a 23-year-old unconscious women behind a dumpster located near a house party. The victim, who decided to not state her name and will therefore be referred to as Emily Doe, admitted in a letter she read aloud in court that that night she drank too much, too fast. However, this isn’t an excuse ‘nor a way to justify Brock’s actions. Someone who is drunk and unconscious should not be taken advantage of, they are still a person who should be respected no matter the circumstances.

Through my reading of the article titled “Can she consent to sex after drinking” by Margaret Wente I identified two rape myths. As we know, rape myths are a set of beliefs about rape and sexual assault that feed into rape culture. These uneducated beliefs place the blame on rape victims rather than the perpetrators and attempt to blur the line between rape and consensual sex. In Wente’s article the rape myths I found are “As for those armies of would-be rapists lurking in every shadow – they’re your sons, your grandsons, your nephews and your brothers” and “If two young people get hammered and have drunken sex, he is responsible for his behaviour, but she’s not responsible for hers”. In the first rape myth the author uses a sense of sarcasm, what she is essentially say is that the people who you are calling rapist are in fact just your innocent friends and family. The author is assuming that people who commit acts of sexual violence are not people that we know. She uses this quote to make readers think that rapists are dark, devious, and unknown people. However, we know that in reality this is not the case, in approximately 80-90% of sexual assault cases the perpetrator is someone the victim knows. An overwhelming majority of rapes that occur on campuses are actually done so by the person the victim is dating or an acutance. Although the author tries to assume friends and family are not rapist, studies would argue to the contrary. In the second rape myth the author is

The Steubenville and Glen Ridge rape cases are two very similar cases. The perpetrators were football student athletes with promising futures and the victims were teenage girls whose capability of consenting to the acts done to them were questioned. One of the victims was seventeen-years old and had an intelligence quotient of 64 and the reading comprehension of a second grader. The second victim was sixteen-years old and was publicly assaulted while she was completely intoxicated. This paper will discuss each victim and their perpetrators, as well as the trial sentencing and prosecution. It will explore the different reactions from the community and the debate over the victim’s responsibility leading towards the incident. In both rape

According to the Los Angles College Consortium (n.d.) there are effects associated with alcohol use they include that the use of alcohol is a factor in most college rapes, alcohol is considered the number one date rape drug, and there is an increase in the likelihood of sexual assault among acquaintance during social interactions. Drug-facilitated sexual assault is defined as “unwanted sexual contact or intercourse that occurs when the victim is too intoxicated or high from alcohol and/or a drug given to her without her consent or against her wishes” (Lawyer et al, 2010, p. 454). Other drug-facilitated sexual assaults include GHB, Rohypnol, ketamine, and Soma (Los Angeles College Consortium, n.d.). These drugs render victims unconscious and they tend to have little or no memory of what happened (Los Angeles College Consortium, n.d). Examples include the following heavy alcohol use was found to predict later sexual assault in a sample of 274 college women, sexual assault were nine times higher on days when a woman reported heavy drinking than days where no alcohol was consumed, and approximately one third to one half of victims report drinking at the time of the assault (Kaysen, Neighbors, Martell, Fossos, & Larimer, 2006). Cases of drug facilitated sexual assault tend to fall through the cracks in the criminal justice system according

In Daniel Luzer’s article “Is Alcohol Really to Blame for the Prevalence of Sexual Assault on College Campuses?” he suggesting that alcohol is not the reason for the continuous sexual assaults at the college level, published on November 18, 2013 by Pacific Standard. In this article Daniel along with other sources suggest that all of the sexual assaults in college, although may involve alcohol, should not be blamed on alcohol, but on the society we have become. They suggest how college students mingle today is different than how they did years ago, and college students are not assaulting females because they are drunk, but because they have not been taught that it is wrong to do so. Different studies have shown that alcohol in colleges has not

In Daniel Luzer’s article titled “Is Alcohol Really to Blame for the Prevalence of Sexual Assault on College Campuses?” published on November 18th, 2013 by Pacific Standard, the reality about sexual assault is shared. While in college, many teens are reporting more sexual assault cases on campus, but is alcohol really to blame? Due to the consumption of alcohol, behavior changes occur for both men and women. Many believe girls are at fault for putting themselves in the position to be assaulted because of their decision to drink. On the other hand, people also blame the boys for their drunken violence towards girls while intoxicated. Alcohol is not the only misdemeanor in this case. Throughout history, changes are occurring in teens’ social

Today there is more than just on kind of rape. There's acquaintance rape and date rape. Acquaintance rape is rape in which the rapist and the person being raped know each other. Date rape on the other hand is rape that occurs in a dating situation (Meek Heit 120). Date rape is most likely to be an impulsive act instead of the usual planned act. Alcohol and drug use plays a big role in date rape,

One night, “Amy,” a student at State, was hanging out with some friends in her room. “A bunch of people were there, and one guy I didn’t know was obviously drunk and kept asking me out. I tried to brush him off, and didn’t take it seriously because he was drunk. I left to go to sleep. “He followed me to my room and kept banging on my bedroom door, trying to push it open and asking me to talk to him. I talked to him for a little while just to appease him.” Finally, the guy’s friends coaxed him away from Amy’s door. “I don’t know if that’s sexual harassment,” she said. “I wasn’t worried that he was going to assault me. The whole thing was just annoying.”

The main debate amongst the explanation is the key motivation that drives the offender to commit rape. Previously, majority of social scientists’ perspective of rape is seen as a sexually motivated crime; for instance, males are given the opportunity to fulfil their sexual desires that cannot be met legally, thus

There are still quite a few debates and questions revolving around the correlation between alcohol and/or drug use and sexual aggression and sexual assault (Swartout & White, 2010). It has been shown that males in college exhibit higher levels of sexually aggressive behaviours. In a national survey conducted on college men, 25.1% of them, before the age of fourteen, said that they had

In the United States rape completely toxic and it’s a dangerous myth. On college campuses where drinking is prevalent, most victims don’t report their assault to the police because of the fear of being blamed for the incident. “A recent National Crime Victimization report showed that only 55% of sexual assaults reported in their survey were reported to the police” (Hayes, Abbott, Cook 2016). Hayes goes on to explain that rape myths are defined as “attitudes and false belief held