FromNotAlone.gov,a new White House website that targets the epidemic of rape on college campuses. An Obama administration task force has also issued tough new guidelines aimed at helping/forcing colleges to do a better job of protecting students, supporting victims, and disciplining perpetrators of sexual violence.
Last January, the White House Council on Women and Girls reported that 1 in 5 female college students have been sexually assaulted, while only 1 in 8 student victims tell authorities about their attacks. “No one is more at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted than women at our nation’s colleges and universities,” the report said.
#didisayyes A poster in response to the recent rape of a CalArts Student who was asked by school administrators victim-blaming questions such as “how short was your dress?”
Rape culture is not just the amount of rapes that occur. It’s a social conditioning that that happens culturally, implicitly. It’s the violence, sexual assault and rape that is joked about and otherwise trivialized. It’s the reasoning given when a person that has been assaulted or attempted sexual assault that their trauma is meaningless.
Rape culture is not trivializing any rape that happens in the prison system or in other places. We are all aware that in other countries, you can be sentenced to death for being raped. However, this realization is not constructive for what is happening here. Rape exists. They are horrible acts of violence that occur to people all over the world. It is a serious crime not to be taken at face value. Unfortunately, as much faith as I’d like to put in our legal system for bringing all rapists to justice, and separating “fact from fiction,” you would have to be under the assumption that all rapes are reported. In fact, an astounding 1 in 6 American women have been the victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. Over 17.7 million American women have been victims of rape or attempted rape. Rape exists. Also men get raped. However, the reason it is not the focus of every rape awareness article is because females make up a significant part of the population (9 out of 10 victims were reported female).
It’s not a guilty until proven innocent situation, the amount of strength it takes for a person to come out and say they were raped and being put into the public sphere is humiliating. To accuse someone of rape is an incredible ordeal. Don’t you think the victim considers this? That is one of the reasons why so few rapes are reported. We have been taught to look out for our abuser, that they are otherwise a “good person” that don’t need their life ruined because of this. Other women fear the social stigma that goes around people being raped. Even if our country, if no woman will get sentenced to death for reporting her rape, in many communities, a raped woman is stigmatized as tainted. At the very least, she will be treated differently. When accusing a person of a rape, you are not only outing the rapist, they are outing themselves as a victim.
Since we were talking about college students earlier, I will continue using them as an example:
“Women ages 16 to 24 experience rape at rates four times higher than the assault rate of all women.
Fewer than 5 percent of college women who are victims of rape or attempted rape report it to victims tell someone, often a friend (but usually not a family member or college official). In one study, over 40 percent of those raped who did not report the incident said they did not do so because they feared reprisal by the assailant or others.15 In addition, some rape victims may fear the emotional trauma of the legal process itself. Low reporting, however, ensures that few victims receive adequate help, most offenders are neither confronted nor prosecuted, and colleges are left in the dark about the extent of the problem.16
Many acquaintance rape victims (using the legal definition of rape) do not label their assault as rape.† Perhaps it seems unimaginable that an acquaintance would rape them, and victims often initially blame themselves. Acquaintance rape victims offer a range of reasons for not reporting the rape to authorities:17
† One of the largest studies of the problem found that in nearly half the incidents legally categorized as completed rapes, the women did not consider the incident to be a rape (Fisher, Cullen and Turner 2000). [Full text]
embarrassment and shame,
fear of publicity,
fear of reprisal from assailant,
fear of social isolation from the assailant’s friends,
fear that the police will not believe them,
fear that the prosecutor will not believe them or will not bring charges,
self-blame for drinking or using drugs before the rape, self-blame for being alone with the assailant, perhaps in one’s own or the assailant’s residence,
mistrust of the campus judicial system, and
fear that their family will find out.”
If you see the reasoning for the underreporting of rapes committed, you will see the rape culture there. Rape culture is women not wearing heels or mini skirts outside at nighttime for fear and EXPECTATION of getting assaulted. Rape culture is the necessity of consent campaigns. Rape culture is the explicit fetishization of assault in the porn industry as creative expression.
Rape culture does exist. I think precisely the reason we disagree is because we are not on the same page for what it actually is. Rape culture is not just RAPE. It is the treatment that goes into trivializing sexual assault and belittling the victim.
You can always make the argument that talking about rape culture is trivial in comparison to all the other types of violence and oppression that exists in the world. However, that doesn’t mean that you should belittle it. This isn’t the oppression Olympics. Horrible things happen to people. Rape culture is a topic of conversation because its something that exists in our culture. No one is outwardly saying I SUPPORT RAPE, IT IS GOOD. If you think that’s what rape culture is, then you are missing the point.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the condescension I detected in your message reeks of insecurity of a constructive argument. We can debate, but sometimes cattiness can take away from the issue being discussed. Here are some sources and information regarding rape culture including some citations for statistics I’ve mentioned in this post. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
As a survivor of campus sexual assault, and as someone who became a feminist and an activist after my own experience of institutional apathy towards my attacks, I feel conflicted. I am so glad that this serious issue is getting more attention, but I am increasingly frustrated and almost scared by the lack of diversity that I see in the survivors receiving national media attention. As I look at photos and watch the media appearances of these resilient, brave survivors I can’t help to feel invisible. I browse a network of campus rape survivors who are working to combat institutional apathy towards rape victims and struggle to find other women of color who are like me.
Why does the representation of survivors in the media matter? Validation of black women of survivors would go against the jezebel stereotype that, in fact, black women are not all sexually insatiable creatures and can be raped. It would challenge attitudes that black women are more to blame for being survivors of sexual and domestic violence and that being raped is just as serious as if they were any other color. An important message that media attention on rape survivors means that “you matter.” Do not other survivors — whether they are men, of color, poor, LGBTQ, gender non-conforming matter, too?
What has contributed to young white women being the face of rape survivors in media? I do not know. It may be a reflection of our culture to be more sympathetic to white female survivors as talking about rape and rape culture in mainstream media becomes more prevalent (a sort of extension of “missing white woman syndrome”). It could be general distrust or fear of the mainstream media to properly tell our stories. Or maybe no one wants to listen. When I first was trying to get attention to my story, I remember reporters, producers, and magazines alike asking me to rehash the painful details of my story only to pick to feature other survivors: all of them pretty, female, and white.
For a long time, Joanna Espinosa struggled to make sense of it all.
Yes, he was her boyfriend. No, he hadn’t pinned her down, or threatened violence. But Espinosa insists that he coerced her, psychologically and physically, into having sex against her will for most of their three-year relationship. She resisted, told him no, pushed him away. More often than not, he persisted and she gave in “just to get it over with,” she says.
“I knew that it was sexual assault, but at the time, I felt extreme shame and was not ready nor willing to fully accept what was happening,” said Espinosa, 24. “Like most unpleasant truths, I buried it until the end of my relationship, when I realized I was holding onto a relationship with a man who was abusive.”
The relationship came to an end in February 2013. The next month, Espinosa filed a sexual harassment claim against her former boyfriend with her school, the University of Texas-Pan American, where some of the incidents occurred.
She says she went to the school first because she thought that without concrete evidence law enforcement would not take her seriously – a common experience among people who report rape to law enforcement, experts say. Besides, she knew that colleges and universities are federally mandated to investigate sexual violence under Title IX, a federal civil rights law that guarantees students the right to an education free of sexual violence, which is considered a form of discrimination.
Indeed, when she went to the city of Edinburg Police Department a few days later, she says they told her that her case would be difficult to prove and took her phone number. She never heard back from them, she says.
Her experience with UTPA administrators was no better, she says. At various stages of the investigation, they questioned why she did not come forward sooner with the abuse claims, suggesting she was acting out as a spiteful ex-girlfriend. In one meeting, she says, administrators asked whether their relationship was “Facebook official” or whether there was a “promise of marriage.”
It took five months for school administrators to reach the conclusion that Espinosa’s complaint was “unsubstantiated.” They did, however, conclude her ex-boyfriend abused his access to university facilities, and placed him on disciplinary probation for the remainder of his academic career, according to documents provided by Espinosa.
Espinosa’s voice quivers as she recalls the ordeal, which led her in 2013 to drop one class in the first summer session and request an incomplete in the second.
It was a punch in the gut after sleepless nights and constant self-doubt, she said. She believes the school violated her civil rights by mishandling the complaint and creating a sexually hostile environment.
A UTPA spokeswoman said the school had not seen Espinosa’s complaint, but noted the school does not comment on pending investigations.
Espinosa’s complaint makes UTPA the latest school to face criticism for its handling of a sexual assault report. So far in fiscal year 2014, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says it has received 16 complaints that included Title IX allegations specifically related to sexual violence.
Those numbers come on the heels of a marked year-to-year increase in complaints the department received, from 17 in 2012 to 30 in 2013.
The U.S. Department of Education laid out minimal requirements in a 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter for schools to follow in responding to reports of sexual harassment, or risk loss of federal funding.
The 19-page letter reminded schools that under Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, colleges and universities must apply a “preponderance of evidence” standard to reviewing rape cases, which means they must operate under the assumption that “more likely than not that sexual violence occurred.”
Now, many are under scrutiny from the federal government. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has 35 pending Title IX investigations involving allegations of sexual violence at schools such as the University of North Carolina, Princeton, Harvard, Swarthmore, the University of Southern California, Dartmouth and Occidental, a Department of Education spokesman told CNN.
Rape is a longstanding issue on college campuses, but the latest movement, led by student activists, survivors and faculty, recasts sexual violence as a cultural problem on campuses nationwide – not just a series of isolated incidents.
Students are taking matters into their own hands, filing complaints en masse and speaking out publicly.
They’ve flocked to advocacy groups such as End Rape on Campus and Know Your IX, which sprang from grassroots activism around university handling – or mishandling – of sexual violence.
The bravery of students who’ve spoken out – and their ability to connect to each other through social media – has sparked a paradigm shift on campuses, said Gina Smith, an attorney who has consulted with schools around the country on sexual assault policy.
“What we’re seeing is a demand that schools treat complainants with compassion,” Smith said. “Schools are stepping up and taking notice.”
From one campus to the next, the concerns are mostly the same, said sexual assault policy consultant Leslie Gomez: lack of clarity, students being mistreated, complex procedures and insufficient training among those leading the processes.
At the UTPA, Espinosa appealed the decision in her case, but the administration upheld it. She reached out to advocacy group End Rape on Campus, and a member of the group helped her file a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights.
“I’m not sure I would’ve come forward if all these people hadn’t done it before me,” Espinosa said. “I needed the validation. I needed someone to confirm, ‘You’re right you’re not blowing things out of proportion.
"It was a relief to hear someone tell me, 'You have a case, and they shouldn’t treat you this way.’”
Here are just some of the students and activists trying to change the way their schools handle sexual violence – for good. CNN does not name survivors of sexual assault, but is doing so in this case because these people, including Espinosa, chose to come forward in the hopes of holding their schools accountable and encouraging others to speak up.
Sarah O'Brien, Vanderbilt University
Despite an ongoing, high-profile rape case involving four football players, Nashville’s Vanderbilt University community hasn’t exactly rallied to change campus culture, alumna Sarah O'Brien, 22, said. But that hasn’t stopped O'Brien and others from working with administrators to clarify the school’s policies around sexual violence, and raise awareness of how the school can help.
“Our campus is not liberal and it’s not activist, so when a group of students come together around an issue it stands out,” says O'Brien, who graduated from Vanderbilt in December.
In 2010, an acquaintance raped her while she was drunk, she said. A series of frustrating encounters with school administrators led O'Brien to come out publicly as a rape survivor in fall 2012.
One administrator attributed her PTSD to the stress of being a student athlete; another told her a statute of limitations prevented her from reporting the rape.
She later found that Title IX gave her the option of seeking academic leniencies due to her PTSD diagnosis, but such provisions were not laid out Vanderbilt’s policy, she said.
“I just felt that university failed me in a lot of ways,” O'Brien said. “As I started talking to other women [at Vanderbilt], it became a common complaint.”
After going public, she organized a Take Back the Night event and began working with student athletes and survivors. She reached out to Know Your IX’s founders, culminating in a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education accusing Vanderbilt of violating of Title IX and the Clery Act, a federal law that requires public disclosure of crimes on campus.
The same month, campus group Vanderbilt Students of Nonviolence delivered an 11-page list of demands. Students asked the school for a single office focused on sexual assault prevention and treatment; a website that pulls together all campus resources and protections afforded under Title IX; posters around campus discouraging sexual violence; inclusion of students on boards related to campus life and sexual assault policies; and more training in sexual assault prevention for people on those committees.
It’s what O'Brien looked for and couldn’t find after her alleged assault, she said.
“The last thing you want to is dig through a bunch of websites and contact administrators who don’t know even know the policy when you’re dealing with a sexual assault,” she said.
Already, changes are under way. The campus hosted an open forum on sexual violence led by a lawyer.
In an e-mailed statement, Beth Fortune, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor for public affairs, said posters are up that say, “Sex without consent is sexual assault." The Project Safe website is live and the office is underway, among other efforts.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for victims of sexual misconduct to get the services they need,” Fortune said.
Since graduating, O'Brien is still involved with Vanderbilt Students of Nonviolence. She’s also working to build a shelter for survivors of sexual violence in Nashville.
“I think change will be a slow process,” she said, “but we’re starting to see it.”
John Kelly, Tufts University
Rape is something anyone can experience, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. It’s something John Kelly knows firsthand, and wants others to remember.
In just 18 months, the 20-year-old Tufts University student has gone from admitting to himself he had experienced partner rape to becoming a leading LGBTQ voice on education policy about sexual assault.
Like many survivors who go public, he did so out of frustration with his school’s adjudication process. Kelly believes the Massachusetts university let his attacker off easy – he was suspended, rather than expelled – because the school didn’t consider oral sex to be rape.
“It was really traumatic, trying and poorly executed,” Kelly said of Tufts’ adjudication process.
But other parts of the process revealed where Tufts “did a fantastic job.” The Title IX office performed a thorough investigation and advocated on his behalf when he was hospitalized after a suicide attempt, Kelly said. It facilitated a no-contact order for his attacker, arranged therapy and made sure he could return to classes.
“I saw the potential for Tufts to have a really strong policy,” he said. “We were halfway there; the problem was in the punishment phase.”
Kelly ran for student senate and got involved with the campus group Action for Sexual Assault Prevention. It teamed up with another group, Consent Culture Network, on an April 2013 letter to Tufts officials, calling for eight major policy changes.
A Tufts University spokeswoman said the school began to “take a deep look at all of its policies and procedures regarding sexual misconduct,” after the 2011 U.S. Department of Education letter, and continued those efforts in 2013, when the university president convened the Task Force on Sexual Misconduct Prevention.
School officials would not comment on Kelly’s case, and he has not filed a Title IX complaint against the school. He says he is trying to make headway by working on a task force subcommittee addressing prevention through policy and campus culture.
He’s also working with the national organization Ed Act Now, which drew more than 175,000 signatures on a petition urging Education Secretary Arne Duncan to hold schools accountable for failing to comply with Title IX and Clery laws.
Kelly and others met with Duncan and others from the Obama administration and Department of Justice. He now serves on the Department of Education’s Negotiated Rulemaking Committee on the Violence Against Women Act, helping to shape the regulations surrounding recent changes to the law.
“We want to make things more survivor-centered, make sure support systems are in place to increase students’ mental, emotional and physical safety,” he said.
Sofie Karasek, University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley was Sofie Karasek’s dream school, a progressive campus, perfect for an activist like herself. She never imagined she’d be advocating for herself.
Karasek said her path took a detour one night in her first year, when she was sexually assaulted at an off-campus event. Ashamed, she told just a few others, and buried the incident – until she learned the same person had assaulted three other students. In April 2012, they met with administrators to tell their story. The following month, Karasek and two others filed a report against him with the school, and waited to hear back.
Six months later, Karasek said she heard through a mutual friend about the resolution: He would be graduating early. No investigation had been conducted as far as she knew; at least none involving her or the other women.
“I gave them the benefit of doubt,” she said. It turned out they weren’t talking to anyone except him, she said, “to resolve it on his terms.”
The school responded to Karasek’s request for an update two days before his December 2012 graduation, saying that he had been found in violation of the student code of conduct and that the case was solved through an early resolution process, she said. The school only confirmed in September 2013 that he had graduated in December, she said.
UC Berkeley did not respond to requests for comment.
Karasek was emboldened to speak out about her experience. With the help of students from other universities, she and eight other students filed a Clery complaint against UC Berkeley in May. But instead of filing the complaint silently, she and another student issued a press release while attorney Gloria Allred held a press conference to announce that complaints had been filed against Berkeley, Dartmouth, Swarthmore and the University of Southern California.
The experience has launched Karasek into the activist spotlight. She testified at a joint legislative committee hearing in August 2013, leading the state legislature to order an audit of sexual assault policies at UC Berkeley and three other state schools. The results are expected in April.
In December, an aide from California Assemblyman Mike Gatto’s office reached out, asking whether she would testify on behalf of a bill requiring universities to report all sexual assaults and violent crimes to local law enforcement. Karasek suggested modifying the bill to require that that all violent crimes be reported except in cases where survivors request otherwise. He listened and introduced the amended bill to the state education code with her suggested caveat.
But progress at UC Berkeley has been “lackluster,” Karasek said. In September, the school introduced an interim policy that allows survivors to appeal their cases, among other changes. But Karasek wishes more meaningful improvements would come, including more staff dedicated to the issue, as well as Title IX coordinators, and for the “preponderance of evidence” standard written into UC Berkeley’s policy.
Really, what Karasek wants is the school to implement a process for formal hearings and investigations in sexual assault reports – something that was missing from her experience with the reporting process, she said.
But a Title IX advisory committee convened by the school chancellor to review policies that she sits on has only met once, she said. Otherwise, nothing much changed, she said.
“The people who are dedicated to changing policy are students,” she said. “We’re recognizing the snowball effect that comes from speaking out.”
Caroline Heldman, Occidental College
Caroline Heldman remembers how it feels to go to bed hungry or cold. She grew up poor in rural Washington state, and remembers the “pain of people looking down on you,” of being the first person accused when something went missing, and being shunned and teased. Still, her father’s Pentecostal leanings ingrained in her a duty to serve others and the view that “someone else’s suffering is my own suffering,” she said.
Heldman, an Occidental College professor, has become one of the leading faculty figures helping students file federal complaints involving the handling of sexual assault cases.
“There’s not a single school that isn’t thinking about this,” Heldman said.
Heldman and colleague Danielle Dirks helped 37 students and alumna file a Title IX complaint in 2013. She served as a faculty advisor to End Rape on Campus, which connects survivors with resources for treatment and options for holding schools accountable.
This past week, in a Google Hangout, she walked Espinosa, the University of Texas-Pan American student, through the process to file her complaint.
“My work is very much driven by the fact that we don’t live in a meritorious society and some people are more likely to experience pain and suffering than others,” she said. “A lot of us are very comfortable acknowledging that given certain circumstances, we could be in the same bad situation as someone else. But it’s more than that – it’s about seeing yourself in others.”
As a young idealist, Heldman thought she could fix everything that was wrong in the world – from the headlight ordinances she argued for as a child in Washington to the social justice causes she took up as an undergrad.
As a full-time professor with tenure at Occidental, Heldman feels a responsibility to speak up about how schools treat victims of sexual violence. Many educators have less freedom to speak out about controversial topics, she said, which puts her in a unique position to help.
“Power in colleges has shifted dramatically in recent years to the administrative side,” she said.
“Those of us who are tenured need to use our academic freedom because we’re the only ones at institutions who have power to speak out when administrations mistreat students.”
Anusha Ravi, Emory University
As far as Anusha Ravi is concerned, how a school deals with sexual assault is a reflection of the entire campus community – and it’s everyone’s job.
As more schools made national headlines with students’ allegations of mishandling of sexual assault reports, Ravi began to wonder, how are handling these kinds of things at handled at her school, Emory University in Atlanta?
That’s why the 20-year-old political science student joined the student group Sexual Assault Peer Advocates. The group provides training to undergraduate and graduate students about how to talk to sexual assault survivors.
It’s a skill most college students will need at some point, Ravi said. She has not personally experienced sexual assault, but she knows people who have. Understanding how to talk about sexual assault fosters a climate of openness within the school community, she said.
Because sexual assault affects women more often than men, she said, a school’s mishandling of sexual assaults projects a sexist image, and for better or worse, so much has to do with image.
“It doesn’t look good for higher education in general and doesn’t make an institution look good,” she said. “As a college student, I do believe that when people are evaluating their own education, they’re not only looking at classes, but campus culture and safety.”
So far, Ravi is satisfied with Emory’s approach.
After the 2011 Department of Education letter, Emory created a university-wide sexual misconduct policy and adjudication process in 2013, a university spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
The school now has Title IX coordinators for each college and supports groups such as Sexual Assault Peer Advocates in its efforts to improve campus culture.
The group has trained more than 1,000 people, from fraternity groups to residence advisers, Ravi said.
“Nobody wants to be the school that treats people poorly, especially sexual assault survivors,” she said. “We all have a role to play.”
Because fewer than one-third of US university sexual assault policies state that a survivor’s dress and past sexual history may not be discussed during disciplinary proceedings.
Read more about campus rape policies in this Students Active For Ending Rape(SAFER) infographic:
