Monthly Archives: May 2010

Beyond the Campus: Week 7 & 8

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I can’t seem to get over this story, or read about it without getting that pit feeling in my stomach, about the 23 year old woman in Flushing, Queens, NY who was struck on the head with a metal pipe on her way home with her groceries, dragged into an alleyway and raped with the pipe – an attack that left her brain dead, and shortly thereafter killed her (further breaking your heart, her mother had to fly to the US from China to claim the body). What’s worse is that it seems like the case of Kitty Genovese all over again – witnesses apparently saw the attack, but did nothing to help. Feministing comments, ”What’s worse is that all the NY Post commenters seem to care about is whether her murderer is ‘illegal’ or not.” Amanda Hess at The Sexist also points out that all the prevention tips in the world couldn’t have stopped such a brutal attack.

Following up with the story from last week about two boys accused of raping an 8 year-old girl in the UK…the lawyer for one of the boys (a woman!) claimed: “What this case is about is not a serious crime. It is about children. There is a game called ‘You show me yours and I will show you mine’.” Except for when those children RAPE. The boys were eventually found guilty, and then cleared of rape, as their ages were called into question for a fair trial (there was also this case of a teen being tried as an adult for sexual assault). After delivering the verdict, the judge told jurors: “It was an extremely difficult case.” No it wasn’t. There are some who believe that a child of that age can’t possibly know the weight of such an accusation, but as Change.org points out, does that mean that we shouldn’t take a child’s rape claim seriously? Does the age of the perpetrator really matter to a victim of rape, and especially when that victim is a child?

If only that was the only story I had on child rape. The Church of Scientology has been accused of covering up an 11 year-old girl’s rape (does sexually abusing children put them on par with more widespread religions like the Catholic Church??), and there’s this awful instance of child trafficking of a 14 year-old girl who was drugged, raped, and tortured for two weeks in a Brooklyn basement. And as one Feministing Community member pointed out, you’re never too young to be slut-shamed! As one middle school urged in their memo, did you know that dressing provocatively makes you dumber?? On the other end of the age spectrum, an 89 year-old woman was raped in the UK by a 28 year-old man. Respect your elders?

Another big theme these past two weeks was sexually-harassing cops. One detective was charged with demanding sex from the women he arrested, and not to be outdone, another cop went on trial for sexual abuse and rape, promising women jobs and programs for their children in return for sex, and threatening them if they told anyone (which according to him is false and all a conspiracy). In another case, a man witnessed a cop assault his girlfriend, reported it, and now faces deportation.

I want to leave you with these two news items, and would love to hear your opinions. First, the Supreme Court ruled that sex offenders can be kept in prison “indefinitely” if federal officials believe they could still be a threat. Do you think this is fair? (Also keep in mind last week’s story about the rapist who was jailed for 30 years and still continued to rape.) And second, what does everybody think about England and Wales’ move to grant rape defendants anonymity? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Amanda is the author of the blog The Undomestic Goddess.

Washington Post Article Misses the Mark

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I found the title of the article “Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence” in the Washington Post to be extremely misleading. I expected to read a some stories of how schools are adequately and sincerely making efforts to prevent and respond to crimes such as rape, but instead I found myself reading a boring, shallow article that barely grazes the real picture of violence on college campuses and how institutions are dealing with it.

One thing that resonated with me, though, is a trend that I am sure is a huge factor in the lack of proper response to gender-based violence:

“Most students don’t think violent relationships are a problem at college…If students think about abuse at all, they picture an older married couple, maybe poor or alcoholic — nothing like their friends at school.”

I would not hesitate to think that those false assumptions stop at students – many college administrators probably believe that, too, which obviously is a recipe for disaster. The media has taken a liking to highlighting the tragedy of Yeardley Love’s murder at University of Virginia as a sort of anomaly, while I hesitate to think that’s the case. I think that the perfect combination of a young white woman attractive by mainstream standards with the right people caring and spreading the word has contributed to her name becoming nationally recognized.

The article periodically throws in some lukewarm, general statements about measures that are supposed to be preventing sexual violence. “Schools can offer a level of protection beyond the criminal justice system’s capabilities” – they can but do they? The Center for Public Integrity has made it clear that schools often opt to let a student accused of rape go free, rather than have a legitimate, thorough investigation and subsequent judicial process.

I think the journalist who wrote this failed to paint a proper picture of what is being done about violence on college campuses. One commenter, 3russells, seemed to have agreed with me. If you remember, Yeardley Love murderer was a student at UVA. 3Russells details a history of sexual violence that has happened at UVA for years and lack of response.

“UVA maintains a zero tolerance for cheating but not for rape….

In 2005 the University responded to a Freedom of Information request to divulge the exact number of student reported rapes. The UVA response was 52. That’s 52 crimes that resulted in zero arrests, zero sanctions…

In addition, the Dept of Education found UVA to be in violation of the Clery Act.”

Schools shouldn’t be merely TRYING to respond to sexual violence. They SHOULD be responding to it and preventing it. Most college campuses are no stranger to gender-based violence, so it is not a legitimate excuse to say that the sudden media spotlight of a murdered student suddenly awakened them to this prevalent, urgent issue.

Merely having policies, education programs, judicial processes in place isn’t enough alone. We should be looking at how effective these measures are and if they’re actually being implemented properly.

Take Back the News!

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So, I can’t believe I have never heard of Take Back the News! On Monday I mentioned that I wanted to be more knowledgeable and involved in issues of media ethics and sexual assault, and then I just happened to come across the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs’ “Media Savvy Youth: Challenging Pop Culture Messages that Contribute to Sexual Violence,” which re-prints Take Back The News’ examples of media misrepresentation and under-representation of sexual violence.  The lists include a number of familiar media crimes, like calling it sex instead of rape, playing up cases of false accusation/imprisonment and stranger rape, victim-blaming, and using “titillating” language. Also mentioned are a couple of issues close to our heart like little coverage of the “number of rapes publicly reported on college campuses and similar institutions” and “little coverage of rape experienced by women of color, and how violence against women and racism cooexist.”

The Media Responsibility portion of the site also includes a list of problematic newspaper headlines (e.g., “‘Forgetful’ rape suspect,” February 10, 2007; New York Post; “Jury Convicts Ex-Principal of Having Sex with Student,” March 30, 2007; New York Times) and a short list of “Examples of Appropriate Media Representation”:

1.) including both the victim’s and perpetrator’s voice

2.) the victim is treated with respect, and the implication is that a crime did in fact occur

3.) the severity of the crime is acknowledged

4.) attention is given to the emotional/psychological long term effects of the crime in addition to any physical consequences

5.) attention is given to the broader issue of sexual assault and the difficulty in prosecuting the crime

But Take Back the News offers a lot more. Started in 2001 by Emily Brandt (and sadly ended in 2009 it seems), TBTNews also has great resources for organizers who want to start a “community print project” that highlights rape survivors’ voices in local media and offers a step-by-step for how to write a letter to the editor regarding offensive media portrayals of sexual violence. Emily also collected a really powerful archive of survivors’ stories, organized by category like “acquaintance assault,” “experience with criminal justice system,” and “personal healing.”

It’s a really amazing site that I highly recommend checking out and that I will definitely be adding to our Activist Resource Center. I also really enjoyed this interview with Emily from from 2004.

[P.S., a quick search of our blog shows me that TBTNews has been featured here before...but as it's all new to me, I think it's OK to do a repeat!]

A Story About Campus Violence

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Let’s imagine for a moment that it’s a Saturday night at Anywhere College. A group of guys is out for the night at a bar off campus, having fun, drinking, nothing out of the ordinary…except for Paul who is acting a little strange. He’s had a hard week—on Wednesday he found out that his girlfriend cheated on him, on Thursday his parents called to tell him that his grandmother had died. He had been slacking off on a group project in Sociology, and on Friday his group members told the Professor that he hadn’t contributed and the Professor told him he would not receive a passing grade on the project. So Paul, he’s depressed and angry, and he’s drinking heavily. Maybe he has a history of being aggressive, got into a few fights in high school. Whatever’s going on, it’s all getting to be too much and as the night goes on, he sinks further and further into a sour, destructive mood.

The friends leave the bar, and as they’re walking down an empty street to find the one sober guy’s car, one of Paul’s Sociology group-mates, Jeff, turns the corner and is walking towards them. Jeff was the one who did the most of the work and the one who encouraged the others to complain about Paul, and he makes a snide remark under his breath as he passes Paul and his friends. Something snaps—Paul loses it, and he punches Jeff in the face. Jeff falls, and Paul kicks him while he’s down. Something’s come over him, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing but he’s punching Jeff repeatedly. His friends finally pull him off and, scared, they all run away leaving Jeff on the ground. A few minutes later another student turns onto the street, sees him, and calls the hospital. Jeff is unconscious, badly beaten, has broken ribs, a broken nose, terrible bruises. When he regains consciousness, he calls the police and says he wants to report an assault.

Jeff names Paul as his assailant and the police start an investigation. Paul denies the charges, and because all of his friends back him up (they weren’t even on that block! They took a different route back to campus!) there are no witnesses. However, Paul had busted open his knuckle while punching Jeff and some of his blood got on Jeff’s shirt. So Paul is arrested, indicted, and arraigned, and a trial is scheduled for three months later.

Now, there is no science to the claim I am about to make; no research, no statistics, just a gut feeling: but I bet that Paul gets suspended until after the trial. Because “we at Anywhere College violence very seriously—it’s an institution of learning, where safety is paramount, and we will not tolerate violations of students’ safety.”

Maybe I’m wrong, but doesn’t that sound about right? You get indicted for beating the shit out of your classmate and you get suspended?

So why doesn’t that hold in cases of rape?

[I want to be clear that the above isn't meant to mimic the dynamics of a sexual assault in any way, just a way to illustrate another kind of campus "misconduct"]

Welcome to SAFER’s Blog (In case you’re new here)

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So, the ladies over at Jezebel chose to re-publish this morning’s post about a University of Missouri student struggling to find and prosecute her rapist while trying to heal and graduate. Thanks so much to them for choosing a SAFER post! I always read the posts Jezebel puts up about sexual violence, especially for the content as much as the comments—it usually ends up being a pretty powerful space where women share their stories and I really appreciate that community aspect. Already the comments on the Jez post are breaking my heart, but reminding me of why it’s important to write about this stuff.

But in case some Jezebel readers (like me! only not already part of the organization!) wind up here and don’t know what SAFER is all about, here’s the brief backstory, as found on our website. (You can also follow us on twitter or facebook)

Started by Columbia University students in 2000, Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) is the only organization that fights sexual violence and rape culture by empowering student-led campaigns to reform college sexual assault policies. An all-volunteer collective, SAFER facilitates student organizing through a comprehensive training manual; in-person workshops and trainings; free follow-up mentoring; our Campus Sexual Assault Policies Database; and a growing online resource library and network for student organizers. SAFER firmly believes that sexual violence is both influenced by and contributes to multiple forms of oppression, including racism, sexism, and homo/transphobia, and view our anti-sexual violence work through a broader anti-oppression lens.

Strong college sexual assault policies are a key element in the prevention of sexual assault. Despite the well-known prevalence of sexual violence among college students, current college sexual assault policies commonly lack primary prevention efforts and due process procedures, exclude student input, traumatize survivors, and ignore disparate treatment of survivors and assailants based on gender, class, race, sexual orientation, and disability. By maintaining inadequate policies and resisting student demands for change, colleges create an atmosphere that condones violence, silences survivors, and reduces equal access to the benefits of a college education. Committed to social change through community mobilization, SAFER arms students with the tools needed to mobilize communities and make lasting change on campus.

If you have any questions, please: contact us.

The Struggle After Rape; One Student’s Story

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Yesterday the Columbia Missourian (which is staffed by students at the Missouri school of Journalism) published a really excellent, extremely sad, piece (which is triggering, as may be the rest of this post) on a University of Missouri student who just graduated this month, but was forced to spend her senior year reeling in the aftermath of rape. The student, “J,” woke up with a condom wrapper on her pillow and no memory of the night before. After an exam at the hospital, it became clear that she had been raped.

J’s story highlights a number of routine struggles for rape victims. For one thing, there is the issue of not knowing how and where to get the proper care. Although the hospital gave J Plan B and antibiotics (although sadly, she was not informed by anyone what the pills she was given actually were, she had to ask herself), she had to find HIV post-exposure prophylaxis on her own:

Over the weekend, a friend told her about drugs that prevent HIV. To track them down, she called what felt like every health care facility in Columbia: University Hospital, Boone Hospital Center, the Regional AIDS Interfaith Network, MU’s Student Health Center and others.

She told her story over and over. Someone at the emergency room of Boone Hospital Center sent her back to University Hospital. A University Hospital doctor suggested she get the drugs from the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services.

For us at SAFER, this directly speaks to the need for university health centers/sexual assault crisis centers to at least have this information easily accessible to students, if they can’t/won’t provide the drugs themselves. But it’s clearly problem that is larger than the university system, which is equally frustrating.

J’s story takes place entirely outside of the university system, in fact, since she didn’t know who the perpetrator was, so she could not make a complaint to the school about another student. She chose to go forward with a police investigation, and has found this to be a slow process:

Public Information Officer Jessie Haden said in an interview that detective work moves slowly even in the simplest of cases…An ideal workload would be about 25 cases, and some Columbia police detectives have twice that, Haden said.

…Three months after the rape, police didn’t know who it was. The next step is to wait for DNA test results. Because of a backlog at the Missouri State Highway Patrol center that processes DNA, those results probably won’t be available for about six months.

To be honest, I have a really hard time knowing how to frame stories like this. It’s hard to balance the fact that, as Haden said, “J.’s experience, though frustrating, is normal,” with not wanting to discourage people from reporting sexual assaults. We know that reporting is important: not only is it important on a cultural scale (breaking the silence about rape, having a better understanding of actual numbers), on an individual level it is a predictor of post-assault care, treatment, and healing. I’ve been writing on this blog for…I guess a couple of years now? Maybe less…but it’s something I still haven’t worked out. I’m not a service or law enforcement professional, I can only go by what I read, so I don’t have special encouraging insight.  Maybe the key is to push the benefits of reporting without promising too much from the criminal justice system, but it’s so tragic to me that I have to think about this “balance” at all. I would assume that if we took sexual violence more seriously, there would be more resources spent on processing crime data (or it would be tested in the first place), and justice would come quicker for some people.

One last thing I want to point out is J’s struggles with local media coverage of the rape. Although I’m assuming J’s identity was kept anonymous, she was still extremely bothered by how stories over-exaggerated and misrepresented how much she had been drinking (the article has a really interesting breakdown on how the media accesses police reports, which is worth a whole other post, really—read the original!) and disclosed information that she felt compromised her case. It’s another issue that I should and would like to know more about— journalistic ethics and sexual assault cases. For the moment, I will say that I was very pleased with the Missourian’s coverage, especially the fact that they ran a lengthy sidebar with information on what HIV prophylaxis is and how it works; information about date-rape drugs, and contact information for university crisis centers and counselling. But of course, I hope that all MU students would know that information before reading this article…

De Anza Witnesses Respond to Botched Investigation

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Last week I posted about the newest terrible development in the De Anza College rape case, which was thrown out because of “insufficient evidence”: the physical evidence in the case was never even tested. Cara has a much longer, and really good post about this over at The Curvature.

Yesterday the three women who witnessed the gang-rape but were not called to testify at the grand jury spoke out about this latest insane failure on the part of the Santa Clara district attorney’s office. I really recommend that you read the full editorial, as it’s quite powerful. Excerpt below:

As people closely connected to this case, we were told that a complete and thorough investigation was performed by the offices of the district attorney and attorney general. In the words of Attorney General Jerry Brown, “No stone will be left unturned.” We now know that this was not the case.

It was announced to the public that no charges would be filed due to two issues. The first was whether or not the sex was consensual. We believed then, and still believe, that an unconscious 17-year-old girl, with a blood-alcohol level of .32, did not give consent to have sex on a dirty mattress on a floor in a room full of several boys.

The second issue was the inability to identify the boys who actually had sex with the victim. In the majority of sexual assault cases, there is typically limited evidence that goes beyond “he said, she said.” What happened in the De Anza rape case provided an abundance of evidence. But both the district attorney and the attorney general stated that they could do nothing because the evidence was insufficient.

It wasn’t insufficient — it simply was ignored.

Friday Video Break: College William and Mary

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Amanda is on vacation this week, so there will sadly be no going beyond the campus…

This whole week has been slow on the blog, as you might have noticed. Apologies, our 9 to 5s have kept us busy. But I wanted to stop in share a video I really enjoyed. SAFER Board of Advisors member Nora sent me a link to this video made by students at North Carolina State University on bystander intervention, which was definitely cool. But as always happens on YouTube, I got distracted by another video, and another and another. But I finally settled on this one taken in 2007 at the College of William and Mary.

It’s a simple video. Some students at William and Mary just interviewed a bunch of their peers about their perceptions of sexual assault on campus and how the school and students address the issue. But I like the video because it shows how smart a lot of students are about this stuff, and how they are clearly ready (and in some cases explicitly asking) for more information/programming/support from their schools on the issue of campus sexual assault. In eight minutes, students bring up so many of the things we blog about here all of time: risk reduction isn’t enough; joking about rape isn’t OK; “lesser” forms of sexual assault are still sexual assault; men can also be victims of sexual assault, and so on. They’re saying the right things, as are so many of their peers across the country. Now if only schools would listen…

What’s Birth Control Sabotage and Why You Should Care

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This week I clicked on a link to Canadian court documents of a case that found that birth control sabotage is a form of sexual assault. It is a topic that I think is very interesting and yet another facet of reproductive justice/rights that we should pay more attention to. I was lead to these documents through a series of links beginning with the Huffington Post.

The Huffington post article is titled “Respect Me, Respect My Birth Control” and talks about a college student’s facebook group used to talk about her own story of birth control sabotage. Birth control–or reproductive coercion–is defined in Wikipedia as:

…[E]fforts to manipulate another person’s use of birth control or to undermine efforts to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Examples include replacing birth control pills with fakes, puncturing condoms, or threats and violence should an individual attempt to use birth control.

It is frequently associated with physical or sexual violence, and is a possible contributor to high pregnancy rates, especially teenage pregnancy rates, among abused women and teenagers.

For more information about reproductive coercion, go to kNOw MORE’s website. It explains in very understandable ways what birth control sabotage is and how can be used to control and abuse women.

Anywho, the college student told her story of how a sexual partner not only took off the condom without consent during intercourse, but also pulled out her NuvaRing (hormonal birth control). When she realized what happened she was livid with the partner and  called him out on it. She’s tried to pursue legal action against him, but she says lawyers won’t take it because there are no laws against what her former partner did. Now she’s been working to raise awareness about reproductive coercion and how it is a serious issue that needs laws against it. She wrote a blog post about her experience and beliefs around birth control sabotage at SexReally.com, which I think gives some great points as to why reproductive coercion should be made illegal.

It is good to see that in Canada they are recognizing the seriousness of birth control sabotage. It is not only a violation of someone’s trust, but also it is a violation of someone’s body. Exposing someone to potential infections or causing unwanted pregnancy when they have been actively taking the measures against those things is wrong. It is also important to point out the reproductive coercion is a very common method used my abusers to keep women in relationships and to exert more power and control over the abused partner’s life.

It is unfortunate that it is only illegal right now in the US (or so it appears) only if you end up getting an STI or pregnant. It should illegal no matter the result of the sexual act. I hope there will continue to be increased dialogue about this and even an eventual change in policy to outlaw this.

Monday College News Round-Up

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If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time (you’re the best!) you might remember the De Anza rape case. The case in which three women were ready to testify saying that they witnessed a girl being raped at a De Anza college party (and tried in to stop it) but for some reason, the county never asked them to give grand jury testimony and the case was dropped for lack of evidence. Well, apparently it only gets worse, as yesterday’s news reports that:

The Santa Clara County crime lab never tested some physical evidence seized in the De Anza alleged gang-rape case after the district attorney’s office notified the lab that “no further testing was needed,” a crime lab supervisor has testified in an ongoing civil case. That untested evidence, according to a written report submitted by a crime lab examiner, included clothing, a comforter, a vomit-covered paint can, and a sheet from the hospital examination of the alleged victim. In sexual assault cases, such evidence often is tested for DNA that could link the accused perpetrators to the victim.

Last week Feministing published a guest post from three student activists at Wheaton College (MA) who have made some very articulate and appropriate demands from their school in regards to reforming the sexual misconduct policy. Similarly, Wesleyan University students, alumni, and parents have joined forces to demand that the school create a staff position dedicated to sexual violence.

The University of Maryland is starting up a new mandatory sexual assault prevention education program for incoming students next year. There aren’t details on the program but “it will likely be incorporated into freshman orientation and be similar to the university’s online alcohol education program, AlcoholEdu.” Does anyone have any experience with online modules like AlcoholEdu? I haven’t seen one yet, and hope to fix that this summer, but my knee-jerk reaction is that something like sexual assault prevention requires personal interaction. Or maybe I just need to get with the way of the future…?