When it comes to popular messages about sexual violence, many of us are treated to a (un)healthy dose of fear – in the guise of awareness and self-protection. You know the drill: don’t walk alone; don’t drink too much; avoid certain streets; be wary of strangers. . . the list goes on. One of the troubling things about these messages is the way they imply that one just needs street smarts and savvy to prevent sexual assault. (Another problematic aspect of these messages is the way they shift attention away from the fact that the majority of assaults are perpetrated by a victim’s acquaintance, friend, or partner; these ubiquitous stay-safe tips don’t mean much when it comes to people you already believe you should trust. Then there’s the fact that plenty of folks don’t have the option of not, say, commuting to and from work late at night or avoiding areas where they might be vulnerable to crime.)  Moreover, the notion that we can reliably prevent being assaulted dovetails neatly with victim-blaming after the fact: “she/he really shouldn’t gone out there without a friend”; “it probably wouldn’t have happened if she/he hadn’t been drinking to excess”; “what was she/he thinking, going to a party in that neighborhood” (And yes, you might have noticed in that last example how these sorts of attitudes capitalize on racist and classist assumptions and fears!) But even before victim-blaming, there’s what I think of as fear-instilling. Those messages about self-protection often function like admonishments to take the proper precautions –  or else (insert ominous soundtrack here). Sexual violence becomes a lurking menace, something one must  guard against with vigilance. This creates an expectation that preventing assault is a burden to be shouldered by individuals, not a systemic problem bolstered by social and legal institutions, discourse, and norms. (It also implies a weird equivalency between sexual assault and something like the weather. Saying “it’s a dangerous world, you must protect yourself” without simultaneously emphasizing primary prevention is a bit like saying sexual violence is an inevitable, “natural” event.)

This is why I was a bit disturbed when this story from Canada popped up in my news alerts last week. You may remember that in the 1990s, a new warning was added to the list of rape-prevention tips:  keep an eye on your drink. You might also remember Rohypnol and GHB receiving press coverage as “date-rape drugs” when both were linked to rape cases in which victims reported being rendered unconscious at some point after ingesting one or more beverages. While it’s not clear how common the use of those two substances to sedate victims was or is, drug-assisted sexual assault is not rare. Sometimes substances are consumed voluntarily, and sometimes not, but legal and illegal drugs and alcohol do often play a role, especially on college campuses. (The Lincoln University gang rape case Sarah blogged about recently involved a victim who was intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness.) So, this drug-detecting card about to go on the market in Quebec that the article highlights might seem laudatory. And I don’t want to say it’s a bad thing in of itself. An invention that you can use to make sure your beer doesn’t have a sedative in it? Okay, sure, thanks. Yet, I can’t help but think that this notion that if we just add more weapons to our arsenal of self-protection we’ll make a real dent in rates of sexual assault is actually a bit dangerous, because it keeps the focus so squarely on individuals as potential victims and reinforces the sense women, especially, should take on the burden of preventing these crimes. A pharmacist interviewed for the piece notes that he thought the testers would be an “interesting service” to the student community in his area – but those same students would be better served by programming that educates their peers about consent, especially when it comes to understanding consent in relation to drugs we know for sure are prevalent on campuses, like alcohol.   

In other news about this idea of personal safety and how to protect it, I also wanted to mention a recent story covered by Jezebel. In sum, a woman who was at a bar where the Girls Gone Wild production company was filming had her shirt pulled down by another patron, exposing her to the camera. Her image was included in the final film, despite the fact that she 1) did not voluntarily show her breasts  (I don’t know whether forcibly removing a person’s clothing is considered a type of physical assault, legally speaking, but it definitely falls under the sign of “violation of bodily autonomy”), 2) did not sign a consent form for the use of her image on video, and 3) can be heard on camera saying “no, no” when asked to show her breasts (emphasis mine). When she discovered her image in a GGW title years later, she sued for damages, since, you know, it was clear at the time of the film that she did not want to have her naked body displayed. In a mind-bogglingly illogical and infuriating decision, the jury did not award damages. In fact, the jury found that she gave “implicit consent by being at the bar, and by participating in the filming” – how exactly this implicit consent squares with a recorded verbal statement that says unequivocally otherwise, I just don’t know. To me, this points up some of the real issues around self-protection. Clearly, the woman in this case wasn’t – and still isn’t – safe from victimization. But not because she didn’t take adequate precautions (let’s see, she was in a public place, with friends, and was not too intoxicated to comprehend her surroundings and verbally limit others’ contact with her body) – rather, she was unsafe because someone felt license to violate her personal limits, and because the environment itself encouraged and sanctioned this. That, after the fact, she wound up having little recourse against those who profited from and further perpetuated her victimization suggests that what occurred at the filming was not an isolated incident but a symptom of larger failures by institutions, like the legal system, to reinforce and support attempts at self-protection and safety. The jury in the GGW case believed the victim was on her own, deserving of no remedy if she was exposed and filmed due to others’ actions, over her own protests. It’s a dangerous world indeed – but stories like these confirm my sense that neither traditional safety tips nor high-tech tools will create a safer one.

Let’s follow up on the Mel Gibson story from last week. While many blogs and news sources have condemned Gibson’s actions, pointing out exactly why he should be held accountable and calling out the media for ignoring domestic abuse, or defending Oksana Grigorieva’s recording as a means of self-defense, there’s still plenty of victim-blaming to be had. The Today Show said Grigorieva was acting passive-aggressive to push Gibson, Forbes Women described his behavior as “human,” Gibson excused himself of blame in saying that quitting smoking had made him “crabby,” and as for the tapes, Dan Abrams doesn’t think they were recorded legally. And to further complicate matters, it now looks like Grigorieva is under investigation for extortion. Yes Means Yes contemplated Gibson’s case along with Al Gore’s to ask simply, “Is this the face of a monster?” They remind us that whatever our disbelief that a beloved public figure could do such a thing, “We have to be willing to accept that if he did, he’s not the person we thought he was, and he doesn’t deserve our support.” Speaking of which, two more of Gore’s former masseuses have come forward to report abuse. Jaclyn Friedman writes at The Nation how the media should report on the case. And as if we needed more celebrity drama, Michael Lohan has also been charged with harassment and allegedly threatened to kill his fiance.

In more victim-blaming, the BBC reported on a rape at a music festival by describing what the victim was wearing and encouraging women to stay with their friends (which clearly didn’t work, as another rape was reported shortly after, though festival officials say they’re unrelated). Lawrence Taylor’s wife also made sure to kick her husband’s victim while she was down, saying “good girls don’t run away,” “that’s what happens when you run away,” and the real charmer, “How in the heck do you rape a prostitute.” There’s more calling out the “good girls don’t” argument over at Yes Means Yes.

In police matters, abyss2hope lays out Milwaukee’s failures in addressing sexual assault and their plan for improvement, while highlighting Rochester, MN‘s enlightened attitude towards victims. A New York EMT was charged with a string of assaults (including – trigger – sodomizing an 11 year-old girl at gunpoint), and the Curvature reports on a story that highlights both police abuse and dating violence.

On the technology front, Jezebel takes a look at an online game that thrives on female subservience, and a 12 year-old girl took to Facebook for help during her sexual assault. abyss2hope points out: “Technology can be a useful tool for those being assaulted and it can be useful for bystanders. If technology is exploited fully by all non-offenders that may cause some offenders to have more fear of detection.” However, technology can work against a victim – here’s one instance of a rape that was filmed and cast live on the web…but not reported.

In other news, The American Prospect takes on the “epidemic” of false rape allegations, abyss2hope reports on a new study that challenges stereotypes of adolescent sex offenders, Full-Frontal Activism points out the parallels between intersex “treatment” (often performed without consent) trauma and sexual assault trauma, and the Curvature reports on a devastating story from our military. Finally, an excerpt from Jessica Stern‘s new book confronts the memory of her rape (mega trigger warning here).

I’d like to end by asking what you think of this recent news story about “deceit rape” – an Arab man who lied about being Jewish for sex (and is now jailed in Israel) – is lying about one’s identity a form of rape? Leave your thoughts below.

Amanda is the author of the blog The Undomestic Goddess.

Advocates for victims of sexual violence have long worked to publicize the fact that “stranger rape” is the least common type of sexual assault. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 7 of 10 female victims know their attackers, and the figure is even higher for women on college campuses. There’s evidence that this message is getting out there: many colleges sponsor programming that helps students understand and identify a partner’s consent or lack of consent; some high schools have started incorporating lessons about dating violence into sex education and health courses; and the terms “date rape” and “acquaintance rape” are now pretty familiar in the popular lexicon.  Yet, there still seems to be a tendency in the culture at large to focus on the specter of the intruder or unknown assailant. It can be convenient and comforting to shift our attention away from some of the norms, beliefs, and behaviors that contribute to sexual assaults in which the victim knows his or her rapist and instead onto the “maniac” or “monster” who commits random attacks. Feminist critiques of the criminal justice system have discussed the notion of the “ideal victim,” whose characteristics include modest dress at the time of the attack, a sexual history of zero or very few partners, and being the victim of a stranger rape. When it comes to the longstanding and still far too prevalent notion that there are varying degrees to which victims might “deserve” their attacks, part of its implicit logic is that the truly “blameless” ideal victim should and will be protected by the criminal justice system. However, two recent accounts that revisit a series of particularly cruel and terrifying attacks in the early 1970s demonstrate that dismissal and skepticism toward victims of all stripes is a sad, enduring legacy. As disturbing as this history is, it’s a good reminder that, as a society, we ought to spend less (or better yet, none!) time parsing when and how victims share “blame” and more time demanding that our institutions consistently and effectively investigate and prosecute perpetrators of sexual violence. We’ll all be safer for it.

Stranger attacks do happen, and Denial, a new memoir by Jessica Stern, a terrorism and public policy expert, centers around the night in 1973 that she and her sister, both teenagers, were raped by an armed intruder in their stepmother’s home in Concord, Massachusetts. The book chronicles Stern’s diagnosis, much later in life, of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and her attempts to make sense of how the experience shaped her emotional makeup and, ultimately, her interest in and aptitude for deciphering the motives and moves of terrorists. I haven’t yet read the entire book, but a lengthy excerpt is available on Stern’s website. (I urge you to check it out – it’s a difficult but moving and unsentimental read and I’m looking forward to reading the whole thing. I have a hunch that the combination of Stern’s intellect and emotional bravery has yielded some fascinating insights about trauma and the nature of terror.) The rapes of Stern and her sister went unsolved until after Stern had been diagnosed and begun tentatively exploring her memories of the crime. Early on in the first chapter, we learn that the case was essentially closed from shortly after the crime until 2006, when a Concord detective began reviewing the case files with Stern. The detective, it turns out, was shocked that the crime closely matched others that occurred in the area, and that, at the time, police hadn’t aggressively pursued what seemed clearly to be a serial rapist. Stern writes:

Lt. Macone saw that the detectives who worked on the case in 1973 did not take the crime seriously, in part because they did not believe my sister and me. They had trouble believing that the rapist was a stranger to us. Rapes like the one we described simply did not occur in our town, or so they believed. Denial and disbelief were the easier course. The detectives left notes such as the following: “I told Mr. Stern that I feel the girls were holding something back from us,” and “I was sure that this person may have been there longer in the house [than the girls reported to us].” . . . In notes from February 13, 1974, four months after the crime, I see: “Personal visit. Spoke to Mr. Stern. He states nothing new to add. He feels that both girls seem to have forgotten it.” The police took my father’s statement as permission to cease investigating the crime, and the rapist was not found.

As if this weren’t stunning enough, it turns out that the man Lt. Macone eventually identified as Stern’s rapist (he had finally been arrested for another rape in 1975 and committed suicide in the 1990s after being released from prison) had been the perpetrator of 44 similar crimes in the Boston area between 1970 and 1973. Writing in the Boston Globe, Law professor Amy Vorenberg recounts her own, similar experience and points out that she and her family were completely unaware of this pattern of crimes occurring in their community:

Having heard nothing from the police or the university, my parents had taken no extraordinary steps to protect their daughters. Yet the same man who attacked me raped two more women the next night. In the same neighborhood. 

The university mentioned by Vorenberg is Harvard –  18 of the 44 rapes occurred within an eight-block radius of Harvard’s Radcliffe campus. In what, unfortunately, probably sounds familiar to readers of this blog, Harvard did not make it a priority to alert its community about the pattern of rapes. Vorenberg notes that the crimes were briefly mentioned in a campus newspaper, but there was no systematic attempt to publicize the danger. She poignantly tells us:

Enduring rape at 13 was rough. But to realize now that I was one of 44 is just hard to process — a fact made harder by the knowledge that my two sisters and I were essentially sitting ducks.

Vorenberg goes on to cite the Center for Public Integrity’s February report on college sexual assault (discussed previously on this blog), which reveals that, even today, colleges and universities often minimize or misrepresent the incidence of sexual assault on their campuses in order to avoid bad publicity.

There are a few lessons to be learned from this painful episode, but I think one of the most important is that reluctance on the part of institutions and officials to fully acknowledge the presence of sexual assault and take responsibility for their role in preventing and halting it is not new, and we must continue to demand quality services for victims and accurate education for the public as a whole. In the end, the issue should be less about whether certain kinds of assault are “worse” than others, but about ensuring that myths about where rape occurs or whom its victims are don’t get in the way of justice and prevention.