Taking rape allegations seriously
The WaPo has some words on the UVA rape story’s unraveling and the lessons we should take from it:
As the doubts and discrepancies are sorted out, here are some truths that must not get lost: Sexual assault, often associated with excessive alcohol consumption, is a scourge that, for far too long, has not been taken seriously enough by colleges and universities. The critical work of putting in place a system that effectively and fairly investigates allegations of sexual assaults, supports victims and provides for due process must continue with even more urgency…
The University of Virginia is certainly no exception to those truths, as its officials have acknowledged in recent days. The fact that it apparently never expels students for sexual assault, the outpouring of complaints from other students and the federal investigation of the school for possible noncompliance with Title IX equal rights protections all point to a serious problem.
To the university’s credit, it responded to Friday’s revelations with exactly the right message. “Despite doubts that have been cast on the Rolling Stone story, we need to keep our eyes on the prize, which is nothing less than zero tolerance for rape,” said Helen Dragas, a member of the university’s governing Board of Visitors. “Our primary concern must be for the well-being of our students. We need to get this right for them, and do so with no hesitation or concern for image.”
Zero tolerance for rape? Isn’t that already in place, if the rape is proven? What does the assertion that the university “apparently never expels students for sexual assault” actually mean? I cannot imagine—although correct me if I’m wrong—that if a UVA student is convicted of rape that the student is not expelled. My guess is that what is meant by the statement is that students accused of rape are not expelled for mere accusations, as long as the charges are unproven.
University-run procedures are not enough to provide protection for the accused; I would prefer that these sorts of accusations be dealt with by the criminal justice system. But if universities must be involved, taking rape seriously does not mean believing every accusation. I say this as a woman, and as someone who is completely against rape. But I also say this as a person who is aware that false accusations exist, and that each case stands alone and most be proved or disproved based on its fact situation rather than the word of one person or another taken as an article of faith.
It strikes me, on reading about this case and its fallout on many websites, that many people on the left approach rape as an either/or proposition. Their thought process is something like this: we believe that women tell the truth about rape, but if one woman (such as Jackie) is proven to have lied, that means that all women are now suspect and the right will regard them all as liars. That’s identity politics as the left practices it; people placed in categories and lumped together by that classification.
But each woman is an individual telling a story that may or may not be true, which must be evaluated on its own according to to the facts of the case rather than some pre-conceived notions of who is telling the truth and who lying based on his/her gender. That is the only way to take rape allegations seriously, and to honor the rights of both accuser and accused. That would seem obvious, but it’s not at all obvious to the left.
What’s striking to me is that the leftist/feminist types I know, don’t want to let this story go. They claim that the people who dared question the facts of the original report are either motivated by fear of greedy attorneys allegedly representing the fraternity or they are “rape-apologists” or “victim-blamers.” They refuse to admit that, as in the Duke case, it is possible for a woman with uncertain motives to make outrageous allegations which don’t stand up to scrutiny.
There are so many bogus statistics about campus rape pushed by the feminist left. They love to say that 20% of women are victims, and that on 2%-8% of allegations are false. And questioning those statistics or presenting others that contradict them only brings more charges about being “rape-apologists.”
I remember in graduate school some leftists would use the phrase “doing violence to” to shut down arguments which questioned the narrative of the day; by that logic, one “does violence to rape victims” by bothering to question the veracity of any allegation of rape.
This is just more of the horrible fallout from the 60s.
In the 1980s the Air Force Office of Special Investigations investigated 556 charges of rape by servicewomen. In that investigation, 27% admitted that their accusations were false either before or after being confronted with lie detector tests.
See “False Allegations,” Forensic Science Digest, V. 11, no. 4, Dec. 1985, p. 64, by Charles P. McDowell. The Digest is a publication of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in D.C.
Also see Kanin, E.J., (1994) “False Rape Accusations”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, V23, P81-92. Kanin found that 41% of reported rapes were fabrications, by admission of the woman.
The libertine religion or progressive morality has consequences. Perhaps we should pursue a moral consensus that acknowledges individual dignity and intrinsic value. It’s logical to avoid objectifying women and human life generally.
It seems to me that if a student was convicted of rape they’d be in prison and wouldn’t be attending class for a while.
Not sure about sexual assault since I’m not really sure what that encompasses. Whatever it is – they say that 80 % are not reported. This claim does not seem credible to me.
As long as a woman can lie about being raped without there being comparable consequence for that false accusation, some women will lie about rape and some innocent men’s lives will be destroyed. So too when during a divorce, women falsely accuse a man of physical abuse or worse yet, falsely accuse him of sexually abusing his children.
There’s a profound reason why “bearing false witness” is one of the Ten Commandments. It is a terrible sin.
Part of the problem is that the campus feminists have been very diligently expanding the definition of sexual assault to include actions such as unwanted advances and a woman’s day-after regret. I suspect that this is one of the reasons they are so insistent that every rape victim be believed by default. It ensures that men who have engaged in something less than the legal definition of rape/sexual assault can still be put before the school’s justice system, even when it seems questionable on its face.
Blogger Ace of Spades was dead-on in his likening this to the Salem Witch Trials.
I remember when feminists were about burning bras and the ‘sexual revolution.’ It was all about comparing themselves to men. It still is. They were gender mongers then. They are gender mongers now.
The Left isn’t concerned about rape. If anything, they would wish for it to grow, so they can profit off of it.
Apparently Erdely has a history of publishing questionable rape stories in Rolling Stone:
http://www.bigtrial.net/2014/12/before-rolling-stone-was-conned-by.html
In this case, one of the accused died in custody.
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What does the assertion that the university “apparently never expels students for sexual assault” actually mean? I cannot imagine–although correct me if I’m wrong–that if a UVA student is convicted of rape that the student is not expelled.
I attended UVA (quite awhile back). The University was in no way tolerant of rape–as we would define it. I would bet almost any amount of money that a student convicted of rape would immediately be expelled from UVA.
But as Tom Murin and Lizzy noted, it is difficult to know exactly what is meant by the increasingly elastic term “sexual assault.” Lizzy wrote:
Part of the problem is that the campus feminists have been very diligently expanding the definition of sexual assault to include actions such as unwanted advances and a woman’s day-after regret.
I agree and would only add that “sexual assault” probably includes all sorts of other other vaguely sexual activities that we would not recognize as “assaultive” or violent or coercive.
So here’s how I would interpret the phrase “apparently never expels students for sexual assault“:
1) Because UVA’s definition of “sexual assault” is so capacious, most or all cases tried by the University were so minor that expulsion was not called for.
2) WaPo covered its ass with the weasel-word “apparently” because they did not investigate thoroughly enough to determine for sure that no student had ever been expelled for “sexual assault.”