Rough Draft

Jess Neary

Op-Ed Rough Draft

3/7/12

            The campus is empty, the sun has fallen behind the mountains and suddenly everything is eerily quiet. For a young woman who is unable to protect herself, walking home under these conditions suddenly becomes a daunting task. Although the recent rape cases happened off campus at a private residence, the idea of rape still haunts those when they are vulnerable, regardless of their location. What steps can women take to stop this and to feel confident in going anywhere, at anytime without feeling the threat of danger? What could the recent rape victims have done to prevent what happened to them?

            In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice reported 191,670 victims of rape, and that’s not counting the ___% reported cases.  Although President Engstrom and the campus have taken the initiative after the initial incidents, more could have been done. Especially since there were nine other cases during the Fall semester. The two most recent victims, who were both reported to have been sexually assaulted by an international student, stated that they did not know the proper procedures in order to convict their attacker, and did not report him to the police in time for them to catch him before he left the country. With Curry’s patient confidentiality, there was no way for them to report the examinations to the police, the women had to come forward. The student support group, Students Against Sexual Assault (SARC), was another venue that was not used. On top of all this, the victims were left in the dark by the police during the investigation after they reported it. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice held a meeting with members of the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). During the meeting, a ____ stated that, “When studies begin at the point of prosecution, most of the attrition has already taken place and it provides a misleading picture of what has happened. We also need to study the intermediate steps of an investigation and prosecution that represent additional points of attrition – most studies focus only on the obvious attrition points of arrest and prosecution. Yet in between there are a number of decisions made by police and prosecutors that determine which cases move forward and which ones do not – for example, the decision to interview the suspect, to locate and interview witnesses, to collect certain evidence. Given research findings on the frequency of re-perpetration, an important decision must be made to seek out any additional victims who might have been sexually assaulted by the same suspect. She said we need real attrition data that pieces everything together because “these cases do not involve one‐time actors, and we need to start looking for other victims.”

            So going forward, what can women do to be smart and self-sufficient in any situation? What venues are available for help as well as simply being smart around strangers? What steps are needed in order to correctly pursue the attacker in a court of law? If women are aware of these things, the potential for rape can go down tremendously, as well as convicting the offenders properly before it’s too late.