Stats about sexual violence in college against women
Sexual assault is considered to be the most under-reported crime in the United States. There are many factors that contribute to this, but there are some things that are particular to a college campus that makes the underreporting on campuses common. Most attacks are done by someone the victim knows, which can make the decision to come forward difficult – especially if the student goes to a small school like Tufts. If you have read my previous post, you know that when alcohol or other drugs are involved with the rape (as most are for college victims), the victim is even less likely to report.
Despite these barriers there have been studies where survivors have felt more comfortable speaking about their experiences in studies, which give us a far better idea of how many people actually have been victimized through sexual violence. Many rape apologists like to look at rates of how many cases go to trial or even just conviction rates and say that sexual assault isn’t a problem, but sadly that is far from the truth. I’ve noticed a trend online that many men reFUSE to believe the stats that one in four college women are raped during their college career. I wonder why so many people are quick to reject the statistics instead of going “HOLY CRAP THIS IS BAD AND WHAT CAN I DO TO CHANGE IT?” By immediately refusing to believe that one-fourth of the women who go into higher education leave as survivors, they serve as people who are perpetuating the cycle of violence. At the end of the day even if one out of 10,000 are being raped that is still TOO MANY PEOPLE and we should still care and be appalled.
There are a lot of studies and results out there that support the 1 in 4 statistic for college women, i’ll refer to the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice report named “The Sexual Victimization of Women”. In the section How extensive is rape among college women?
At first glance, one might conclude that the risk of rape victimization for college women is not high; “only” about 1 in 36 college women (2.8 percent) experience a completed rape or attempted rape in an academic year. Such a conclusion, however, misses critical, and potentially disquieting, implications. The figures measure victimization for slightly more than half a year (6.91 months). Projecting results beyond this reference period is problematic for a number of reasons, such as assuming that the risk of victimization is the same during summer months and remains stable over a person’s time in college. However, if the 2.8 percent victimization figure is calculated for a 1-year period, the data suggest that nearly 5 percent (4.9 percent) of college women are victimized in any given calendar year. Over the course of a college career—which now lasts an average of 5 years—the percentage of completed or attempted rape victimization among women in higher educational institutions might climb to between one-fifth and one-quarter.
Another alarming statistic (that shows about the lack of proper sexual education at universities) is about how many women won’t late their rape as rape.
In each incident report, respondents were asked, “Do you consider this incident to be a rape?” For the 86 incidents categorized as a completed rape, 46.5 percent of the women answered “yes,” 48.8 percent answered “no,” and 4.7 percent answered “don’t know.” Among women who experienced other forms of sexual victimization, it is noteworthy that 3.4 percent defined their sexual victimization as a rape and 1.1 percent answered “don’t know.”
…
Women may not define a victimization as a rape for many reasons (such as embarrassment, not clearly understanding the legal definition of the term, or not wanting to define someone they know who victimize them as a rapist) or because others blame them for their sexual assault
Having a few hours of non-mandatory (if it mandatory it isn’t strictly enforced) sex ed during Freshman Orientation week is not enough. We need a more comprehensive policy that has a considerable concentration on education about sexual violence so people know that they’ve been legally raped and that people know that they are potential perpetrators if they don’t want to ask to ask for consent.
Another hurdle is that an overwhelming number of women know their perpetrators.
Most victims knew the person who sexually victimized them. For both completed and attempted rapes, about 9 in 10 offenders were known to the victim. Most often, a boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, classmate, friend, acquaintance, or coworker sexually victimized the women.
The combination of being unsure about being raped and then knowing the person who did it can be very confusing and discouraging. Especially at Tufts, I have known girls to be reluctant to report because they “don’t want to ruin someone’s life.” Even after going through such a traumatic event, many still feel reluctant to potentially be the “cause” of someone’s life being derailed.
Victims in the sample generally did not state that their victimization resulted in physical or emotional injuries. In about one in five rape and attempted rape incidents, victims reported being injured, most often citing the response “bruises, black-eye, cuts, scratches, swelling, or chipped teeth.”
This again ties into what I wrote yesterday – not having any serious physical injuries correlates with lower rates of reporting. The report in the end says that less than 5% of rapes are reported to the police. Reading all of the different things at play when raped at college, I am not surprised that the reporting rape is so low. I still believe that awareness about prevention and what sexual violence is can really fight this and I hope that one day Tufts students won’t have to come to a website run by students who were wrong by the university to get a proper education about sexual assault and rape on campus and beyond.
