COLUMN: Stop blaming victims; hold sexual perpetrators accountable

By Bruce Harlan
Meadville Tribune
November 12, 2018

https://bit.ly/2z6RQ1n

We live in tough times. Whether you’re watching TV, reading the newspaper or looking at your smart phone, the news is all around us and it’s usually the same thing: more examples of mass shootings and acts of terrorism, more reports of destructive weather, more divisive stories involving politics and more allegations of sexual violence.

In the last 12 months, consider all of the stories about sexual violence making headlines: Bill Cosby’s trial and conviction for three counts of sexual assault; Dr. Larry Nassar’s guilty plea for abusing hundreds of young women who attended sports camps at Michigan State University; the Pennsylvania grand jury’s report on six Catholic dioceses where more than 300 members of the clergy were named in connection to sex crimes against children; and, of course, the #MeToo movement that spread virally on social media to help demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment.

To date, more than 140 public figures have been named or implicated in a variety of sexual violence incidences. What in the world is going on?

Well, for those of us who work regularly with survivors of sexual violence, we’re not surprised. We have known for decades about the alarming rate of sexual abuse in our communities.

Men, women and children of all ages, races, religions and economic classes are victims of sexual assault. It occurs in rural areas, small towns and larger cities and usually by someone the victim knows. Studies show that approximately 80 to 90 percent of women reporting sexual assaults knew their assailant, and the majority of assaults occurred in places ordinarily thought to be safe, such as homes, cars and offices.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a rape or attempted rape occurs every 5 minutes in the United States. Even more startling, an American is sexually assaulted every 98 seconds. In the time that it takes you to read this column, another American (most likely a women or child) will be sexually assaulted.

If we are ever going to solve this problem, we will have to acknowledge that here in America exists a rape culture. What is rape culture? Rape culture describes an environment where sexual violence is widespread, normalized and excused.

Examples include everything from sexually explicit jokes to the gratuitous gendered violence prevalent in movies and television. In a rape culture, victims are blamed, sexual harassment is tolerated and accusations of rape aren’t taken seriously. When a culture tolerates a certain level of sexual violence, statements like “boys will be boys” or “she asked for it” are pretty commonplace and reflect the prevailing attitudes of its members.

In a rape culture, statistics regarding the false reporting of sexual assault are inflated, too. We’ve seen this phenomenon recently in some high profile cases. However, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, studies suggest that the prevalence of false reporting on sexual assault is between 2 and 10 percent and consistent with false reporting of other major crimes.

But a closer examination of the research would indicate that even these statistics are inflated. For example, rape accusations may be labeled “false” by law enforcement agencies because there is not enough evidence to pursue prosecution. In some cases, victims may have delayed reporting the sexual assault or decided not to cooperate, which makes evidence collection even more difficult. Also, when presented with a victim’s conflicting statements, many investigators quickly concluded that the victim was not being truthful.

Currently, we have a better understanding of trauma and recognize that traumatic events impact a victim’s ability to remember specific details about their assault or to recall those details in chronological order. Rather than call all of these cases “false,” they should have been deemed “baseless” or “non-corroborative.” From our perspective, victims rarely make up accusations of sexual assault, and the research would seem to support this belief.

So, how do we change the culture? For starters, we can stop blaming victims and hold perpetrators more accountable. We can stop trivializing sexual violence in the media and in our daily conversations. We can redefine what it means to be healthy men and women and stop objectifying one another. At a minimum, we can stop glorifying violence.

Furthermore, we can become active bystanders and learn how to safely intervene when we witness abusive behaviors in our public spaces. We can teach and encourage our children to obtain enthusiastic consent before engaging in sexual activity. We can create a culture of respect by modeling respectful behaviors and attitudes and by holding our civic and political leaders to a similar standard.

Lastly, we can begin to eliminate a culture of rape in America by encouraging victims of sexual violence to come forward and believing them when they do so.