(ThyBlackMan.com) Last year the president signed the third reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The act provides increased funding to help in the treatment and protection of rape victims as well as providing funds for rape sensitivity training to police. The desire to end rape culture has become a hallmark of the Obama administration. Now Senators and house of representative members are contributing to the cause with multiple new bills being constructed and pushed through to help in the treatment and protections of rape victims.
A bi-partisan effort is being made to finally hold schools responsible for covering up or mishandling rape cases. Sen Richard Blumenthal one of the bills co-sponsors had this to say about the bill and the mishandling of rape cases, “We are done with the days of asking victims why they drank too much or wore the wrong thing or went to the wrong place or hung out with the wrong guy.”
The White House Council of Women and Girls and the Office of the Vice President conducted a study and found that approximately 1 in 5 women has been raped while in college. The likelihood of being raped increases
during attendance in university. In the study, 63 percent of men who admitted to carrying out a rape said they have committed an average of six rapes each. One can infer from this that perpetrators of rape are not being properly dealt with and are consequently having multiple opportunities to rape again. There are many causes for the lack of suitable prosecution and rehabilitation of rapist.
The majority of rape cases go unreported and the majority of those reported do not lead to prosecutions. This further inhibits rape victims from reporting their assaults. Studies show that despite sensitivity training police tend to still exhibit biases towards rape victims believing their stories to be false, over exaggerated, or provoked. This leads to further emotional victimization of those who report being sexually violated. Prosecutors are often reluctant to take on rape cases and rape kits, a viable tool in the prosecution process, often remain untested.
The collegiate environment encourages rape by lowering the legal and ethical threshold with which rape cases are responded to. A campuses reputation can be severely hurt by the publication of rape on campus; this can lead to dropping application rates and decreased funding to the school. This gives an incentive for schools to not only ignore allegations of rape, but also actively cover up suspected rape cases. If all bodes well for the bills, soon schools will be financially and legally liable. Hopefully this will begin to curve the trend of college rape in campuses, so that schools can return to being a place of learning as opposed to a place where women are made to feel unsafe.
Staff Writer; Jeremy Bamidele
This young brother is a former faculty member at Rancho Santiago Community College in California and currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he is completing Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania. He can be reached at jbami@sas.upenn.edu.