The Center for Disease Control states that in a 2008 study, 20 percent to 25 percent of women in college reported experiencing an attempted or completed rape. To give a geographically narrower view of the prevalence of rape, the Police Department has released that during the first quarter of 2011 there was a 24 percent increase in reported rape cases.
An even more troubling statistic arose out of a recent report commissioned by the White House Council on Women and Girls. Between 2004 and 2008, 54 percent of females who affirmed having been raped said the police were never notified. Rape is a crime—so why do more than half of women who are victimized not contact the police?
Last year, Spectator published an opinion piece written by a rape survivor who explained the process she went through at Columbia in order to attempt to bring her violator to justice.
After a university panel wrote a 30-page verdict that ruled in the victim’s favor, the author of that piece claimed, Dean Michele Moody-Adams signed off on a decision to discount the results of the hearing due to a procedural error.
The defendant also appealed, and the victim was not notified.
The printing of the article was followed by controversy and a slew of comments, some of which questioned the writer’s choice to seek justice through the university rather than through the NYPD.
“Why not call police? This completely escapes me, since she will be protected of her identity regardless, and will most likely bring justice to the rapist by doing so,” one responder wrote. “Was she afraid to interact with police department for some reason not listed in her writing above?” In light of the statistics released by the White House, the answer should not be left unexamined.
In November 2006, Mary,* a Barnard student, was raped by a man she met at Henry’s, a local bar. She maintains that she was drugged, as she can clearly remember the sequence of events leading up to the man’s arrival at the bar but only flashes of what occurred after.
“I remember lying on the carpet, not being able to move anything but my eyelids,” Mary said. “I remember telling him to stop, repeatedly.”
It was not until she arrived back at her dorm, where the guard on duty noticed that something was wrong, that Mary understood the full extent of what had transpired.
“I had blood on my faces and bruises. There was blood in my underwear. I was in shock. It didn’t register that I’d just been raped,” she said.
In the months following the rape, Mary was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and atypical depression. She couldn’t sleep at night and kept reliving the harrowing experience she had lived through.
“I tried so many times to go back to school, and it didn’t work out. My friends were shocked. They didn’t know what to say,” she said.
Mary’s rapist was never convicted. In fact, he was not punished at all.
Mary mistrusts the NYPD because of her experience. “They treated me like I was the alleged rapist,” Mary said.
She later discovered that the man who had raped her was friendly with a number of cops. Despite her parents’ numerous complaints to the police, nothing was done.
Reflecting on the entire experience, Mary said, “I can see why victims wouldn’t come out. A lot of victims don’t want it to go public. It was a really stressful situation. I cried through all of the interviews.”
Regarding the general response, she said, “I knew some friends would be a little more judgmental—that whole ‘don’t dress slutty if you don’t want to be hit on’ thing.”
According to Jennifer Levinson, BC ’11 and JTS ’11, one of the Take Back the Night organizers, other colleges perceive Columbia as being particularly active in dealing with instances of sexual assault. But Levinson said that there is still plenty of work to be done.
“There’s a need for Take Back the Night because there are so many impediments to reporting sexual assault,” Levinson said. “If you get to trial, your entire sexual history will be trotted out against you, and it will become very much a character thing. But it’s not about who you are, where you were, or what you were wearing.”
Her fellow TBTN organizer, Gita Deo, BC ’12, said, “A lot of times, when survivors speak out and say that they were sexually assaulted, a lot of people don’t believe them.”
Mary’s story is an example of how the police can make a victim feel like the defendant. Unfortunately, her experience is far from singular. In a 2010 series titled “The NYPD Tapes,” The Village Voice explored many flaws in the NYPD’s methodology, including in the investigation of sexual assault.
In one article, the Voice interviewed Carole Sher, director of Beth Israel Medical Center’s Rape Crisis & Domestic Violence Intervention Program. She said many detectives interrogate victims of rape by asking questions that, according to the article, “are in a way disbelieving, or almost trying to prove that it didn’t happen.”
The series also discussed the story of an NYPD detective who revealed that “the downgrading of crimes to manipulate statistics allowed a man to commit six sexual assaults in a Washington Heights neighborhood in 2002 before he was finally caught after his seventh attack.” A third story focused on the NYPD’s attempt to downgrade a felony sexual assault to a misdemeanor.
The problem has become grave enough to warrant reforms. Last December, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly created a task force to work on changing some of the NYPD’s policies and procedures regarding sex crimes.
*name changed
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