Since 2010, my school has been running a free women’s self-defense program that has an emphasis on self-protection i.e., teaching women how to predict, prevent and avoid violence not because it’s their responsibility to have to deal with violence, including sexual violence and rape, but because all of the odds concerning violence are stacked heavily against them. Whilst I agree with the sentiment, that men should just stop raping women, I’ve worked in this industry, and with survivors, long enough to know that such a prospect isn’t imminent. Each year since running this program we have put on a free campus safety seminar for women who are about to go off to college/university, not as a gimmick, not as an up-sell to our regular program - i.e., most of the young women who attend these seminars, are going to university out of state - but because the US has a problem with “rape culture” on its university campuses. And unfortunately, like mass shootings, it is a distinctly US problem, which if to be addressed and dealt with needs to be admitted to and acknowledged. When I first moved from the UK to the US and pointed out the problems with crime that the US compared to the UK has (I’m the first to acknowledge that I once came from the murder capital of Europe), I was often met with the response, “It’s no worse here than anywhere else”. When it comes to dealing with, and addressing any type of violence, this denial/discounting gets us nowhere. If Glasgow hadn’t acknowledged that the violence that led to homicide, was specific and “unusual” to the city, when compared to other locales it would have never been able to reduce the murder rate to where it is now. So, America, this isn’t a judgment, this article is a realistic assessment of why the Cornell rape case was handled so badly and how this promotes rape and sexual assaults on campus. This isn’t a comparison of one country against another, and I’m too old to be playing international “top trump” games about which country is better than another etc. However, my starting point is that US academic institutions have issues that need to be addressed and I believe can be practically addressed.

               I moved to the US in 2008, and one of the first differences between UK and US academic institutions that I experienced was that US academic institutions had their own police forces, which answered to the institution. There are pros and cons to this, and I’ve worked with fantastic officers and university police departments, but there is a systematic conflict of interest, when an institution is the employer of those who are the entryway to the criminal justice system. I remember hearing, not long after I moved here, an interview on the radio concerning a female student who had been raped on campus by a fellow student. For various reasons, the university was trying to take a “mediation” approach to the assault, despite the fact that mediation is primarily a “civil” rather that “criminal” tool e.g., I think you owe me $700, you think you owe me $300, so we agree on $500. In a sexual assault there is no role for mediation as one party did something to another, and both parties don’t share responsibility in the dispute. In a sexual assault, one person does something to another, and there is no shared responsibility. And it doesn’t matter if the person victimized was on Ketamine, drunk or a combination, if they are unable to actively give consent, it is rape. There are no exceptions.       

               This student who had been victimized was coerced by the institution she wanted to graduate from, to engage in dialogue with her perpetrator, over a telephone network/system e.g., she was in one room in a building on a phone, he was in another room in the same building on a phone etc. At a certain point in the discourse, he broke down and started to confess to having issues with alcohol and drugs etc., and this was the reason why he committed the sexual assault. A professor, who was with the victim (and I use that term deliberately, rather than survivor, as she was still processing the rape), turned to her and said, “we’re starting to get there”, as if this was an educational moment for the perpetrator of the rape that she should be celebrating. The excuse of alcohol abuse doesn’t change the fact that she was raped, however because “educators” focus on “educational moments” that was where their focus was i.e., is there an opportunity to change a person, even if that means at the expense of justice. Call me old school but justice comes first, and as part of justice comes re-education and rehabilitation. Our attention should be to the victim’s needs not the perpetrator’s deficiencies and problems/issues. Unfortunately, many people in academia believe (from a noble place) that getting people to write essays will redeem them, regardless of what those they’ve victimized have to experience.

               One such experience is shame and guilt. I don’t think I’ve met one survivor of rape/sexual assault who still doesn’t blame themselves to some degree, even though they are blameless. If you want to speculate about the degree to which a victim of sexual assault is responsible for being a victim e.g., they went to a party, they drank to much, they were wearing provocative clothing etc., you are demonstrating your own weaknesses and insecurities. If you believe you, or others, are entitled to sex because someone is sexually active, flirtatious and dresses provocatively etc., you display how weak you are e.g., if someone couldn’t actively say “no”, then you’re entitled to treat them how you want. Unfortunately, the current rape case at Cornell is not unique or alone where US colleges and universities are concerned, and when a sexual assault can be “atoned” by a few essays there is a very serious cultural investigation that needs to be undertaken.