ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 10, 1996 TAG: 9602130054
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT JOHNSON
FORMER VIRGINIA Tech student Christy Brzonkala's recently publicized lawsuit, which alleges that Tech didn't properly handle her allegations of rape against two Tech football players, has reignited local interest in this perennial problem.
Brzonkala's suit sparked an editorial (Jan. 31, ``The wrong forum for a rape charge'') arguing that rape cases shouldn't be handled by campus disciplinary processes, and an opposing op-ed piece (Feb. 2, ``A case for campus hearings'') by Tech Dean of Students Cathryn Goree contending that they should. However, few people seem to understand the complex background against which the question of dealing with campus rape is played out: the extraordinarily high incidence of college rapes compared with almost any other crime, and the deep ambivalence among us about rape itself.
Most estimates of campus rape range from 12 to 20 percent of college women. While many of us know that 12 percent means roughly one of every eight college women is raped on campus, and 20 percent means as many as one in five has been the victim of forced intercourse, few of us seem to fathom how astronomically high such numbers are compared with rates for other crimes. For example, if one in five Roanokers were likely to be beaten by a mugger, it would provoke demands to deploy the National Guard.
Aside from our lack of comprehension of campus rape's numbers, our conflicted attitudes toward sex and women generally compound the difficulties of dealing effectively with this crime. A woman who talks publicly about sexual issues in any form is frequently regarded with suspicion or contempt. Words or unspoken thoughts such as ``loose'' (and worse) commonly attach to her. Thus, a woman speaking out about rape is inherently at a disadvantage.
Few of us would have problems saying or hearing someone say ``he stuck a gun in my ribs and told me to hand over all my money'' in a court or other public forum, no matter how traumatized a victim might be by such an attack. Yet who is really comfortable saying or hearing in any venue a phrase such as ``he pulled off my underwear and pushed his penis into my vagina'' - words that would be necessary to successfully prosecute a rape charge? The first phrase is the stuff of television police shows; the second is hardly ever heard, though the reality happens far more often than the first. ``Family'' newspapers such as this one frequently - wrongly - decline to print such words.
Many scholars who have examined rape note that our attitudes about it are so conflicted that it's questionable if anything can be done to reduce it without radical change. Attempts to lessen the amount of public sexuality, which many people blame for America's high incidence of sexual assaults, most likely would result in fewer women prosecuting such crimes for fear of violating even stricter taboos about open discussions of sex, and in increased reticence by juries to believe that women claiming rape weren't ``loose women'' simply for raising the subject. Further, some researchers have plausibly speculated that the only way to effectively adjudicate more instances of rape is to greatly decrease penalties for it in order to overcome the juries' tendency to acquit defendants in the absence of evidence beyond ``she said/he said.''
These points underlie much of Dean Goree's argument that college sexual-assault cases should be dealt with by confidential campus forums that have lower evidentiary standards and greatly reduced sanctions than criminal courts, because otherwise women wouldn't come forward at all or they would lose more such cases when they did. The opposite view taken by this newspaper and Bronzkala's attorney, that such cases should be dealt with only by the courts, without question would reduce the number of college women who would ever proffer charges.
Neither side in this argument is ``wrong.'' Given our abiding ambivalence and biases about sexuality and women, rape can never be dealt with in the ``right'' way. Men who rape, of course, continue to rely on this ambivalence to get away with their crimes.
I've known many women in my eight years at Tech with stories like Brzonkala's. Few took their cases to a student disciplinary hearing, let alone to a district attorney. One can have only the deepest admiration for Brzonkala's courage in being willing to publicly state her charges and seek justice in a situation where justice is hardly ever found.
The answer to ending the blight of sexual attacks on college women requires a general comprehension of the hideous frequency of college rape, and a common willingness to hear more - not less - talk of sexual problems in public life. And it will ask us all - liberal, conservative, male, female, atheist, agnostic and pious - to recognize that women who have been raped are no different from the victims of any other crime, possessing the same right and obligation to tell their stories to us without fear of facing suspicion, derision, rejection or hostility.
Scott Johnson is director of clinical training in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Virginia Tech.
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