Can Online Reporting System Help Prevent Sexual Assaults On Campus?

jyosim writes Studies have shown that as many as 90 percent of campus rapes are committed by repeat offenders. A new system is designed to help identify serial assaulters, by letting students anonymously report incidents in order to look for patterns. But some argue that having the ability to report someone with just the click of a button may not be a good thing. Andrew T. Miltenberg, a New York lawyer who represents young men accused of sexual misconduct, says though the system seems well intended, he is concerned about dangers it may pose to students who are accused. 'We're all guilty of pressing send on an angry text or email that, had we had to put it into an actual letter and proofread, we probably wouldn't have sent,' he says.

Comments

Students + Anonimity

[Needs2BeSaid]

This will end very badly. Some students will use this as an attack and/or revenge tool against people they don't like. Anonymity plus rape accusations will equal lawsuits and destroyed lives.

Re:Students + Anonimity

[MitchDev]

No kidding, there needs to be accountability when you claim rape.

The accusation, even when later proven false, destroys lives.

Re:Students + Anonimity

[sd4f]

The problem is this whole beat up about campus rapes is blown way out of proportion. Case in point is the mattress carrying student, who now appears to just have been a woman scorned. So any systems are already being abused. If there's criminality going on, the only thing to do is go to the police. Police need to treat rape seriously, they generally do, but I get the feeling why certain people want this resolved outside police is because police will also treat fraudulent allegations of rape seriously.

Re:Students + Anonimity

[Needs2BeSaid]

Those anonymous "details" are accusations. A system like this will be used to intentionally harm people.

Re:Students + Anonimity

[NotDrWho]

Did anyone else see that report last weekend on "60 Minutes" about the Duke lacrosse coach? The guy wasn't even accused of a crime, only COACHING the men who were accused. And those men were all PROVEN INNOCENT. And even still, it cost the guy his job and still follows him to this day. And that was for coaching innocent men!

That's the kind of damage even being ASSOCIATED with someone FALSELY ACCUSED of such a crime can do.

Re:Students + Anonimity

[Anonymous Coward]

My uncle was a Family Court judge for many years. He used to joke that he got so used to hearing allegations of child molestation and abuse in divorce and child custody cases that he was surprised when at least one parent DIDN'T accuse the other of molesting or abusing their kid.

If he and other judges like him had accepted it as dogma that 99.99% of such accusations were true, then there wouldn't be enough people walking around free today to run all the prisons for everyone locked up.

Re:Students + Anonimity

[swb]

Rightly or wrongly, the police may be influenced by their familiarity with the criminal justice system and circumstances that were reported. So many rape accusations boil down to a he said/she said situation that would be impossible to get charged by a prosecutor, let alone result in a convicton in court.

A woman I used to know was raped by a coworker. The woman and her roommate were waitresses at a restaurant and bar. They had the company Christmas party at the restaurant and the rapist was one of the employees. Everyone had too much to drink and the rapist was too drunk to drive and asked if he could crash on their couch. They said sure. In the middle of the night, he crept into her room and raped her and left the apartment afterwards.

In the morning, she told her boyfriend who insisted she go to the police who were basically dismissive of the claim, not because they thought she was lying but because there was no way to conclusively prove it was rape. There were witnesses who saw the three of them (the woman who was raped, her roommate, and rapist) voluntarily leave together. All had been drinking. The apartment wasn't forcibly entered. The rape itself didn't involve enough violence that she had bruises, scarring or signs of a physical struggle.

The cops said they would bring him in for questioning but that unless he actually admitted raping her outright, what would almost certainly happen is that he would say that after they got back to the apartment she invited him into her room for sex and that he left afterwards and that the rape accusation was that she felt guilty because she had a boyfriend. And because there was no way to disprove this version of events, the prosecutor wouldn't even file charges. They also said the presence of the roommate would work against her, since he would claim that since her roommate didn't wake up she wasn't fighting or resisting.

Are the cops insensitive? Maybe, but what can they do when there's no evidence?

I believed her personally because I knew her fairly well, but if I think about it too long even I can start to enterain doubts. Why was there no physical struggle? Why didn't she yell and wake her roommate? If I was a cop confronted with this a lot, I can see why they come off indifferent.

Re:Students + Anonimity

[ShanghaiBill]

Worse than that, not one member of the Duke Lynch Mob has suffered any repercussions at all for their actions in demanding penalties against the accused before they were tried.

In the UVa case, "Jackie" has faced no repercussions for making false accusations, and neither has Rolling Stone Magazine. At least Jackie tried to retract the story before it was published, but RS went ahead even though the "victim" no longer stood by the story. But more significantly, the University of Virginia has suffered no repercussions, despite taking drastic and broad punitive action against the fraternities, before doing any fact checking, much less waiting for a proper investigation.

Here's what I don't get

[XxtraLarGe]

The way the whole campus rape thing is handled seems idiotic to me. Why is sexual assault an issue for colleges or universities to handle? IMHO, it should be a police matter. If a student reports that they were sexually assaulted to a college or university, the college or university should have to report it to the local authorities, instead of being handled internally.

The most common reason I hear for not doing this is that the victim doesn't want their assailant to go to prison. Why? So they can continue raping other people? Chances are the victim isn't the rapists first victim, or if they were, they won't be the last. Suspending a rapist from school or making them transfer does not protect other people.

The other problem I have with having colleges or universities handle this problem is that I've heard of several instances where there wasn't due diligence in fact finding, and there was a presumption of guilt against the alleged assailant. Let the justice system handle what the justice system was created for. Colleges & universities should stick to educating people and doing research, not adjudicating serious crimes.

Serious things treated seriously and w/ dignity

[WillAdams]

There needs to absolutely be a mechanism in place for a woman to:

  - safely be transported to a hospital in a fashion which maintains chain of evidence
  - be examined by a sympathetic, but impartial medical professional using a rape kit to collect evidence
  - make a formal statement, and if it includes an accusation, that to be duly sworn out in a reasonable fashion

There needs to be in place mechanisms for the hospital, police and other social structures to take the above seriously. If there aren't, that needs to change.