One out of every six female students is a victim of rape or attempted rape on campus. This makes it essential to increase sexual assault awareness on campus. It is crucial for rape victims to feel comfortable about reporting the assault so that they can receive proper medical treatment and support.
Society often views the rapists as the victims by blaming the accuser of dressing provocatively, being flirtatious, playing hard to get or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But rape victims are never to blame. Shifting the responsibility to the victim is unfair because nobody chooses to be raped and it increases the shame the victim already feels. It also creates an atmosphere in which victims feel they must pretend nothing happened and as a consequence, they may never seek the physical and/or mental health treatment they need.
In the summer of 2003, an unidentified 19-year-old female accused Kobe Bryant of raping her at the hotel where she was employed. The victim alleged that what started out as mutual flirtation escalated into non-consensual sex.
By reporting this event, the victim subjected herself to further trauma, this time from the judicial system and the media. She has received death threats, her name has been released by the court three times-all supposedly by accident-and her sexual history and mental state have been discussed on countless talk shows. All this seems to have put her through as much trauma as did the alleged assault [Editor\s note: Bryant's accuser dropped all criminal charges Wednesday. A civil suit is still pending].
Incidents like this make victims less willing to report the incident, to seek treatment and to press charges. However, victims are not required to press charges even if they seek treatment. If more people knew this it would increase the number of people receiving treatment and improve their lives.
The Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault (WCASA) reports that 14 percent of sexual assault victims are between the ages of 18 and 24. College campuses have a heightened risk for sexual assaults, especially for freshman girls during their first few months of school.
Although there are a variety of resources, including University Health Services and the Dane County Rape Crisis Center, available to victims, they usually do not utilize them. The WCASA reveals that only 5 percent of undergraduate women who are raped report it to the police.
The dominant problem is that most perpetrators are not strangers, causing the victim to blame herself. By definition rape is non-consensual sex; thus a husband could rape his wife if she did not consent to have sex with him.
Many people are not aware of this, and they often hold the victim responsible if they knew the person because ""they should have known better."" They also fail to place blame on the perpetrator making victims more hesitant to seek help.
On campus there are many programs, the most prominent being Promoting Awareness and Victim Empowerment (PAVE), which offer educational programs on sexual assault. By attending these programs, we can learn more about rape and educate our peers about the false beliefs held by society.
By raising rape awareness and increasing our support for victims we can raise the number of victims who press charges. Although doing so can be challenging, if more victims pursue legal action, more sexual offenders will be incarcerated. If we can stop blaming the victims and encourage the media to protect their rights, we can help other victims seek treatment and stop rapists from inflicting further damage on society.
Micaela Frudden is a sophomore majoring in pre-business.
