This weekend I was talking to an acquaintance — smart, funny, well-read — who said she assumed most people on the Sex Offender Registry are dangerous, because “they just keep doing it, right?”
The answer:
.
That zkaszanfdn
piece is running on the New York Times Op-Docs page (opinion pieces in documentary form). If you want to see more about this issue by filmmaker and Bronx Defender David Feige, I recommend his movie Untouchable. As for whether kids are safe in a neighborhood where there’s a registered sex offender, it turns out that kids are in more danger from people they know than from a stranger, even one who is on the registry.
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31 Comments
A real sex offender probably wouldn’t stop unless given no choice. And no horny teens who got into bed with each other aren’t real criminals in my opinion even if the law says otherwise. The guy who forced himself on someone is a real criminal and I don’t really want to not torture these jerks forever. The person who manipulated someone into committing a crime should be the only person to pay even though the law thinks differently. For me a true criminal is someone who commits a crime of their own free will and no pressure or anything else makes them do it.
When a person does something that society has labeled as a sex offense, (even peeing in a parking lot) He proves that he has sex fiend DNA in his system. There may be a small chance that he can reform. However, we can’t risk it. He should be shunned for life and not allowed back into society.
BTW it’s a good thing that we’re civilized and we don’t have a crude justice system like public stonings.
Thanks for telling a funny and well story like this. The sex offenders are just doing right now.
It is a criminal activities I think because the real sex offenders are somehow committed their offense.
And it is also a mental torture and should take a strong step against this. So that our social environment is fair.
“Unable?” Hardly. Nearly everyone is able to control their behavior when they have motivation to do so.
Unwilling, though, is an entirely different story. Rape and molestation are crimes of power and control. Some guys (and some females too) are so addicted to that power that they will continue to abuse whoever they can get away with abusing. Most of us know a “Creepy Uncle Roger” type that everyone in the family whispers to keep your children away from. Most of us have, directly or indirectly, experienced a situation where someone comes forward to say that Bob molested them for years, only to have dozens of other family members and friends come forward too. That teacher or pastor or coach who’s just a pillar of the community who would never … well, except that he did. Repeatedly. Jerry Sandusky comes to mind.
The problem the the registry, though, is two-fold. First, it ensnares a lot of people who shouldn’t be on it. Guys who pee in the alley. Eighteen-year-olds who sleep with their sixteen-year-old girlfriends. Teen girls who send naughty pictures to their boyfriends. Yet, at the same time, the registry doesn’t capture those who should be on it. Creepy Uncle Roger types and Jerry Sandusky types get away with what they do for years – decades even – without getting on the registry because they never get caught. They’ve learned to use their power well to hide their crimes through intimidation and public image.
Ugh, sorry for the brain-o. The problem *with* the registry….
It really angers me that anytime the media talks about sex offenders, for any reason, it is automatically assumed that a person who is officially a sex offender is a degenerate to society. A person who snatches little children off the street and rapes them. Basically an evil person worse than Kim Jong-Un or Osama Bin Laden or any other mass murderer or serial killer. If I’m on that registry for peeing in public or playing doctor with the neighbor girl when I was 10 or having consenting sex with a 16-year-old girl when I was 23, it is certainly not a good thing but I can’t imagine how it is when everybody assumes I’m on that registry for snatching little children off the street and raping them.
The weird thing about college is that they seem to be encouraging the idea of rape in order to save their title IX money. I pretty sure if you have been actually raped then there will be no doubt in your mind. The list should be for real rapists. The parents hate that their teen is having sex keep the law out of it yell at the kids the parents. Schools if they want to insist on being parents then the number one priority must be the kids best interest not theirs.
So now Theresa is parroting Betsy DeVos’s false and harmful narrative that most college rape is just consensual sex gone bad. Sorry, but neither you nor Betsy know what you’re talking about and you would be well advised to stop talking until you do.
Rape on college campuses has been practically epidemic for decades and it’s been virtually impossible for victims to get any sort of justice precisely because of propaganda like that. Even in cases where there’s been video evidence of gang rape of an incapacitated victim, somehow the perpetrators manage to elude justice, especially if said perpetrators are athletes, wealthy or otherwise “elite”. This is precisely why the Obama-era policies were enacted.
The problem is treating all sex crimes equally. I know multiple offenders personally who reoffended over and over again, with the result being that vulnerable children (in one instance, the offender’s siblings and their friends; in the other, troubled teens the offender was “counseling”) were repeatedly victimized. In one instance, the offender claimed to have stopped (and may have) but only due to the threat of jail (his victims ranged from 9 months to 13 while he was a late teenager, he claims to have stopped at 18). The answer probably lies in making sure non-predatory offenders (Romeo and Juliet within a reasonable age gap, very young offenders who don’t reoffend) don’t get put on the registry in the first place. True predators manipulate the system and DO often continue to harm children.
Dienne – the big problem wasn’t with the Obama -era policies, but how they were implemented by the universities. At least 2 are being sued because they basically went the route of “all claims are true, you can’t defend against them, and your life will be ruined *even* if we find out the complainant lied”
Devos is an idiot – *BUT* never for a minute think that false claims of rape don’t happen – there are even female reporters calling out women who have been crying rape because they changed their mind *after* the act, not during and not before.
They swung from “rape doesn’t happen here” to “If you claim you were raped – even with no proof, 2 years after the event, and after you have admitted to your friends it didn’t happen, someone will still be guilty” because it looks better that way.
Obama’s policy directive was good – but in classic bureaucratic fashion, some universities (under pressure from some groups who will remain nameless) swung completely away from the judicial standards of proof and rights and right over to “witchhunt” mode.
The low recidivism rate has been reported on for years (including many articles by the NYT) but instead of doing away with the life destroying restrictions, our justice system just puts hundreds of thousands more people on the registry, including for such “crimes” as consensual teenage sex, and sexting.
I would not have much faith that things can improve, but now that the supreme court is revisiting this, there could be actual change. Here’s hoping.
No dienne but kangaroo courts are not ever good idea. Having people that aren’t even the supposed victim scream she was raped when the girl is yelling no I wasn’t isn’t helping. The police should be handling rape. If for some reason they hadn’t kept dropping the ball no one would thought of making colleges Handel it.
“Rape on college campuses has been practically epidemic for decades”
Dienne, um, hyperbole much? This statement is ridiculous. But mostly you should read everything that Emily Yoffe has written on this subject, just this month, for The Atlantic. It’s all online. The pendulum has swung way too far towards ruining the life of anybody accused of any kind of sexual offense, and it needs to stop.
This whole “kangaroo court” and “the victim must always be believed” meme are all part of the propaganda. I used to work on the Chicago Rape Crisis hotline and I’m still friends with quite a few people engaged on the front lines of the anti-rape movement. The reality is that very little has changed since the implementation of the Obama-era regulations. It’s still virtually impossible for rape victims to get any justice unless there is clear-cut evidence that it was “rape-rape”, not “merely” date rape. Unless a woman shows up in the emergency room bruised and bleeding and immediately files a police report (a very rare series of events in cases of rape for a great many reasons), she simply isn’t believed regardless of any other evidence.
The Obama-era regulations simply make it possible (still not likely) for the victim to get a hearing with the university and, maybe, not have to go to school and even live with her rapist. The reality is that a microscopic percentage of rapes are handled by the police and prosecutors – cases simply aren’t taken on or followed through the system. So the chances that a victim is going to have her perpetrator convicted by law are somewhere between slim and fat. So what is the victim to do? No conviction means there was no rape? She should just have to live with it? She has no recourse?
The reality is that universities have control over who attends their programs and no one has a right to a college education. It is incumbent upon universities to ensure, to the best of their ability, that their student body reflects the values and standards the university purports to uphold. When there is evidence that a student has violated those values and standards (by, in this case, raping fellow students), the university has the right – indeed, the duty – to expel that student. Not every violation will result in a criminal charge, but that doesn’t mean the university has no right to expel a student. For instance, downloading your thesis off the internet is not a prosecutable crime (the police would, in fact, laugh to be involved), but you can bet it will nevertheless result in expulsion.
This is not to say that any student can just walk in to the Dean’s office and say, “Joe raped me” and Joe should be summarily expelled without due process, but this is not what’s happening anyway. Universities have to conduct their own investigations and determine if the allegations have merit and, to the best of their ability, the circumstances of what actually happened. The fact is that over 90% of rape allegations are valid, yet less than 1% of them ever result in a conviction in court. Universities simply can’t turn a blind eye to that remaining 89+% of cases and just say, “well, gee, sorry, honey, no conviction, so enjoy seeing your rapist in class.”
No, the pendulum has *not* “swung”. A handful of intentionally high-profile cases to the contrary does not make it so. Again, over 90% of rape allegations are valid. Fewer than 1% result in a conviction. So 89+% of cases still result in a lack of justice for the victim. I’m sorry if a handful of bad boys haven’t been quite as bad as they’ve been accused of being, but it’s still pretty easy to avoid being accused of rape – behave like a gentleman and keep your hands to yourself. It’s not, on the other hand, quite so easy to avoid being raped.
I don’t believe that sexual assaults are on the rise on college campuses (or in the military for that matter). I mean, let’s be realistic. We’re talking about a situation where teenagers/young adults are leaving home for the first time, are responsible for themselves, are drinking, partying, and having fun. Boundaries are being pushed and are often times broken. It is a ripe environment for sexual assaults.
On the flip side, colleges and universities are BUSINESSES. They’re in it to make money through donations and grants. They naturally want to attract the best and the brightest who will bring attention to their campus which will in turn bring in money. Any negative publicity will potentially detract from that.
For whatever reason, when a crime happens on a college campus, it seems like the majority of victims report it to the school. Before college campuses started having their own police departments (many with the same powers and authority as city police departments), it was very easy for the school to keep these crimes under wraps.
That’s not to say that the advent of campus police departments means that these crimes are now public. And even with these police departments, many victims of crime still don’t report them to the police, but to campus staff. But when one victim comes forward and files a public complaint, it almost always seems to open a floodgate. Suddenly a campus that was considered “very safe” has an eruption of crime.
“Rape on college campuses has been practically epidemic for decades…”
True, depending on how you want to define “rape”. Some people resist or reject the definition that it is a rape when, say, consent was not gained while the person was 100% sober. If you want to insist that alcoholically-impaired consent isn’t consent, that’s fine. But we’re going to have to charge an awful lot of women with rape, and there’s going to be a LOT of cases of “mutual rape”, in and around college campuses.
The main problem is that people are learning their tolerance for alcohol (and, to a lesser extent, other intoxicants) about the same time they’re discovering their sexuality. Some of them wake up sober and don’t like what they discovered while they weren’t. There’s a reason frats offer free alcohol to anyone who shows up at their party with boobs… and this is not a recent development. The role of alcohol in human reproduction is well-known and quite ancient.
What has changed, recently, is the notion that if two people get drunk, and then they have sex, and then they wake up sober and wish they hadn’t had sex, that’s a case of rape. (Of course, it isn’t rape if he’s the only one who wishes it didn’t happen.) Yes, it’s a bad thing when people don’t like the sex they have. It’s a bad thing when they have sex with someone they rather wish they hadn’t had sex with. But (controversy hat on) not all of these “rapes” are the same. Some deserve to be treated like felonies, because they are felonies. But some are not, and many of the people who complain about the “rape culture” are highly sexist… the women are victims, the men are aggressors, period. Sometimes the roles are switched. Sometimes they’re BOTH victims, and sometimes they’re both aggressors.
In most other legal contexts, voluntary intoxication does NOT absolve a person of the consequences of their actions. Drink in a bar all night, then sign a contract? That contract is valid and you will be expected to perform what you’ve contracted to perform. Get drunk in a bar, then assault someone? You’re both civilly and criminally liable for the carnage that results. BUT drink heavily, and wake up next to someone you wouldn’t have considered attractive while sober? You poor thing, you’ve been victimized! (Universities try to control this by the simple expedient of prohibiting most drinking on campus. So if you drink too much and have sex with someone (you poor victim) at a minimum you should be facing discipline for breaking the drinking rules. That feels like “piling on”, so that isn’t going to happen. But holding the university responsible for the fact that you chose to break the rules and don’t like what happened as a result? Really?
I sent my daughter off to college about 4 years ago. What I told her was that she didn’t need to be on the lookout for guys putting things into her drink. Not because that doesn’t happen, but because the most dangerous drug is ALREADY in the drink. The vast majority of college rapes involve alcohol. The best way to avoid being raped in college is to A) not drink to the point of losing control, and B) staying clear of people who are. Which is not to say that these things cannot or must not be done… just that extra precautions are warranted when heavy drinking is in the forecast.
https://www.thenation.com/article/what-betsy-devos-gets-wrong-about-sexual-assault-on-campus/
“For whatever reason, when a crime happens on a college campus, it seems like the majority of victims report it to the school.”
You say this base on what? The fact is that the majority of rapes are never reported. To anyone.
https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/betsy-devos-wants-fewer-rights-for-rape-survivors-more-for-alleged-attackers/
“According to a National Institute of Justice report [which report is linked in the linked article], 20 percent of young women will become the victim of a “completed or attempted sexual assault” while in college. And more than 6 percent of men will also be assaulted.”
If 20 percent of college women and 6 percent of college men were suffering from cancer or diabetes or anything really, wouldn’t we call that an epidemic?
Dienne,
I was speaking in regards to REPORTED crimes. Not just rape, but all forms of crime — from property crimes to the varying degrees of sexual assault.
When I was in college some 5 centuries ago, 😉 there were women’s dorms and there were men’s dorms. None of this women’s floor and men’s floor crap. Women and men were housed in separate buildings. If a guy wanted to visit a girl in her dorm, he needed to be escorted, no questions asked. I could not just walk up to the 3rd floor in “Betty’s” dorm and knock on her door. She needed to come down to the lobby to escort me! Of course, women didn’t need to be escorted from the lobby of the men’s dorms. I certainly had no problem with that. It was all common sense to me. I think when you house young women and young men into the same building like they do today on college campuses and even allow them to use the same communicable bathroom, I think you’re just asking for trouble.
But then again, what do I know? I guess I’m just old fashion!
This strikes me as similar to a traditional perception of suicide: If you stop someone from doing it once, they’ll just do it again. Actual research shows that a few will attempt suicide repeatedly and persistently, especially when mental illness is a factor, but most do it more or less on a one-time whim. Extending the model to sex crimes would account for the known data disconcertingly well.
I’ve always wondered about the contrasting “facts” on which some are claiming that rape is so prevalent in society and so few false rape claims are made.
If most rape victims do not report their rapes, how the hell can people insist that 1 in 5 women are raped? Where does this number even come from? Based on their own self-report, possibly years later, in a research study in which 20% of the people who chose to participate in the study admitted to being sexually assaulted so they extrapolated that 20% of the entire population was sexually assaulted?
First, there is a selection bias in that people who have been sexually assaulted or have been otherwise affected by sexual assault are more likely to agree to take part in research projects about sexual assault than people who have not. That is just basic human nature. People tend to spend time doing things that are meaningful to them than things that are not.
Second, peoples’ memories are often not 100% accurate. The human memory is very susceptible to influence from ourselves and those outside. How we view ourselves, how we want society to view us, our own social mores, society’s social mores, input from other people all impact our memories. This is definitely true years after an event, but it is also true in the immediate remembrances of the event.
If only a very small percentage of rapes are reported and only a very small percentage of them fully investigated and prosecuted, how the hell can people insist false reporting of rape is rare and that 90% of alleged rapes really happened (just going with Dienne’s numbers here)? On what is that allegation even based?
That said, I do agree that very, very few women (or men) completely fabricate a rape and report it to the police or college authorities knowing that it is false to cause trouble. However, see my second point above: the human memory is highly susceptible to influence. The human memory is also highly susceptible to alcohol and drugs and, in many of the allegations involving college rapes, we are dealing with intoxicated individuals – alleged victim, alleged perp and all the witnesses are all intoxicated to some level.
@Dienne
People have been discussing the situation on college campuses long before DeVos. To assume people are parroting her is to be completely ignorant about the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter and the majorities disproval of it.
Polls have show the majority of Americans were against the illegal overreach that is a blatant abuse of Title IX and removes due process from students for years.
You need to look at the questions asked in surveys claiming 1 in 4 college students is a victim of sexual assault and/or rape. It’s so messed up that several people who have taken it have gone on record to say the survey counted several of their responses as rape when it was not. They typically start by asking if a woman has ever experienced …, from age 11 to date, and then frame it as if it happened on campus. They ask if you have ever had sex after consuming an alcoholic beverage. If you have, it’s counted as rape. Never mind that having a glass of wine and consenting to sex is completely possible. According to the survey any sip of alcohol negates all consent. Got to pad those numbers somehow!!
You’ll find surveys claiming anywhere from 70 – 90 % of girls on college campuses have been victims of sexual harassment. When you dig into the meat of the studies you will find the #1 type of sexual harassment mentioned in the study was someone looking at you. Again, this is due to the set up of the questions. Have you been a victim of sexual harassment? Have you had someone (A) grab you in a inappropriate way? (B) Verbally proposition you more than once? (C) look at you? Again, the girls taking the survey say they never found it worthy of reporting (to anyone other than Facebook when they later think someone is trying to traffic their child).
You have to realize these surveys claim that college students experience higher rape rates than women in the war torn Congo. Who would send their kids there? Every legitimate study will tell you women outside of ivy leave colleges, in impoverished areas, are at a much greater risk but instead we encourage Ivy League girls to pretend they were, even after the accused student was cleared, while making porn reenactments of their non rape for school art projects.
Am I saying rape does not happen on campuses? No. What I am saying is that rape has been watered down to a grotesque and insulting extreme on campuses, a hysteria has been promoted, and lives destroyed due to blatant violations of rights and laws during it.
No one wants to take away precautions for actual victims, but no one wants to see the falsely accused being railroaded either. Take a look at the 50+ court cases colleges have lost, so far, due to false accusations and rights violations
Take a look at the story about 2 drunk students who had been making out at a party all night. They went back to the girls dorm room after people started telling them to knock it off/get a room. The girl freaked the next day because it was her roommates boyfriend. Everyone had seen them all over each other. She accused him of rape to avoid an awkward situation with the roomie. This was confirmed in texts she was sending to a friend before she made the accusations. She told her friend that he passed out as soon as they got back to the room and she gave him oral sex when he was unconscious. She then got him up, kicked him out, texted another guy and told him to come finish her off.
The poor, poor dear.
Take a look at the story about a student in a wheelchair who had lost both of his feet in a horrible car accident. A female student was telling people he raped her. He went to administration and asked for help/guidance. They sent him to the police department where he was arrested. The canals student had been caught falsely accusing multiple students of rape, and she had threatened to falsely accuse her previous boyfriend. This was confirmed by texts and emails in every situation. In this case she had accused the student of pinning her down on the bed and raping her in a way that wa physically impossible, considering he doesn’t have feet. He was still charged with rape, expelled and blackballed from other universities (as all are).
Again, a hysteria has been created and an environment fostering false accusations has been promoted. They are so easy to make and get away with. You may even get awards from feminist organizations for your lies. There are numerous cases like this and the male students are not even allowed to speak or show evidence that counters the accusations in kangaroo Courts. This does nothing to protect actual rape victims. It spits in their faces and discredits them.
Last post. I meant to say this…
The cases we are seeing filter through the system right now take, on average, 2 years to make it inside the court room. Students who have parents with a substantial amount of money are the only ones who have any hope of getting that far. There are hundreds of cases, but I am sure there would be hundreds more if all could afford to address the injustice.
@ John B
Take a look at this recent accusation
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/armaan-premjee-usc-student-cleared-rape-charge-security-video/
The student could still be expelled from college, after being cleared by the police/a court of law. This has happened multiple times thanks to government overreach that encourages violations of the accused rights to protect the alleged victim.
There is something seriously wrong when evidence comes forward that disproves the accusers story, and often proves beyond a shadow of a doubt IN A COURT OF LAW that they were out right lying, yet the falsely accused is still punished by the school in order to protect the female student who made false accusations. How does this protect victims? They are punishing one!
As you can see from the story, people still have to sign guests into dorm rooms. That’s what got this one busted. She was caught coming on to a male student… strong, by a bar surveillance camera. She was caught dragging him by the hand to her dorm room, and signing him in. She was standing on both feet, leading the way.
One article is credited with starting this nightmare, pardon, “movement” that was supposed to address assaults on campus. This is B.S. Several colleges had been revoking due process and wrongfully suspending falsely accused students for decades. They just got permission from the government to do it this time.
Radical Feminist/Women’s Studies professors did it in the late 1980s and early1990s after teaching students to view hurt feelings and regret after a one night stand as rape. He doesn’t call you or send flowers? You were raped. You find the same type of nonsense in college policies today. Vague and overly broad policies that conflate hurt feelings with serious crimes. The false accusations poured in then, demands to make campuses safer where shouted from the roof tops and lawsuits followed, along with multiple public debates between radical (victimologists) and liberal feminists that are easily found on YouTube today. In fact, some of the surveys used to claim the 1 in 4, 1 in 5 stats at colleges today were actually conducted among a very small sample size at 2 colleges in the early 1990s. People are still trying to straighten out the damage done then. Victimologists made it acceptable to remove all responsibility, accountability and agency from female students. It’s only gotten worse.
I digress…
An article was credited with sparking the movement and 2011 Dear Colleague Letter that amounts to nothing more than a report to Facebook.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3353941
I hate saying this because I have no issue with women sharing their stories. It can be good. I do have an issue with people having their stories published, years after it happened, with no proof to back it up. Jackie/Rolling Stones, anyone? Andrea Dworkins many paranoid schizophrenic rants on talk shows about her top secret spy husband holding her captive and raping her daily, anyone?
I don’t think movements should be insipered by something that can not be confirmed.
@ New Name
How dare you Victim Blame! You are breaking the Non Victim Blaming Model (aka listen, believe and never question the accuser alone) of feminist therapy, which is actually (as noted in the 1970s) malpractice worthy activism pretending to be therapy.
Do you want to know the first time we saw it in action?During the ritual sex abuse accusations that made up the Satanic Panic.
Good times, and people have been discussing/debating it’s harms since the 1970s.
I remember the late 1980s, early 1990s discussions about it surrounding a date rape hysteria on campuses. It was my high school years. I found it refreshing to see people calling out the victimologists false narrative as they were removing every ounce of accountability from females students and laying it at the feet of male students. If she is hammered, nothing she does is her fault or responsibility. If you are hammered, everything you do is your fault and responsibility and guess what? Everything she does is your fault and responsibility, too! Let’s hear it for all the strong and capable women out there! Wooooooo! You go girl!
Of course the majority of mini Radfems can’t understand context and automatically go into a meltdown about blaming victims when you are talking about attitudes and policies that cause serious problems, and not a specific case. Just common threads in multiple cases.
A reporter in Ireland is under attack for publicly discussing what a parent should say to their daughter, in relation to accountability, responsibility and taking safety precautions. We have safety/precautionary tips for any and everything imaginable. Hospitals are forced to waste thousands of dollars a year x-raying Halloween candy for razor blades because paranoid parents keep buying into urban legends but you best not read a story about an alleged rape in a hotel and tell your daughter to think twice before getting hammered and going back to a hotel room with a man she doesn’t know well.
You may lose your job.
Ok, one more, because I have a lot to say on this
I think someone brought up the only 2% of women make false claims stat. This came from Susan Brown Millers 1975 book Against Our Will, and no one knows how she got it. Feminists have clung onto it with a death grip for 42 years. More recent estimates are much higher, and could be higher than what is being put out due to the various definitions used for false reports.
I find the attitudes around this to be appalling. This is discussing the highly effed up Affirmative/Enthusiastic Consent Laws passed into law for California Uni’s, and pushed on students at several other campuses. It’s designed to force students to ask for permission before every single move they make. This was mocked relentlessly and shut down by students in 1991, but colleges have continued enforcing it.
As discussed, no one can agree on the definitions/specifics and videos made for students show male students asking for permission before every single move they make with a female student. Can I kiss you? Can I touch your hip? Can I touch your shoulder? Can I kiss you again? The same video will show female students kidding someone and then asking for permission, and undressing male students without asking permission. This is intentional. They will tell you men have to pay for the actions of some. It’s nothing but mass confusion for 18 year olds trying to navigate this nightmare.
And this is what popular mini millennial Radfems have to say on the matter… (Jesus… their parents have to be ashamed of raising such worthless, lying, hateful, ignorant trash)
https://www.thefire.org/even-affirmative-consent-advocates-seem-confused-affirmative-consent/
“As Jonathan Chait observes today in New York Magazine, some supporters of California’s new law don’t seem to be concerned about the law’s impracticability:
Indeed, the law’s advocates don’t uniformly believe its written standards will actually be followed at all. This defense by Amanda Marcotte is telling: “The law has no bearing on the vast majority of sexual encounters. It only applies when a student files a sexual assault complaint.” So the law will not come into play because nobody will actually try to enforce it. Instead, it will technically deem a large proportion of sexual encounters to be rape, but prosecutors will only enforce it if there is an accusation. And since most, and possibly nearly all, sexual encounters will legally be rape, then accusation will almost automatically result in conviction.
Indeed, this may be the point. [Tara] Culp-Ressler dismisses concerns about convictions of innocent people. (“In reality, false rape allegations are very rare, comprising about two to eight percent of all reports.”) Two to 8 percent seems like a fairly high number of innocent people to convict as rapists, and of course that proportion could well rise quite a bit under a legal regime that expands the definition of rape in ways that are both extremely broad and extremely confusing.”
^^ This is linked in an article about sexual coercion policies that conflate hurt feelings with a crime. This is done with a majority of crimes, including rape.
https://www.thefire.org/colleges-policies-against-sexual-coercion-prohibit-honest-discussion-of-feelings-and-intentions/
Earlier this month, University of California, Los Angeles School of Law professor Eugene Volokh called out Clark University for such a policy, now removed from its website. According to the former policy, sexual assault includes coerced sexual contact, and coercion includes statements like the following: “If you love me you would have sex with me.” “If you don’t have sex with me I will find someone who will.” “I’m not sure I can be with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with me.”
So if a student simply does not want to be in a sexless relationship, how exactly is that student supposed to communicate his or her feelings under this policy?
It looks like that question will remain unanswered by Clark, at least. Volokh reported that in addition to taking this explanation of sexual coercion offline, Clark stated that it was “not current Clark policy.” But a quick search reveals that other schools maintain similar provisions on sexual coercion.
Youngstown State University (YSU), a public institution in Ohio, advises its students that coerced sex is not consensual, and that the following statements, among others, could be coercion: “If you LOVE me, you’ll have sex with me.” “You know you want it.” “You’re a tease.” These statements might be obnoxious, but they are not threats. They come with no explicit or implicit consequences other than the speaker being upset or sexually frustrated. And where the only result is hurt feelings, it cannot be said that someone is being forced into having sex.
YSU isn’t alone. Emory University’s policy on consent and coercion similarly lists “coercive statements,” including: “If you really loved me, you would have sex with me.” “If you won’t have sex with me, I’ll find someone who will.” “I didn’t realize you were such a prude.” A layperson might characterize the second statement as a “threat” to leave the relationship. But a “true threat” under the law—a type of expression unprotected by the First Amendment—conveys “an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence.” Here, the threatened action consists only of something the speaker has a right to do regardless of other factors: choose a different partner. It’s not within a public institution’s legal authority to effectively forbid potential sexual partners from making their feelings and (legal) intentions clear before continuing with a relationship.
Emory states on its website that its policy was adapted from the University of Michigan’s. UM’s website, in turn, contains similar language, but states somewhat unhelpfully: “This article has been archived. It is still available for reference purposes, but may contain out of date information.”
Each of these three schools has provisions of their policies that appropriately target threats of violence or blackmail and use of drugs as unacceptable means of obtaining sex. Those prohibitions have legal bases and articulable boundaries. Accordingly, they don’t pose the same risk to protected expression and due process as policies that treat as threats any statement that might have a persuasive or negative emotional effect on a person.
Students will be best served if universities make a trend of rescinding these overly broad policies rather than implementing them. Young people are already receiving enough confusing messages about what consent means without being told that being frank about their priorities will render any subsequent sexual activity nonconsensual. Universities should maintain policies designed to ensure their students are safe. Beyond that, though, they cannot dictate the details of conversations leading to sexual activity when each party involved is capable of deciding for themselves whether to have sex.”
How hideous is it to turn every sexual encounter young adults have into potential rape? I know no rape victims who would want this. It’s what you fight against. Doing this to people is some kind of sick, twisted, revenge for something that has not even happened to most of them.
It’s not surprising when you look at documentaries on the type of feminist theory they follow
BBC Documentary called Lefties: Angry Wimmin
https://youtu.be/sCRohDqWDcw
The women who started this in America (this BBC doc does give the best look, straight from the horses mouth) were certifiably insane. Most had/have serious mental conditions and were known to get on stage and stand there with their eyes rolling back in their head, babbling incorrectly for an hour. Their family members were constantly terrified they would kill them. They made up new fake rape accusations, that had more holes than Swiss cheese, and shared them every other week on talk shows, demanding all believe them. They publicly promoted the Satanic Panic. Gloria Steinem had to sell Ms magazine because of her role in the panic. Google her 1993 cover titled BELIEVE IT! Cult Ritual Abuse Exists!
They were called victimologists for a reason, and they destroyed more women, men and children over the last 40+ years than most know.
Some shouldn’t be breathing due to the harm they have caused others, let alone making more in their pathetic image.