Sexual Assault: Closer to Home Than You Think
A controversial topic that has swept across the United States in recent years has been the issue of rape and how our society can make progress in convicting a greater number of assailants. Although states like California have recently passed their affirmative consent law, which states that unless both parties verbally consent to any form of sexual interaction – it is not consensual, most other states have not come close to making any type of adjustment to their current penal code. Laws such as the one above requires college campuses to adopt the “yes means yes” policy for sexual assault so that a victims silence or passivity does not count as consent. While affirmative consent laws would help with the conviction of more rapist, the issue in society is that so many women are reluctant to report their rapes and due to their hesitation about sixty percent of sexual assaults go unreported. Many wonder why a victim of sexual assault, specifically rape, would not report their assailant, but when you take into account that a majority of rapes get blamed on the victims and that the rape test they perform at the hospital is just as invasive as being raped again, it is a no brainer as to why more victims do not come forward. Baylor, unfortunately, has conformed to the way society typically deals with sexual assault. Though one might think that because of Baylor’s religious affiliation, the campus would not have as many sexual assault issues as other colleges, but the reality is that it occurs here just as much as it occurs at other colleges. While rape is a worldwide issue, the problem at Baylor is that rape and other forms of sexual assault are actually swept under the rug to maintain Baylor’s “good Christian” image. Although there is no permanent solution to something as prominent as sexual assault, adding support groups for sexual assault victims, having an on-call physician at the Baylor clinic, and re-educating the police on how to properly address sexual assault victims, Baylor could actually fix the issue instead of ignoring it while creating a more comfortable environment for students on campus at the same time.
As with any college, any statistics or articles about sexual assault or rape on Baylor’s campus is extremely hard to find. Although articles about rapes and sexual assaults that occur on college campuses are not hard to come by, most of the time when a victim decides to publicize their story – it is few and far between. Most women admit to being sexually assaulted years after it happened, when not only is it too late to persecute the assailant, but also the name of the college that it occurred at is no longer relevant because they no longer attend that school. The hurdle that we face here is that while we can get somewhat accurate statistics about how many men and women are raped in college, we do not know statistics for specific schools. While I can see why a college would not want to publish the number of sexual assaults that occur on their campus, covering up information such as this misleads students into believing that rape is not a real or relevant issue at their college campus. Baylor’s status as a private Christianity commonly casts a false sense of security on campus because students do not want to think that one of their fellow Christian peers would commit such a heinous crime. This mindset that Baylor students would not act this violent towards each other has seeped into the thought process of many Baylor University police officers. Two separate anonymous female students that currently attend Baylor, one a sophomore and the other a freshman, both have similar accounts about how the Baylor police approached their sexual assault reports. Although each student was consulted by different police officers, both women said that the police officers’ questions focused around them and their actions – rather than addressing the direct situation, which would be the male assailant, they focus on what the victim did wrong. The police officers’ questions included asking how much alcohol the victims had consumed, asking if they had been flirting with the assailant, and asking about what the victims were wearing and commenting on how they “should have covered up more if they did not want to get attacked”. While these questions are shocking and equally as sickening, the comment that each police officer made that resonated with each victim the most was that their fellow Christian brothers are “not capable of committing such an atrocious act”. The ignorance that the police and some of the Baylor student body holds when it comes to sexual assault, not only results in victim blaming, but also creates a hostile environment for those whom have experienced sexual assault at Baylor because this harsh mindset creates an environment where the victim’s mental health is harmed since they believe their attack was their fault and that if they report their assault they will be ostracized.
The naiveté of the Baylor police department is not the only predicament that Baylor faces when it comes to addressing sexual assault. While Baylor does have a counseling center, and the university generously provides seven free counseling sessions to every student, many sexual assault victims do not feel comfortable confiding in others about their experience. There are several factors that contributing to this disconnect between victims and counselors, the first being that because a majority of the time the counselor has not personally experienced the situation that a sexual assault or rape victims has been in. Due to the fact that the person the victim is supposed to confide in and find resolve in has not been through their experience or have personally dealt with the after math of a traumatic event such as the victim has, many victims feel that a counselor would not be able to help them because they literally have no way of relating to them. Five out of the six anonymous Baylor rape victims whom were interviewed admitted that they have not sought out any type of counseling because they feel like it would be a “waste of their time” and would only cause them to relive their horrific attacks. The one student whom has reached out to the counseling center for help went solely for the purpose of obtaining anti-anxieties and anti-depressants. By not providing an environment where victims feel like they can disclose such confident materials, this causes victims on Baylor’s campus to conceal what happened to them without an outlet to release their pent up emotions. Without a proper place to discuss their experience, their likelihood for developing both depression and posttraumatic stress disorder increases to thirty percent and sixty percent, respectively.
To resolve this issue of ignorance that the Baylor police, student body, and faculty have when it concerns sexual assault on campus, Baylor could re-educate the groups mentioned above on how to better handle the issue of sexual assault and how to support the victims after the fact – should they decide to publicize their experience. By educating the Baylor police on how to approach a victim of sexual assault, this would eliminate the act of victim blaming that the police partake in while they are writing up on a report on the incident. With victim blaming out of the way, the police officer can then better focus on who committed the crime, what they looked like, and what occurred during the time period the victim and assailant were together. If the police were to actually focus on the assailant instead of what the victim did wrong and approached their interview of the attack differently, victims of sexual assault would feel safer on campus knowing that the authorities on campus are actively trying to help them. Implementing a support group for victims of sexual assault on campus through the Baylor counseling center, where members of the group are all victims of some type of sexual assault, will give victims more resources on Baylor’s campus and give them an outlet to express what they are feeling to people who actually understand.
While putting in place a support group for sexual assault victims and re-educating the general population of Baylor on how to better support victims of sexual assault might seem excessive, but by putting these in place we are potentially reaching out to around 600 students whom have been effected by sexual assault. An alternative solution that came up while researching sexual assaults on college campuses was that by increasing the number of patrol cars and the frequency at which they circle campus, would prevent or hinder almost all sexual assaults on campus. In theory this solution seems like it could work but the fact that seventy three percent of sexual assault of committed by someone the victim knew and about sixty percent of sexual assaults occur at the victims house or at a home of a friend, neighbor, or relative. If someone is walking across campus and is accompanied by another person whom they know and are comfortable with, a police officer who passes by them – the police officer would not see anything wrong with the situation since each person’s body language portrays that they are comfortable with each other. Due to the fact that a majority of sexual assaults are not completely random and do not occur publicly, by simply upping the police presence and frequency on campus would not solve the issue of sexual assaults on college campuses. Although the proposed solution does not provide policy implementations that would stop rape, it does implement changes in the way Baylor handles the after math of a sexual assault; which not only assists the victim in coping with what happened to them, but could potentially lower the rate of sexual assaults on campus because assailants would eventually see that the police are actively approaching the issue of sexual assault and are not longer ignoring the problem.
Victims of sexual assault are six times more likely to experience posttraumatic stress disorder, three times more likely to develop a depressive disorder, triples their suicidal tendencies, and they are twenty times more likely to abuse substances such as alcohol or drugs. The psychological repercussions and the detrimental affects that it has on the way that victims function in their day-to-day life exemplifies why sexual assault is not only a heinous crime, but it also has a heinous impact on the victims. By providing a support group for victims of sexual assault and re-educating the body of Baylor University, while although not directly dealing with issue of stopping sexual assault, by better handling the after math of sexual assaults on campus, we can make Baylor a place where students feel comfortable enough to come forward with their experiences and also have an outlet channel their emotions into and by re-educating the Baylor police, student body, and faculty, while also opening up a support group through the counseling center we can make Baylor a model school for how to handle sexual assault on c