Letters & Opinion
Letter to the editor: WRC shines light on assault
Women’s Resource Center
Outreach Coordinator
In regard to the recent article, “Women’s Resource Center provides help To sexual assault victims,” the Women’s Resource Center would like to clear up a few misconceptions. The article was accurate, but it was also misleading, specifically in the introduction when stranger-rape is employed as an example of a campus rape scenario. While stranger-rape does occur, it is far less common than acquaintance-rape or date-rape.
People often assume that rapes are perpetrated by deranged, sex-crazed lunatics hiding in bushes waiting for young, nubile females to stroll by. This is a rarity and a dangerous misconception. Two out of three sexual assaults are perpetrated by a non-stranger. It’s a horrible truth but perpetrators are often friends, relatives or intimate partners of the victim.
It’s for this reason that teaching how to protect one’s self from rape only solves half the problem. We also need to be teaching consent, and maybe then we can stop rapes before they happen. 84% of individuals whose actions matched the legal definition of rape believed that what they did was definitely not rape. Using sexual coercion is rape. Pressuring someone into sex against their will is rape. Sex with someone who doesn’t have the ability to say no is rape.
Rape is about sex, but more specifically it is about power and control. That is what a perpetrator takes from a victim of rape. That’s what we need to give back to them, to aid in the transformation from victim to survivor to thriver. Misconceptions like this one make it all the more difficult for victims to come forward, report their assault and take back control of their lives.
