Justice Department: Students actually less likely to be sexual assault victims

Judging from the significant uptick in coverage of sexual assaults on America’s campuses, it’s easy to get the impression that rape is rampant. The highly publicized but dubious narrative involving the gang rape of a University of Virginia student that set the media world on fire after its original publication in Rolling Stone magazine was only the most recent publicized tale of on-campus sexual assault. The collapse of that poorly checked story has prompted student advocates and high profile feminists to caution that the implosion of one assault narrative does not invalidate the fact that campus rapes are a scourge of near endemic proportions.

Those making this claim point to the statistic that suggests 20 percent of all college women will be subject to sexual assaults. How did this statistic become so popular, you ask? The White House’s promotion.

“We know the numbers: one in five of every one of those young women who is dropped off for that first day of school, before they finish school, will be assaulted, will be assaulted in her college years,” Vice President Joe Biden said in April.

“It is estimated that one in five women on college campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there,” President Barack Obama echoed, repeating for effect, “One in five.”

That figure was derived from a 2007 study by The Campus Sexual Assault Study conducted by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice. Apparently, the DOJ is backing off this well-cited but suspect statistic.

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study, the rates of rape and sexual assault among college-age women from 1995 to 2013 are actually lower relative to the rest of the population.

Highlights:
– The rate of rape and sexual assault was 1.2 times higher for nonstudents (7.6 per 1,000) than for students (6.1 per 1,000).
– For both college students and nonstudents, the offender was known to the victim in about 80% of rape and sexual assault victimizations.
– Most (51%) student rape and sexual assault victimizations occurred while the victim was pursuing leisure activities away from home, compared to nonstudents who were engaged in other activities at home (50%) when the victimization occurred.
– The offender had a weapon in about 1 in 10 rape and sexual assault victimizations against both students and nonstudents.
– Rape and sexual assault victimizations of students (80%) were more likely than nonstudent victimizations (67%) to go unreported to police.

Reporting on this development, the editorial team at The Federalist noted that it should be stated that sexual assault is a terrible crime and that it needs to be prosecuted rather than “shamed.”

“That’s why it’s so important for victims to report the crimes when they happen, so law enforcement authorities can find the perpetrators and hold them accountable,” The Federalist. “Perpetrators of sexual assault who are never reported are obviously far more likely to victimize even more people.”

The fact that nearly 8 in 10 alleged campus rapes go unreported is tragic. Many have noted, probably with accuracy, that the protagonist of the Rolling Stone’s story, “Jackie,” probably did experience some form of trauma and her memories may be flawed as a result of allowing so much time to elapse between her attack and the investigation into that alleged incident.

If something good emerges from the debacle surrounding the Rolling Stone report, hopefully it will be that women who are victimized in the future and the friends of those victims will make sure that those assaults are reported to the authorities and investigated promptly.