Bill 1636: Sexual Assault In The United States

There are two types of rape kit backlogs in the United States: the publicly-known backlog of unexamined kits that have already been submitted to labs for testing and the secreted backlog of kits in law enforcement safekeeping that have not been sent for testing. This latter backlog is of particular concern since the programs already in place to reduce backlogs in laboratories, were not intended to address unexamined evidence stored in police stations. http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=InNews&ContentRecord_id=d005d0ed-c1ad-4971-ad7b-edf6ffb20307 .

What is the Clery Act and Title IX? How are they related to campus sexual assault?

In Daniel Luzer’s article “Is Alcohol Really to Blame for the Prevalence of Sexual Assault on College Campuses?” he suggesting that alcohol is not the reason for the continuous sexual assaults at the college level, published on November 18, 2013 by Pacific Standard. In this article Daniel along with other sources suggest that all of the sexual assaults in college, although may involve alcohol, should not be blamed on alcohol, but on the society we have become. They suggest how college students mingle today is different than how they did years ago, and college students are not assaulting females because they are drunk, but because they have not been taught that it is wrong to do so. Different studies have shown that alcohol in colleges has not

Last week, the White House released a short, celebrity packed, 60-second public service announcement (PSA) on the topic of sexual assault. 1 is 2 Many addressed those who are in control of preventing sexual assault as its intended audience was those who can put a stop to sexual violence: the perpetrators or would-be offenders. Although this one minute announcement completed the task of bringing sexual assault to the forefront of discussion, it failed to encompass the central issues concerning the culture of sexual assault: societal misperceptions, the victims, and the justice system. Sexual assault is a phenomenon that has been around for centuries; the culture of sexual assault is rooted in both legal practices and societal perceptions.

Under Title IX, sex violence is prohibited, therefore, college and universities should be on immediate alert when handling sexual violence reports in regards to acting quickly to protect victims of sexual violence and other students to ensure they feel safe at their respective institution. All public and private institutions such as school districts, colleges, and universities receiving any Federal funds must comply with Title IX. Therefore, by making sure that all students have equal access to education, schools are required to prevent and respond to reports of sexual violence. In Law for recreation & sport managers, it states that, “in the 2001 OCR guidance, sexual harassment is defined as it applies to educational institutions as unwelcome

This is The Campus Sexual Assault Bill of Rights, instituted by George Bush in 1992. This set of regulations, in conjunction with Title 4, protects sexual assault victims both on and off campus. Despite such rules being in place, many colleges and universities have been reported to have violated these and other regulations. Misconduct in handling sexual assault cases on campus is always an issue, since On March 8, 2016, detailing student complaints against 4 universities in violation of title IV, the law defending from sexual discrimination in any federally funded organization. The four sexual assault survivors filed their complaints with the U.S Department of Education against American University, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Indiana

Through the last few years, legislation has tried to create more funding for laboratories to analyze thousands of rape kits for the officers to solve the crime. Crime labs cannot test rape kits for they do not have the funding for it because most funding goes for other crimes that police stations view as more important. When labs do not analyze the rape kits because no one has enough funding for the requirements to be able to test the kits. Funding that “Congress passed the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Reporting Act, requiring three-quarters of federal funding for sexual assault kits be used for testing or taking inventory”(Reilly). In the article written by Reilly, Congress stresses that a certain amount of federal funding will be for testing sexual assault kits. Congress passed an act so all crime labs can get all of the testing of rape kits done. Congress has passed a bill to create extra funding for backlogging of rape kits, while states are trying to raise funding for crime labs to have the ability to test rape kits. Crime labs do not have the resources to analyze thousands of rape kits, which leads to needing more funding from the state to allow them to test rape kits to solve the crime. States do not create a high enough budget for police stations to use on testing rape kits that leaves rape kits to sit in storages for years. For most police stations “ they had a backlog of 1,500 rape kits dating back more than a decade,” have rape kits that date back decades because their labs never receive enough funding for the amount of testing that needs to be done (Beitsch). Backlogging of rape kits has multiplied over decades for the lack of funding from legislation. Rape kits sit in storage because there is no money in the budget. Most victims wait for years before they find out if their rape kit was tested or thrown away. One victim, in particular, was “ led to believe that the kit was

Sexual assault policy in the United States as it stands is clearly inadequate for protecting the physical wellbeing of men and women from sexual assault. Layering of policy serves a s a Band-Aid on a social wound much too large to be contained and the rise of sexual assault as a public problem reiterates the need for greater legislation and policy to protect everyone from becoming prey to the crime of sexual assault. While eyes focus on the (disproven) rise of violence in the United States, and turn to gun control, other violent crimes are forgotten. Sexual Assault has seen several cases of policy failure that actors have tried to salvage through the act of policy layering and have not significantly resolved the problem.

Start blaming the system, not the victim. Sexual assault is a crime that is very common, yet the punishment perpetrators receive is not as harsh as it needs to be to reduce the occurrence of these crimes. Laws concerning sexual crimes have been edited over decades to be stricter however, sex offenders typically receive little or no punishment. Sexual Assault is defined as any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient (“Sexual Assault”). Victims of sexual assault are often blamed as the reason for the crime being committed while the blame is taken away from the offender. Harsher punishment must be enacted on sex offenders because the victims suffer conflict from the crime throughout their

The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program (SHARP) is not reinforced by several army leaders to prevent crimes of sexual harassment and assault on awareness, education, confidential reporting, and accountability for individuals who commit the crime. The Army has a fantasy policy to promote medical services and confidential reporting for victims of sexual harassment and assault

In the state of South Carolina there are a number of laws regarding sexual assault and consent. Now sexual battery in the state of South Carolina includes vaginal, anal, and oral sexual intercourse as well as any intrusion such as touching. Furthermore, the legal age of consent in the state is 16. Unfortunately, if someone is 14 years of age, they can consent to have sex with someone who is 18 years of age or younger. Yet, submitting to coercion someone, especially if it’s of an aggravated nature is not considered consent. Therefore, a person could receive up to 30 years in prison for making someone have sex with them without them given consent.

According to RAINN’s publication “The Criminal Justice System: Statistics," 20% of victims don’t report out of fear of retaliation, 13% believed that the police would not help them, 13% believed it was a personal matter, and 7% didn’t want their perpetrator to get in trouble. Even if a victim does decide that they want to proceed with the rape kit, there are a number of factors that can prevent them from succeeding. In some cases, there is the fear of being touched and the fear of re-traumatization. Others realize that their nearest hospital with a SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) program is extremely far from their location. Although a nurse does not necessarily have to be a SANE to proceed with a kit, it is often preferred in order to gain the best evidence for legal proceedings. Many nurses are not willing to undergo the training and be on-call in the event that a victim comes in at night. Some hospitals do not want their employees completing rape kits, because they do not have the proper training and administrators fear that these doctors and nurses will have to take off of work to testify in court. Still other victims are discouraged by police, hearing anecdotal evidence and statistics, like the fact that approximately .6% of rapists end up incarcerated (“The Criminal Justice

University of Tennessee Knoxville was recently involved in a lawsuit for enabling athletes to sexually assault women by silencing the victims and failing to provide disciplinary actions or even investigation onto the accused. While this is a recent case, this is not the first time this sort of behavior involving a school has been brought into light. One in four women will be sexually assaulted by the end of their undergraduate career (Posluszny). Sexual assault happens throughout society no matter what the gender or age, seeming to be in increasing epidemic over the last few years. While the idea of sexual assault is largely met with public hostility in theory, actions often contradict this. This contradiction lies heavily in a culture that is unwelcoming to the victims and often leads to the perpetrators being tolerated. The existence of rape culture in western society occurs due to the preservation of violent media, patriarchal standards, and the state of the criminal justice system. This culture cannot be improved until we confront each of these problems to their roots.

The second determinant for sexual crime victims’ law report rate is the affective factors, which is closely related to the previous cognitive one. The influence affective factor may have on report decision-making can be different in the specific situation of offences and demographic elements.

If colleges started taking more action against sexual assault do you think it would damage their reputation or actually improve it? What effect would it have on the school’s student population? What is so wrong about representing a school that defends its students and take actions against sexual