Alexandra Lutkus

11/29/17
CDM
IRP

“The mistake we make is in thinking rape isn’t premeditated, that it happens by accident

somehow, that you’re drunk and you run into a girl who’s also drunk and half-asleep on a bench

and you sidle up to her and things get out of hand and before you know it, you’re being accused

of something you’d never do. But men who rape are men who watch for the signs of who they

believe they can rape. Rape culture isn’t a natural occurrence; it thrives thanks to the dedicated

attention given to women in order to take away their security. Rapists exist on a spectrum, and

maybe this attentive version is the most dangerous type: women are so used to being watched

that we don’t notice when someone’s watching us for the worst reason imaginable. They have a

plan long before we even get to the bar to order our first drink.” Scaachi Koul, One Day We'll

All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. Every 98 seconds, someone in America is being

raped.

Women between the ages of 18-24 who attend some kind of university are three times

more likely to be assaulted than their male counterparts because universities are breeding

grounds for assailants to get away with heinous crimes all to avoid headlines in newspapers. The

laws and bills that are supposed to protect victims have loopholes and escapes routes for

perpetrators leaving victims cast aside awashed with guilt and horror. Rapes have been

notorious for cover ups and misguided blame, at the college level, at home, and in the movie

industry where everything is rarely as it seems. In order to better understand why, it's best to look

into the past, into our history, to see where we as a society, have gone wrong.
 On November 21, 2015, staff writer for CNN Jessica Ravitz, The story behind the first

rape kit, writes about Louis Vitullo, a Chicago police sergeant who became the chief

microanalyst in the city's crime lab who is credited with developing the first rape kit. In the

beginning rape kits had instructions and items like swabs, slides and a small comb. The kits were

once called “Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit." and stayed that way for a few decades. Rape kits

are important in any case as they take DNA and any fluids that can help aid in the victim's

account of what happened. However, nowadays some kits are either discarded, hidden, or never

taken at all, like they were ignored back in the 1970s. Martha Goddard was a survivor of sexual

assault during the 1970s, when the women's movement just begun and women no longer silenced

by the male dominated world . The victims were finding courage to report their sexual assaults

but the issue was that no standardized protocol to collect and share forensic evidence existed yet,

nor was there an understanding of the psychological trauma attached to these crimes. “If a

woman didn't appear sufficiently traumatized, her claims were often dismissed” explains Susan

Irion, who advocated for rape victims back then. If or when the emergency room personnel

bothered to gather evidence, it usually wasn't collected properly. “Slides were co-mingled.

Packages containing evidence were not properly sealed.”The evidence was destroyed, tainted or

open to allegations of tampering, much like it is today.

Martha Goddard took it upon herself to create a comprehensive rape kit that would help

the victims and follow the proper protocol. Goddard visited hospitals to learn what procedures

were needed to keep evidence secure and charged into every police precinct in the Chicago area.

She learned what was needed to collect evidence in the proper way and "wanted the brains of

people who knew what they were doing and were frustrated." She needed funding and was close

friends with Christie Hefner, which allowed the initial funding for the kits to come from Hugh
Hefner's Playboy Foundation. According to a 1980 Chicago Tribune article kist were first

utilized in September 1978, when 26 Cook County hospital emergency rooms made it a part of

standard practice for gathering trace evidence and all it took was the strength and resolve of one

women to get the ball rolling. Just think of how these situations could have been avoided or

bettered if these steps would have have been taken just 60 years earlier.

Since the creation of man, the potential of rape and assault has always existed. It is naive

and inconceivable to think that this is just an issue of a couple of poisoned apple generations and

an error of human rights to let women, children, and men be subjected to it any longer. 96 years

before movie mogul Harvey Weinstein allegedly sexually harassed or assaulted multiple women

over decades a young 20s’ movie star lost her life when silent movie star Roscoe “Fatty”

Arbuckle followed her to a bathroom and pushed her in a room, brutalizing her so badly that her

bladder ruptured and she died 4 days later. When he was arrested he was taking pictures and

treated as if he did nothing wrong. In 2007 Annie Clark, who graduated in 2011 from UNC,

stated that when she went to administration she was told “Rape is like a football game, Annie. If

you look back on the game, and you’re the quarterback and you’re in charge, is there anything

that you would have done differently in that situation?” Then Becket Brennan attended a party

thinking it was safe in 2008 when she went into a basketball player's apartment and was raped by

three men. Two of the players led her upstairs and raped her, when they were done, a third player

came in the room, pushed her in a closet and assaulted her again. The actions taken against the

boys were unfounded. It would take years to write down every victim but the point is, with a

huge amount of time between these cases, nothing has changed.

College rapes have been notorious for cover ups and shifted blame benefiting only the

attacker, leaving the victim to feel helpless and hopeless. In 2016 the case of Lawrence Gains
assaulting a fellow teammate on Carthage college grounds was kept quiet until social media

broke the story and clued in other Carthage students what had happened just a few doors away;

he was still allowed to remain on campus for a brief period of time. When a women is raped, the

media barely bats an eye but if it is a man assaulted by a person of the same gender, it is shared

on every media outlet and while most of the world calls the victim names, justice is found. In this

misogynistic society where women are the steps men take to succeed, of course it wouldn't

matter if just one more women is taken advantage of. According to an article posted on website

Rainn, 11.2% of all students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence,

or incapacitation with graduate and professional students standing at 8.8% of females and 2.2%

of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation.

One in five female students report rape or attempted rape to someone with authority and they are

notoriously mishandled or watered down until it’s not even close to what was reported in the first

place.

How can we as a society stand back and watch as victims are blamed and made to feel

bad while the attackers are labeled as All-American and shouldn’t have to pay for twenty

minutes of pleasure, how can we hold ourselves accountable and expect others to follow when

this culture regards the attacker and scars the victim. “Does this darkness have a name? This

cruelty, this hatred, how did it find us? Did it steal into our lives or did we seek it out and

embrace it? What happened to us that we now send our children into the world like we send

young men to war, hoping for their safe return, but knowing that some would be lost along the

way. When did we lose our way? Consumed by the shadows. Swallowed whole by the darkness.

Does this darkness have a name? Is it your name?” character Lucas Scott, One Tree Hill. This

quote explains how we as a society almost turn away and refuse to take accountability for the
rape culture we have welcomed into our homes and watch on TV or the local news. Politicians

making excuses and colleges renaming claims just to keep the violence down on campus all give

power to what is wrong in our society. On Sept. 21, 2008, Katherine Lees, a freshman at

Carthage College, was sexually assaulted by two men in her dorm room located in Tarble Hall

after midnight. The two men were never identified and Katherine Lee later withdrew from school

and brought a negligence suit against Carthage and its insurer, Lexington Insurance Company.

The case eventually went to a lower court where it had incorrectly deemed an expert witness's

testimony to be inadmissible, and then made its way up to Federal court. The argument was that

the school did not provide enough security or care once this case had been reported to the school.

Lee and her Lawyers argued that there were not enough security measures taken on campus and

especially not in the all-girls dormitory where she resided. Daniel Kennedy, professor emeritus

of criminal testified that there were “numerous security deficiencies at Carthage,” and that

Carthage had a history of sexual assaults leading up to Lees’s case -- eight between 2003 and

2008. Kennedy also stated that Carthage security procedures did not live up to the practices

published by the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, but the

court dismissed that point, as the standards are merely recommendations. The court also clarified

that past cases of rape at Carthage involved acquaintances of the victims, while Lees’s case

involved strangers. Jumping back to the security procedures being merely recommendations is

absolutely horrifying.

Why pretend to be a lion when you are in fact a sheep. Sure, campus security always

claims to send their next available officer, that they are here to protect us and will do whatever it

takes to make sure the student body feels secure on Carthage campus, but when a Carthaginian is

raped in her own dorm room on campus, it is not given a proper ruling because the security
measures are just simply guidelines that do not need to be followed? Students get away with an

unbelievable amount of crime while on campus because heads of residential life do not want to

send students into the world as criminals” quote taken from Miriam Montez, Area coordinator

for Carthage College. In the 2017 Students’ from the University of Queensland Club Yearbook

produced by residents had horrible quotes included in its pages. Quotes from the Yearbook

include: “I miss the chase;” “It’s not gay if you don’t push back;” “There will be condoms so

please all cum.” Sharna Bremner the director of End Rape On Campus Australia, states “Talking

about choking women or putting fists through their faces certainly doesn’t reflect any sort of

culture of respect, in fact it demonstrates the complete opposite” she told news.com.au. Rape

culture has only grown in hatred and continues to shade its victims in shame.

Rape cover ups do not just happen on college campuses, or to movie stars but to anyone a

attacker views as an “easy target”. Society is raising people, grooming them to take advantage of

someone else and it is okay because of what gender you are or what status in this nation's

economy you hold. We need to be better for the up and coming generations who inherit our

messes with no guidance to fix them. Carthage College is ranked 41 out of 100 in terms of safety

on campus and incidents reported. So many victims and cases fall through the cracks just to save

face, where is the accountability? In the student handbook every first year student is told to read,

where in their does it accurately state what happens when you report situations like this. If you

are on the football team, the point system setup allows its players to get away with misdemeanor

crimes and assaulting people before they are dismissed from the program. It doesn’t share the

statistics or reported incidents up to date so what is being told to students? What is being taught

about rape culture and how to speak up when victims need help or to be heard?
 Bibliography

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Weinstein.” The Cut, 29 Nov. 2017, www.thecut.com/2017/11/before-harvey-weinstein-

virginia-rappe-roscoe-fatty-arbuckle.html.
 MaureenShaw. “Everything Wrong With How We Talk About College Rape, in 9 Awful

Quotes.” Mic, Mic Network Inc., 15 Oct. 2015, mic.com/articles/104442/9-times-college-

officials-said-the-worst-things-about-sexual-assault#.dYyZxPqHu.

One Tree Hill. “Quotes.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 2006,

…….www.imdb.com/title/tt0757574/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu

Rainn. “Campus Sexual Violence Statistics.” Campus Sexual Violence: Statistics | RAINN,

Rainn, 2013, www.rainn.org/statistics/campus-sexual-violence.

Ravitz, Jessica. “The Story behind the First Rape Kit.” CNN, Cable News Network, 21

Nov. 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/11/20/health/rape-kit-history/index.html.

Straumsheim, Carl. “Expert Testimony Restored.” Carthage College Negligence Case

Headed Back to Court after Ruling, INSIDE HIGHER ED, 17 Apr. 2013,

………www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/17/carthage-college-negligence-case-

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