+A / NEWS / MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2010 THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN KANSAN.COM
Chance Dibben/KANSAN
AFTERMATH (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Amanda, a Lawrence resident and former Johnson County Community College student, said she was raped when a freshman in high school. Although Amanda said she regrets not reporting the rape, she said she has worked hard to forgive her attacker and hopes her story will strengthen other women.
Annie McKay, former assistant director of the Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center, who specializes in sexual violence prevention services, said it was wrong to blame victims for the crimes against them by pointing to their behavior.
We have long been conditioned to say, 'Well, I guess I shouldn't have looked like that,' or, 'Had I made better choices, I wouldn't have been raped," she said. "But you can make every right decision and still be sexually assaulted."
The decision to report a sexual assault is not easy. Victims face a barrage of invasive tests and a legal system that requires them to retell in detail and relive their humiliating attack before police officers, nurses, doctors, prosecutors, psychiatrists, and, for the select few whose cases make it to court, a judge and jury.
A lack of eyewitnesses other than victims in most rapes makes rape the most difficult crime to prosecute, especially if victims don't call police quickly or allow for the gathering of biological evidence, Amy McGowan, assistant Douglas County district attorney, said. McGowan was a Jackson County, Mo., prosecutor for 17 years and has worked in her current position for five years.
Sixty percent of sexual assaults are not reported.
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 2005
Because many sex crime cases lack physical evidence, such as an attacker's DNA left behind in sperm, to corroborate a victim's testimony, McGowan said her office prosecuted only about one of every four cases. The district attorney's office prosecutes only when it knows it has sufficient evidence to prove a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, the victim might be dragged through a painful and futile process in search for justice the legal system couldn't provide.
--that passers-by, who saw the two on the ground behind a bush, approached them and pulled the man off of Kate. The man then fled on foot. After receiving a ride home from the passers-by, Kate arrived back at her sorority house, disheveled and drifting in and out of consciousness.
"I look at every case as, 'Can I prove this to a jury?'" McGowan said. "It's tough — the majority of cases I can't file."
"We were having fun," Kate said. "It was a typical dollar night and he bought me a drink. He seemed nice enough."
Kate remembers little about the night she was assaulted. Her last memories of the night are drinking two drinks and one shot she bought for herself, then sipping a drink a male KU senior she met at the bar bought for her.
Kate suspects she was drugged. However, at the hospital she had more than three times the legal amount of alcohol in her blood and the doctor told her that at the time she was assaulted, it would have been affecting her body like surgical anesthesia.
She's seen pictures her friends took that night at a local bar. In one, she has 10 shots lined up on the bar. Kate says she would never have deliberately drunk them all. But, with no memory of an attack, she can't offer effective testimony in court. That is, if her case can ever be prosecuted. It has been under review by the district attorney since the assault in September.
What she knows of that night after he bought her the drink she has learned from police and friends who were with her. Her friends left her alone for only two minutes, but it was long enough for her to disappear outside with the young man who bought her the drink. Later police would tell Kate and her friends that witnesses saw a man on top of her, with her dress pulled up around her waist. Police also told Kate
Haley, a friend and onetime roommate who saw Kate when the passers-by brought her home at about 3 a.m., said, "I don't think she knew where she was. She couldn't say words. It was all jibberish. She could walk but couldn't actually say anything that made any sense."
At first, Haley thought Kate had too many drinks, but she had never seen her this incoherent. Her sorority sisters called an ambulance and told the paramedics who picked Kate up that she would need a rape kit.
A recent study published in the Journal of American College Health found that 96 percent of the sexual assault victims who had been given "roofies," the nickname for the sedative Rohypnol slipped into drinks by would-be rapists, had already consumed alcohol beforehand. Jessie Fazel, a nurse who examines victims of sexual assault at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, said a majority of the victims came to the hospital under the influence of alcohol, rather than "roofies." She said that some
To hear an interview with Kate, go to kansan.com/audioclips/10
would be rapists also slipped over-the-counter drugs such as Benadryl and Visine into their intended victims' drinks to intensify alcohol's effect, but that voluntary alcohol consumption could incapacitate a potential victim just as effectively.
"I see lots of people who don't know what happened or had a memory lapse who think they were drugged," she said. "Lots of times we can't tell if they blacked out from alcohol or medication."
Thorough examination can reveal traces of a drug such as Rohypnol in the victim's blood. Had Kate consented to the rape kit and exams, nurses could have contacted GaDuGi Rape Crisis Center and an advocate could have come to the hospital to accompany her through the painful and embarrassing exams.
Instead, Kate fled the hospital and called.
her parents. When she related what she remembered to her dad, Tom, who lives in Wichita, she cried for the first time since the assault.
"I started bawling." Kate said. "Saying it out loud, telling my dad what happened, was so hard."
Her father found it hard to listen.
"It was terrible," he said. "She was still disoriented."
He immediately left for Lawrence to make what he called the longest two and a half hour drive of his life.
Kate didn't take her KU test that day. Instead, she went to her mother's house in Overland Park for two weeks, feeling numb. When she returned to campus, she struggled to resume a semblance of the life she had before the assault. She avoided going to class for fear of seeing her attacker on campus. She didn't feel like going out, because it could happen again. Returning to her sorority house brought with it the pain of gossip and speculation about that night. Self-blamed, guilt and shame overcame her when she heard talk of what she "should have done" to avoid it. Kate remembers hearing one friend say, "Maybe if she wasn't so drunk it wouldn't have happened."
--justice, 2
Contrary to popular belief, most rapists are not strangers who jump out of bushes. According to the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Study, about 73 percent of victims knew their attackers before the assault. Rapists can be dates, boyfriends, friends, marital partners or family members. Such relationships can complicate and delay a victim's decision to report. For victims such as Jessica, mutual friendships can dissuade them from reporting their rapes to police at all.
"All I can remember saying was, 'What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me? You're supposed to be my friend."
JESSICA Overland Park senior
Jessica, an Overland Park senior, was sexually assaulted last semester by her friend Dan. She was out at a bar with friends and Dan offered her a ride home. When they arrived at her house, he claimed he was too drunk to drive himself home. Drinking blurred her memory of the event, but she does know he didn't succeed in raping her. At the time of the assault, she was having her period and using a tampon. She woke up with it still inside her. But she remembers him holding her body down on the bed for 20 to 30 minutes, groping her, repeatedly assuring her they were just "fooling around." She felt powerless against his tight grasp of her wrists.
"All I can remember saying was. What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me? You're supposed to be my friend," she said.
The next morning, when she woke up, he was gone. She began vomiting, and couldn't stop. After two scalding hot showers, she took still another. No amount of scrubbing could cleanse her of the dirty feeling that overpowered her. She decided no one should know about her humiliating experience.
"I felt completely isolated in my own feelings," she said. "I felt unlovable."
Eventually, Jessica found the courage to tell a mutual friend who knew her attacker. The friend approached Dan about
The graph above shows what percentage of women of each ethnicity are victims of rape. Although about 80% of all victims are white, minorities are somewhat more likely to be attacked.
Source: www.rainn.org Graphic by Haley Jones
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How Kansas law defines felonies such as rape
In Kansas, felony offenses are classified by 10 severity levels, with level one the most serious. Rape is a level one criminal offense — the same level as murder. Offenses level one through four carry "presumptive imprisonment," which means the defendant is almost certain to serve time in prison if convicted.
Kansas law defines rape as sexual intercourse with a person who does not consent to the sexual intercourse"when the victim is overcome by force or fear; when the victim is unconscious or physically powerless; or when the victim is incapable of giving consent because of mental deficiency or disease, or when the victim is incapable of giving consent because of the effect of any alcoholic liquor, narcotic, drug or other substance, which condition was known by the offender or was reasonably apparent to the offender."
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Source: U.S. Department of.