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Friday, December 8, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
KU student battles with effects of rape
By Liz Hueben
Kansan staff writer
The only thing Kirsten Lawng said she deserved after that party two years ago was a hangover the next day.
Instead, she has endured two years of emotional anguish.
She said she was raped by another KU student after he took her home from the party. She had known him for more than a year.
Lawing said the man was taking her home because she was so drunk she was not aware of what was going on.
"I passed out," said Lawing, Wichita senior. "He was extremely drunk. I woke up, and he was raping me. I realized this person I absolutely hate was raping me. He wouldn't stop."
Lawing never reported the incident to police because she said she did not have a strong enough support system at the time.
"I never called the police because I couldn't handle any more rejections about whether or not I had been
raped," she said, "I didn't want anyone to ask me what I was wearing or saying, "Maybe you wanted this to happen." I felt very alone.
"I'm not very convinced that the police, lawyers and judges in the United States are sensitive about rape issues, and I didn't want to put myself on trial about something I felt so bad about."
She said the same man had attacked her previously in her room residence hall her freshman year, she was able to get away from him.
She still sees the man on campus several times a week, and he smiles and asks why she won't talk to him, she said.
"The next day he wanted to have lunch with me," she said. "He doesn't think what he did was rape.
"Ms.' magazine reported that on a survey of men who said they had forced someone to have sex with them, 48 percent of them said that what they did was definitely not rape."
Charlene Muchlenhard, assistant professor of psychology/women's
studies, referred to a study by Diana Russell in which rape was defined as intercourse through force, threat of force, or when one person was unconscious, asleep or otherwise helpless and unable to consent.
She said Russell found that 24 percent of all women had been raped and that 80 to 90 percent of the rapes had been date rape or acquaintance rape.
Of those raped, Russell found that 30 percent reported stranger rapes and that 1 percent reported date and acquaintance rape.
Lawing said that she tried going through therapy but that it didn't work for her. She said she didn't like the therapist-client relationship.
She also said she had a difficult time telling her parents about the incident.
"It was hard to talk to my parents because I know it hurts them to see me hurt," she said.
Lawing said she turned instead to various support groups to help her get over the burn.
She said she had gotten a lot of
support from Douglas County Rape Victim Support Services (RVSS), Headquarters and Women's Transitional Care Services, which are all local centers that lend support to women who have raped.
She said she also got involved in feminist organizations.
"Through feminist organizations I've met a lot of women who have had the same experiences and believed which is comforting." Lawing said a lot of women who have been raped since they have been at KU."
She has been active in a group on campus called Students Against Violence Against Women and has participated in Lawrence rallies that are paired with national rabewareness campaign "Women Take Back the Night."
She said she got involved in the rallies because she thought the end results of a sexist society were rape and battery of women.
For the past two years, Laws having has to carry around a lot of emotion.
"You question your own judgment.
You question your own personal intuitions," she said. "You have no assurance it won't happen again.
"it's harder after an acquaintance rape for a woman to trust the men she harbor after a stranger rape for a woman to trust the men she can't see."
Sarah Jane Russell, director of RVSS, said studies showed that the same symptoms developed in victims of rape, as in victims of stranger rage.
She said, however, that these symptoms, called Rape Trauma Syndrome, were more intense for a victim of acquaintance rage.
Rape Trauma Syndrome is a set of long-term and short-term emotional problems that a rape survivor may encounter.
The problems include: guilt, emotional shock, disbelief, embarrassment, shame, depression, feelings of powerlessness, disorientation, flashbacks to the rape, denial, fear, anxiety and anger.
Muehlenhard said women got more social support after a violent, stranger rape than after a rape
where the victim knew the offender.
She said there were other long-term harmful effects of rape, which included problematic adjustment to family and work, alcohol and drug abuse or dependency and sexual functioning problems.
However, Muehlenharr added, about 25 percent of all rape victims said that in the long run they were as well off or even better off after the rape for different reasons, including therapy and a change of values.
For Lawing, one problem is that she is very angry. She said she could be prosecuted for harassment more easily than the man could have been prosecuted for rape, had she reported the incident.
"I sprayed ketchup on him at the Glass Onion once. Not very mature, I know," she said.
Lawing does not seem to feel much shame, though shame can be one of rape's effects.
"I'm supposed to feel ashamed about what happened to me. But the person who raped me should be the one who is humiliated," she said.
Date-rape victims often have difficult time convicting attackers
By Liz Hueben
Kenan staff writer
Kansan staff writer
In many cases of rape, a victim does not have the capacity to think very clearly about what kind of support is needed.
One of the biggest decisions for a rape victim is whether to report a rape to police, especially if the rapist was a date or acquaintance.
One problem with date-rape cases in court comes from relatively low rates of conviction.
There are many factors to be considered before making this decision because there are advantages and disadvantages to the legal path.
Jim Flory, Douglas County district attorney, said it was difficult to convict a date-rape suspect because
the testimony in court was basically just one person's word against another's as to whether the alleged victim consented to having sex with the defendant.
“Consent is the big problem,” he said. “In cases of acquaintance rape, you don’t usually have to worry about getting caught on,” or the defendant pleading insanity.
Flory cited one case in which a woman who said she had been raped fied to a nearby grocery store and was arrested in police. Flory summoned the clerk for advice, who said that when the woman came, she was obviously upset and was crying.
But the defendant claimed she consented to having sex with him and was acquitted.
Flory said he was sure there had
been more acquaintance rapes or sexual assaults than had been reported and prosecuted by his office.
In the U.S. legal system, a defendant can be convicted only if jury members are able to find the defendant guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." Flory said that was tough to prove in date-rape cases.
"In a case of date rape, there are no eyewitnesses, and a rape kit taken at the hospital doesn't prove any wrongdoing. It is whether the victim consented." For more
Flory said such problems arose in any one-on-one crime where there were no eyewitnesses, such as assault.
Another traumatic experience for a rape victim in the courts is that
some defense lawyers try to turn the case around so that the victim is on trial.
Flory said he did not think this had been a problem in Douglas County. He local defense attorneys had done their jobs without attacks on the victim.
To alleviate persecution of alleged rape victims in court, some states, including Kansas, have passed rape shield laws that make a victim's sexual history inadmissible in court as evidence that she would have consented to sexual intercourse with the defendant.
Another factor that causes trauma in rape cases is that the victim has to answer questions about an unpleasant experience that may have happened months before, which forces
the victim to re-experience the rape. Flory said.
There are many stereotypic traits of rape victims in the eyes of society and the eyes of jurors.
Charlene Muehlenhard, assistant professor of psychology and women's studies, said there was a common reason that a woman would cry rape just because she might be angry at her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, husband or someone else.
"Going through the court system is so traumatic that if a woman really can be forced to get back at a man, there are easier, quicker ways than that." she said.
Kirsten Lawing, Wichita senior and member of Students Against Violence Against Women, said that rape was falsely reported as often as
any other violent crime, yet it was the least prosecuted crime.
crime.
In Douglas County, fewer than $1/4$ of one percent of all reported rapes have been untrue, according to the booklet "Surviving Rape and Sexual Assault in Douglas County," produced by Douglas County Rape Victim Support Services (RVSS).
Legally, Flory said, saying "no" to sexual advances was enough to call subsequent sexual contact rape. But, in practicality, he said, it probably was not enough for a jury.
Gary LaFree, professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico, will book "Hape and Criminal Justice: Society of Sexual Assault," in which he
See RAPE. d. 10A
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