Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE PREVENTION NEEDS STRONGER WORDS FROM THE PRESIDENT

By Wendy J. Murphy

President Obama recently issued a statement recognizing April as "Sexual 
Assault Awareness Month".

Good, I thought, after reading the first line.  We need a strong leader to 
speak out against sexual violence.

Then I read the rest.

Seems Obama may not be the right guy.

His statement was such perfunctory milquetoast - you'd think he was issuing a 
proclamation in support of Girl Scout Cookies.

Oh he made a few good points - like noting that sexual violence can lead to 
"long-term health problems and severe emotional harm".

But while adding that victims "need an array of services", including 
"accompaniment to criminal justice proceedings", he nowhere notes that 
victims rarely need someone to accompany them to court because most cases 
reported to law enforcement are never accepted for prosecution in the first 
place.  Of those that are accepted, a majority are dismissed or resolved 
without a conviction.  Even more disturbing is that few rapists spend any 
time behind bars.

So while it's nice to suggest that victims need "services" - the truth is, 
they already have access to plenty of support - free of charge.  What's 
missing is justice, a core concept around which civilized societies are 
organized - and a basic right denied victims of sexual violence every day 
across the United States.

Vice President Joe Biden already knows all this.  He submitted an important 
study to Congress in the 1990s, aptly20titled “Rape:  Detours on the Road to 
Equal Justice”, in which he noted a gross disparity in prosecution and 
punishment rates when comparing theft crimes to sex crimes.  Nothing much has 
changed since then.  In fact, if the President's failure to mention it is any 
indication, this disparity appears to be widely accepted.

Obama's statement should have included a federal commitment to real change 
with regard to the “detours".  But instead, he made the awkward observation 
that a victim should receive services "even if [she] chooses not to report 
the crime to the police".  While some rape victims are understandably 
reluctant to report the crime out of fear they will be blamed, shamed or 
simply not believed, even oblique tolerance for such roadblocks denies 
victims equal justice.

He could have at least said he wanted to combat these problems, or mentioned 
that he felt frustrated because rape is the most underreported and 
underprosecuted crime in the United States.

But he didn’t.

If that isn't bad enough - Obama's silence on the growing problem of child 
sex abuse was deafening - especially in light of the last decade's spike in 
demand for child porn because of the internet.  Child sex abuse need not have 
been the President's key focus in a statement about "Sexual Violence 
Awareness Month", but it was worth a mention.

The worst thing by far, however, was Obama’s inexplicable failure to use any 
language suggesting that rape is a human rights violation.
 You’d think that with Joe Biden's expertise on the issue, and Obama's 
personal background, he would understand particularly well the right of all 
human beings to be free from targeted violence.

Judging by his recent comments during the NATO summit in France on a proposed 
law in Afghanistan that would legalize the rape of a wife by her husband, 
Obama clearly appreciates the way that sexual violence interferes with basic 
freedoms for women.  He called the law "abhorrent" and disrespectful to 
"human rights".  Hmmm.   So our President thinks women in other countries, 
but not this one, have a "human right" to be free from sexual violence?

Calling for more "awareness" is a good idea.  But a statement that fails in 
so many basic ways to tell the truth about such a serious problem is a sign 
that either Obama doesn't really want a whole lot of "awareness", or he needs 
to start letting Joe Biden handle the issue.

I’ll give Obama the benefit of the doubt for now – and assume the statement 
isn’t a reflection of how he really feels.

But I’m worried that he won’t really "get it" until someone whispers in his 
ear that if black victims of racist violence were systematically being denied 
legal redress, he would refuse to sign a proclamation that didn’t start with 
the phrase “human rights” and end with a firm condemnation of "unequal 
justice".