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Education Crime Technology

The War On Campus Sexual Assault Goes Digital 399

Posted by samzenpus from the ending-the-epidemic dept.
HughPickens.com writes: According to a recent study of 27 schools, about one-quarter of female undergraduates said they had experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering college, but most of the students said they did not report it to school officials or support services. Now Natasha Singer reports at the NYT that in an effort to give students additional options — and to provide schools with more concrete data — a nonprofit software start-up in San Francisco called Sexual Health Innovations has developed an online reporting system for campus sexual violence. One of the most interesting features of Callisto is a matching system — in which a student can ask the site to store information about an assault in escrow and forward it to the school only if someone else reports another attack identifying the same assailant. The point is not just to discover possible repeat offenders. In college communities, where many survivors of sexual assault know their assailants, the idea of the information escrow is to reduce students' fears that the first person to make an accusation could face undue repercussions.

"It's this last option that makes Callisto unique," writes Olga Khazan. "Most rapes are committed by repeat offenders, yet most victims know their attackers. Some victims are reluctant to report assaults because they aren't sure whether a crime occurred, or they write it off as a one-time incident. Knowing about other victims might be the final straw that puts an end to their hesitation—or their benefit of the doubt. Callisto's creators claim that if they could stop perpetrators after their second victim, 60 percent of campus rapes could be prevented." This kind of system is based partly on a Michigan Law Review article about "information escrows," or systems that allow for the transmitting of sensitive information in ways that reduce "first-mover disadvantage" also known to economists as the "hungry penguin problem". As game theorist Michael Chwe points out, the fact that each person creates her report independently makes it less likely they'll later be accused of submitting copycat reports, if there are similarities between the incidents.
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The War On Campus Sexual Assault Goes Digital More

The War On Campus Sexual Assault Goes Digital

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  • Will Any Effort Be Made To Validate The Report? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19, 2015 @06:44AM (#50960981)

    Or will they just assume the guy is guilty?

    "Hey, I don't like that guy. Let's all report him through the rape app. We're girls so we'll be believed over him, particularly by the media. The media will even believe us after it's been shown that we were lying because it fits with their narrative."

    • That's not how you do it, you create false reports a couple months apart. Then at least the police will have a very hard time proving false testimony for all but one of the reports. While the system still gives the earlier reports an air of false legitimacy.

      That's the only problem I have with it, as long as police/judges treat the earlier reports with enough suspicion I don't have a problem with it.

  • "nonconsensual sex or touching" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zapotek ( 1032314 ) <tasos.laskos@NOspAm.gmail.com> on Thursday November 19, 2015 @06:45AM (#50960983)

    According to a recent study of 27 schools, about one-quarter of female undergraduates said they had experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering college

    So basically they asked about touching and sex just so they can put the phrase "nonconsensual sex" and "one-quarter" together?

    Those 2 are nowhere near the same level of severity to be reported in that fashion.
    I've been touched plenty times nonconsensually, I figured "that's a bit too familiar" (yes I'm a man, yes by women), however I wouldn't place those occurrences nowhere near anything having to do with rape.

    • Frankly, I'm surprised that non-consensual touching on college campuses is that low. Or maybe because they only polled women. Perhaps the statistics would be worse if they polled guys as well?

    • Re:"nonconsensual sex or touching" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @07:11AM (#50961033)

      And that is the kicker. The 25% number has nothing to do with rape, but they make it appear so as if it has. That is dishonest to the extreme.

      The problem here is that "touching" is one of the established ways of testing out whether somebody else is amenable. Of course, you go for non-critical areas, like hands or lower arms or shoulders, but unless these idiots intend to re-program basic human behavior, touching and then observing the reaction is an acceptable and very well established (probably a few 10'000 years old) ways of asking a specific question. (There is also a whole formalized instance of this: Dancing. That is no accident.) And the established way to deal with it is to not get offended, but signal interest by accepting the touch or non-interest by terminating it. Anybody that thinks this is unacceptable behavior or even a crime needs therapy because there is something seriously wrong with them.

      • Re:"nonconsensual sex or touching" (Score:5, Informative)

        by Your.Master ( 1088569 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @08:15AM (#50961173)

        If you look up the study, the exact quote is “nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation,”.

        The summary is brain-dead, but in a way that *understates* the problem, compared to the actual quote (which doesn't contain the word "rape"). After all, you're interpreting this as lower arms and shoulders, but that's clearly not "sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation"..

        • Re:"nonconsensual sex or touching" (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AthanasiusKircher ( 1333179 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @09:14AM (#50961393)

          If you look up the study, the exact quote is âoenonconsensual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation,â.

          The summary is brain-dead, but in a way that *understates* the problem, compared to the actual quote (which doesn't contain the word "rape").

          Two things:

          (1) You'll notice that the section of the summary which mentions "touching" is actually a very close paraphrase of the NYT article which is linked there. So the NYT is actually what's "brain-dead," and TFS just continued the "brain-dead" trend of not looking at the source.

          (2) I'm sure this will be ignored by most people here, but can I just offer a plea to moderators to think about posts a bit before modding them "+1 Insightful" or "+1 Informative"?

          The particular issue is with the common type of Slashdot post which shows up frequently around just about any study -- "Well, gee, a proper study of X would have to consider [obvious factor Y]." The default policy here seems to be to assume that all researchers running studies are absolute morons and would never consider whatever obvious flaw I came up with after 2 seconds of thought and posted on Slashdot. Or, as in this case, we assume that the researchers have some sort of agenda and ignored obvious data flaws or whatever.

          Guess what, mods? 90% of these posts are WRONG. Most studies do have some subtle flaws, but researchers generally make an attempt to address many of the obvious ones.

          The problem is that summaries are generally too short to contain all the details, so you'd actually have to RTFA to see that the researchers actually did take into account "obvious factor Y." Sometimes TFS is also misleading or poorly worded in such a way, which contributes to the problem. This is an editorial problem, but complaining about the editors here is fruitless, so I'll appeal to those with moderation points:

          If you see a post that seems "too good to be true" in claiming to have found some obvious flaw that completely invalidates a study, either take a minute and look at the study and check it, or just ignore the post. Don't just mod it as "Insightful" or "informative" because you wish it were true, or you'd like to think everyone else in the world is an idiot (or, in this case, a manipulative idiot).

          I'm tired of seeing obviously stupid posts rise to "+5 Informative" within an hour of a story going up (two such posts in a row here). I'll excuse the people posting such crap, because there's always a lot of crap posts here. But moderation should be taken at least a little more seriously.

          • I agree with your point, but one of the many challenges that we face when discussing here is that often we can't get to the original studies (paywall) but only a summary written by a journalist who doesn't include the relevant parts. So we have no way to know if there is an agenda by the original authors of the study or agenda by the person writing the news article and/or summary.

        • Re:"nonconsensual sex or touching" (Score:4, Informative)

          by goose-incarnated ( 1145029 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @09:42AM (#50961543) Journal

          If you look up the study, the exact quote is “nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation,”.

          The summary is brain-dead, but in a way that *understates* the problem, compared to the actual quote (which doesn't contain the word "rape"). After all, you're interpreting this as lower arms and shoulders, but that's clearly not "sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation"..

          Those were numbers pulled from 2 universities. A sample size of two isn't very impressive. Here's the actual rape numbers, from a study that spanned four years: 1 in 52 [aei.org] women are raped.

        • Umm... no. You are misrepresenting the issue. (Score:5, Informative)

          by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @10:32AM (#50961931) Journal

          From TFS:
          https://www.aau.edu/uploadedFi... [aau.edu]

          Overall, 11.7 percent of students across the 27 universities reported experiencing nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching by force or incapacitation since enrolling at the IHE.

          Which is about HALF of the fabled 25%.

          The magic 25% (i.e. the long parroted and continuously debunked legend of 1 in 4 women being raped) was reached through following fiddling of numbers.
          Again, from TFS:

          To assess the overall risk of nonconsensual sexual contact, prevalence measures were estimated that combine the two behaviors that constitute sexual contact (penetration and sexual touching) and the four tactics discussed above (physical or threat of physical force; incapacitation; coercion; AAC [Absence of Affirmative Consent]).

          Absence of Affirmative Consent being a catch-all category for any kind of "explicit" and "active, ongoing voluntary agreement" of "both partners".

          The question that makes 11.7% into "1 in 4 women" being:

          Since you have been a student at [University], has someone had contact with you involving penetration or oral sex without your active, ongoing voluntary agreement? Examples include someone:
          - initiating sexual activity despite your refusal
          - ignoring your cues to stop or slow down
          - went ahead without checking in or while you were still deciding
          - otherwise failed to obtain your consent

          When that question, which no longer talks about rape but about failure to read minds and thus tell if someone is still deciding and a failure to "otherwise obtain consent" (possibly in written form) we get the magical 1 in 4 numbers.
          Which would dictate that every family that has at least one female child, also has at least one rape victim (two grandmas + mom + daughter = 1 of them must be have been raped).

          But even then more fiddling with numbers is needed to reach the magic 1 in 4 value. Such as limiting the survey response to seniors only.

          According to the AAU survey, 16.5 percent of seniors experienced sexual contact involving penetration or sexual touching as a result of physical force or incapacitation. Senior females (26.1%) and those identifying as TGQN (29.5%) are, by far, the most likely to experience this type of victimization.

          And if it needs to be more obvious that they get those numbers by padding the set and expanding the time frame...

          Students who are relatively new to school may experience higher risk because they are not as familiar with situations that may lead to an incident of sexual assault or misconduct.
          Examination of the rates for the current academic year show this pattern holds for undergraduate females.
          Among freshmen, 16.9 percent of females reported sexual contact by physical force or incapacitation.
          This percentage steadily declines by year in school to a low of 11.1 percent for seniors.

          And then there are other issues...
          Like defining "penetration" as "when someone's mouth or tongue makes contact with someone else's genitals", without defining whose mouth and whose genitals are in question.
          The way question is defined, both giving and receiving oral sex constitutes penetration.
          On whom? Well... On both giver and receiver of oral sex, according to such a loose definition.

          Or "physical force" being defined as "holding you down with his or her body weight, pinning your arms, hitting or kicking you, or using or threatening to use a weapon against you".
          Which equates physical violence and a gun to your head with "being on the bottom".

          Or how numbers reported don't really match up.
          Like penetration numbers for fem

        • If you look up the study, the exact quote is “nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation,”.

          The summary is brain-dead, but in a way that *understates* the problem, compared to the actual quote (which doesn't contain the word "rape"). After all, you're interpreting this as lower arms and shoulders, but that's clearly not "sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation"..

          What the study implies but doesn't say is that there is some location where non-consensual penetration or sexual touching is ok but that college campuses are not that place.

          They need to tell us what the appropriate place *is*.

      • Re:"nonconsensual sex or touching" (Score:5, Interesting)

        by swb ( 14022 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @08:15AM (#50961177)

        I think the "problem" is probably much deeper than that and involves a whole bunch of cultural assumptions, behaviors and perhaps even physiological responses that aren't even questioned, let alone well understood.

        I've always been kind of curious about the assumptions implied by the language used to describe sexual encounters. Sex is often described in active/passive giver/receiver terms. "I let him have sex with me" or more colloquially "I let him fuck me", implying that sex in some way is an experience where men actively act on women who somewhat passively accept or recieve it.

        Men and women typically approcah sex with men as the initiators, with women signallling their approval quite often by passive acceptance of male advances throughout the sexual experience.

        I also think there's something of a physiological element as well. I've read that some percentage of women actually experience orgasm during consciously unwanted sexual encounters. Which leads somewhat to a kind of paradox where women may actually by experiencing some kind of physical pleasure during a sexual encounter that they may not conscioulsy want from an intellectual and emotional perspective. It's not hard to see this leading to a kind of cognitive dissonance and confusion which allows results in the sexual act to be completed (physical response in the moment overriding longer term desire and motivation) yet longer term the experience is evaluated by women as being unwanted despite the appearance of it being desired at the time.

        Now, ladle on to that all the other elements of college -- alcohol and drug use clouding judgement, a lack of experience by both men and women in terms of what they really believe to be a holisitically good sexual experience, broader social expectations about "hooking up", etc.

        And then you have a fairly strong undercurrent of ideology in feminism that tends to view most sex, including sex that most people would consider consensual, as being rape or male aggression.

        But let's ignore all that, create an app that just turns sexual assault into a yes/no checkbox.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I've always been kind of curious about the assumptions implied by the language used to describe sexual encounters. Sex is often described in active/passive giver/receiver terms. "I let him have sex with me" or more colloquially "I let him fuck me", implying that sex in some way is an experience where men actively act on women who somewhat passively accept or recieve it.

          That is the argument put forward by radical feminist Andrea Dworkin in the 1987 book "Intercourse".

          And then you have a fairly strong undercurrent of ideology in feminism that tends to view most sex, including sex that most people would consider consensual, as being rape or male aggression.

          When asked about the book, Dworkin makes it clear that she does not consider all sex to be rape. Keep in mind this is one of the most radical feminists to ever have lived. You have come to the same conclusion as she did, meaning you are more radical than mainstream feminism, and yet you have this strange impression that somehow it's the other way around.

          You should read that book, you might be surprised.

    • Yeah, it's like those kiddy porn stats: "last year we rescued 12985 kids..." meant to be understood as "... from a violent raptor", whereas in reality it means "... from a loving home where the father stumbled into a MAFIAA trap on amule".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      about one-quarter of female undergraduates and students who identified as queer or transgender said they had experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering college

      Why did you edit this important bit out of the full quote? The way you did it makes it sound like 27% of all females on campus have experienced this, which is not what they are saying at all.

      • Because my job isn't to report on this and because the bit I copied was enough to being attention to the point I was trying to make, with said point having nothing to do with gender but rather the author's attempt at manipulation by counting together touch and rape.

        Not to mention the fact that this was obviously a quote of the full description, with the description being a mere scroll away.

        You saw a gender bias where there was none, so it was probably just your own.
      • Also, the bit you highlighted isn't even in the summary. I just copied and pasted the relevant bit.

      • about one-quarter of female undergraduates and students who identified as queer or transgender said they had experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering college

        Why did you edit this important bit out of the full quote? The way you did it makes it sound like 27% of all females on campus have experienced this, which is not what they are saying at all.

        so 27% of individuals on campus who either are or pretend to be female have experienced this. Interesting. How about the queers who don't pretend to be female, do they experience this as well? From other queers or straights or what?

  • Collusion? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ydna ( 32354 ) * <andrew@s w e g er.net> on Thursday November 19, 2015 @06:45AM (#50960987) Homepage

    I think this is a pretty cool idea (improving the likelihood of reporting rapists and ill-informed post-adolescents). But will it be able to avoid collusion on the part of those reporting? Multiple persons with an ax to grind (or just wanting to "tease" someone) could seemingly file multiple reports triggering the escrow's release. That, in itself, is not the problem. It's the consequences of free (or possibly anonymous) condemnation. I still think anything that improves reporting of (genuine) assault is a good thing. I just worry about how technology has an equal hand in facilitating asshattery.

    There are two goods I would like to see from an effort like this: punish the truly criminal and better educate those poisoned with the antique ideals of past generations. I didn't have the best education regarding this (but it was better than most maybe) as a child and must frequently question my thinking regarding other humans. Yes, I'm talking about men. I prefer to be inclusive, but men are the fucking problem here.

    I just don't want to ruin someone's life because of poor guidance (by parents, peers, media, educators, etc.). I expect that a small percentage of false-positives is to be expected. But I don't want to provide a means to facilitate it.

    Even the most vile transgressor deserves to face their accusers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      If it goes to trial, one of the things the defense will care about is whether or not the people who reported it knew each other ahead of time. That's something could be verified with witnesses.
    • It seems that in this case, if there are multiple reports, the transgressor then gets a chance to face their accuser. We all see the concern of collusion to "get somebody" but I don't see how this program increases that problem. After all I could get five of my friends and all agree to walk into the dean's office telling the same story without any online tools.

  • Open to abuse, by design (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sibko ( 1036168 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @07:00AM (#50961011)

    Notice how "evidence" and "courts" aren't words used anywhere in this.

    Write a script to automatically file rape claims against every male in the school. It gets held by the escrow service, so the university can't even see the fact that everyone has a rape claim against them, at least, not until they've asked for the data during an investigation.

    Someone eventually escalates some situation or another and the university pulls the data on the person and - Woah, 33 pre-existing rape claims! You're expelled buddy! And then this gets shared with every other university, and you make newspaper headlines, so all google searches of your name turn up rape accusations and, well, good luck ever getting a job or college education for the rest of your life.

    And all this, without a single court getting involved.

    "Social Justice"? More like modern Salem witch trials.

  • Anonymous rape claims (Score:5, Informative)

    by starworks5 ( 139327 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @07:06AM (#50961023) Homepage

    its like 4chan, for rape.

    But seriously, as soon as I saw the ada initiative on there, i knew it was bullshit. Selena Deklemann herself tried to entrap me once as an enemy of feminsts, by trying to cajoule me into going to meet her behind the florist dumpster alone, and after i repeatedly refused accused me of harassing her at Open Source Bridge.

    Then there is the matter that the founder of the ada initaitive, which is also listed in there, currently has a federal case open for a false rape claim against her husband, among others that she has made over the years to others, except for the fact that she killed herself over the issue. Schwern vs Plunkett

  • Vague definitions, intentional misinterpretation (Score:3)

    by tomxor ( 2379126 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @07:32AM (#50961063)

    nonconsensual sex or touching

    Whoa... i know you have to pick a range for your checkbox but this is a rather large one, but of course that is the trick, everyone will focus on non-consensual sex when a rather large proportion of that is will be non-consensual touching, magnifying there numbers... why don't you do a study on males with "non-consensual violence and touching" same thing.

    *brushes past someone in hallway* interpreted as -> He pushed me he pushed me... waaaaa

    It's a shame because studies like these will do very little for the real cases of non-consensual sex by devaluing the more honest studies.

  • Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EmeraldBot ( 3513925 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @07:44AM (#50961097)

    In the article, it mentions female undergraduates, and only females. Guess what, men get raped too. [slate.com] Why is there no insurance for that case? Because every man is an insaitable sexual animal who can't do anything but assault the nearest woman? That's not very gender equal, is it, to automatically assume that the male is automatically the rapist? Isn't this the very definition of sexism, to treat someone differently solely by gender?

    That's ignoring the absurdity of not checking this in court or anything either. In some states, rape is a capital crime, punishable by death in the US. If another person and I have a vendetta against someone, can't we just file two reports? Boom, no proof required, no pesky legal checking. Minimum, they'd be ruined for the rest of their whole lives: potentially, they could wind up on death roll (in some places). That'd be indirect murder, clearly a very funny college prank, yes?

    It's astonishing to me how no one thought this through or even put aside their cultural biases to do any research into this whatsoever.

    • Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jmac_the_man ( 1612215 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @08:26AM (#50961203)
      You're 100% correct in your point about rape investigations, like all criminal investigations, should be a job for actual police and courts with a responsibility to protect the right of the (potentially falsely) accused.

      However,

      In some states, rape is a capital crime, punishable by death in the US.

      is wrong. The only capital crime under any state law is murder. There's a few others at the Federal level (treason and the like), but rape isn't punishable by death anywhere in the United States.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        You're 100% correct in your point about rape investigations, like all criminal investigations, should be a job for actual police and courts with a responsibility to protect the right of the (potentially falsely) accused.

        However,

        In some states, rape is a capital crime, punishable by death in the US.

        is wrong. The only capital crime under any state law is murder. There's a few others at the Federal level (treason and the like), but rape isn't punishable by death anywhere in the United States.

        According to this, you're incorrect.
        http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or... [deathpenaltyinfo.org]

    • If another person and I have a vendetta against someone, can't we just file two reports? Boom, no proof required, no pesky legal checking.

      You could do that anyway. There's are these phsyical places called I think "police app stores", where you can talk to a human police app in person and report a crime.

      IOW being an app does not alter any of the fundamentals.

  • Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19, 2015 @07:48AM (#50961107)
    I once tracked down the "one in four" number. It turns out they include all drunken sex, all cases of not asking permission at each step and pretty much every other bullshit thing they could throw in to inflate the number. And why am I reading this on Slashdot anyway?

  • An app the collects anonymous accusations with timestamps and holds them in escrow. Na that can never be abused.

    Oh yea get some clickfraud people on it and suddenly every male on any campus has a report or 12 all came from unique IP's did their capcha's etc.

    This needs to be litigated to death and the idiots that made it be held personally responsible. A massive financial crater to show just how stupid this is, to dissuade others from being this foolish.

  • Comment on comments (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XB-70 ( 812342 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @08:45AM (#50961273)
    As you read the initial comments about this article, a clear pattern emerges: a vast preponderance of comments refer to any lack of formal trail process, gaping cracks in the factoids quoted and major concern that males will be 'tried' and 'convicted' without due process.

    Sexual (and physical) assaults are crimes - but they are not crimes limited to one gender nor are limited to one gender upon another. Ideas like this perpetuate stereotypes while significantly reducing real rights and freedoms.

    Statistics have shown that lesbian people (as an example) experience domestic violence at a very similar rate to that of heterosexual women (Waldner-Haygrud, 1997; AVP, 1992). It has been estimated that between 17-45% of lesbians have been the victim of at least one act of violence perpetrated by a female partner (Burke et al, 1999; Lie et al, 1991), and that 30% of lesbians have reported sexual assault / rape by another woman (Renzetti, 1992).

    In short, if such a system is to be introduced, it needs to be gender neutral, have significant oversight and be tightly tied to the legal system.

  • the idea of the information escrow is to reduce students' fears that the first person to make an accusation could face undue repercussions.

    Is that a realistic fear? And is it currently common for rape to go unreported because of this fear?

    • Yes. Especially if the perpetrator is somebody powerful. Like a celebrity or start football player. See Bill Cosby

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @09:18AM (#50961411)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • What are you doing America? Your universities and colleges are turning into a Marxists hug boxes. Apps like these will be used by PC feminist girls to hunt down the people they disagree with men and women alike. Though police is soon a reality.

  • Could we please agree on ceasing the inflationary use of the term "War".
    It's getting tiring.

    Thank you.

  • Shitarama! Did I sleep right through Thursday again?

  • Rape (Score:2)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 )

    Some victims are reluctant to report assaults because they aren't sure whether a crime occurred

    If as an adult, even a young one on a college campus, you don't KNOW if you were sexual assaulted, than I would argue you were NOT sexually assaulted. You just another special little snow flake that wants to blame someone else for the outcome, even if its nothing more than hurt feelings or shame, for your own poor choices.

    Either something happened forcibly and against your will or it did not. You were coerced in some way or not. Its really pretty f'ing simple.

    I am going to get accused of victim blaming

    • Some victims are reluctant to report assaults because they aren't sure whether a crime occurred

      If as an adult, even a young one on a college campus, you don't KNOW if you were sexual assaulted, than I would argue you were NOT sexually assaulted. You just another special little snow flake that wants to blame someone else for the outcome, even if its nothing more than hurt feelings or shame, for your own poor choices.

      Either something happened forcibly and against your will or it did not. You were coerced in some way or not. Its really pretty f'ing simple.

      I am going to get accused of victim blaming here but I strongly feel the 'I was to drunk to consent' thing should not fly.

      No, you're not going to get accused of victim blaming - you're going to get accused of drugging women to rape them. Bill Cosby didn't use force, so by your logic, all of those women consented.

      If you are conscience enough to stand and speak you are conscious enough to consent, with proviso you have not been given an intoxicant without your knowledge.

      Fortunately, the law doesn't work that way. The law also understands that there may be multiple intoxicants at play, some of which may be with the victim's knowledge, like alcohol; and some of which may not, such as GHB.

      Its unfair to expect your 'attacker' to be able to evaluate your sobriety when they are also more than likely highly intoxicated as well.

      Multiple studies with confessed rapists show that they are typically not intoxicated, while seeking

  • Define Non-Consensual (Score:3)

    by Ayanami_R ( 1725178 ) on Thursday November 19, 2015 @11:35AM (#50962455)

    If it means, "was consensual at the time, and now later I feel bad about it," Then yes, I believe these numbers. If non-consensual is defined by a sane person, then I believe this is hogwash.

  • Since this will contain information on people who have not been tried or convicted, or even indicted, I'm curious what protections will be taken to safeguard the data? And, what happens when some idiot decides they all deserve to be made public?

    Apologies if the article actually addressed this, I only read the summary.

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