Illustration by Danni Rains
Darrah Walker
Lantern Staff
As a female in today’s society, simply just walking down the street to my car or across campus to my class can result in guys making sexist jokes and/or “cat” calls. According to worldometers.info, over 7 billion people are alive on Earth; approximately 49 percent are women. Out of all of these women, I know I am not the only one who experiences forms of sexual abuse and the majority of the cases we are informed about involve college students.
In 2016 a rape case involving a Canadian Judge Robin Camp blamed the victim (a college student) for the alleged actions. CNN reported the case and stated that Camp asked why the victim couldn’t “just keep her knees together.” The judge then released the accused and did not charge him. Cases like the one in Canada are great examples of why women today do not come forward with the abuse they have experienced.
A study conducted in 2014 from Department of Justice (DOJ) showed that only 20 percent of the sexual violence experienced in college is reported to law enforcement. The DOJ discovered different reasons for why reports aren’t made in a study in 2007. Female students began to say: There was not enough proof, fear of retaliation by the perpetrator, fear of a hostile treatment done by authorities, authorities may not take the incident seriously, they didn’t want friends and family learning about it and lastly, they didn’t know how to report it.
Since the school year has started, there have been two alleged sexual assault cases involving Butler students.
The first reported assault occured off campus, and then less than a month later, another report was filed that occurred on campus. There has never been a time where I thought the college I would attend would be featured on KWCH talking about the alleged sexual assaults.
When school first started, I experienced numerous times where male students would hit on me and make “cat” calls. I didn’t really think anything of it until after the reports were made. Now I wonder, is this considered sexual harassment? Is it worth coming forward and telling a mandatory reporter? What kind of actions would be taken?
“I think most women are like me, you’ve heard enough of it through the years that you don’t excuse it, and you don’t embrace it, but you push it aside,” Martha Blackburn, a Tennessee congresswoman, reported to BBC News in July 2016.
Coming forward about any form of sexual abuse is important, and women shouldn’t sit back and take it.
Women want to trust that if they ever confided in a mandatory reporter that it would be taken seriously and that the blame wouldn’t be put on them. Sexual abuse is never the fault of the victims, and those victimized should feel comfortable coming forward and take a step toward ending sexual violence.