7 Women File Complaint Against UConn for Failing to Respond to Rapes

[ismnotwasm]

In a press conference with Gloria Allred (who is representing the seven women), former student Kylie Angell tearfully recounted her experience with campus security and the university's Community Standards department after she was raped by a classmate in a UConn dorm. It's heartbreaking:

I was notified on the same day as the [Community Standards] hearing that [my rapist] was to be expelled and he was not to be allowed to come back on campus again. Though I was emotionally and mentally exhausted, I felt that this was a victory and that I could finally go back to my life as a student. Then, two weeks later, I was eating in the dining hall, when the perpetrator sat down next to me and threateningly grazed my elbow in an act of obvious defiance. I was then met by heckling by his friend, who shouted at me that the perpetrator was back.

Unaware of what was going on and feeling that I was in a nightmare, I fled the scene to the UConn police. The officer told me, "Women need to stop spreading their legs like peanut butter or rape is going to keep happening 'til the cows come home." Shocked, I left, feeling confused, violated, traumatized and vulnerable. [Breaks down sobbing] I then learned that the perpetrator had filed an appeal, but I had not been informed that it had been filed... The only explanation that I was given was that the Vice President of Student Affairs felt that expulsion for having raped me was too severe.

Angell went on to describe how her PTSD and anxiety caused her to feel unsafe in her own apartment, to miss days of classes, and to suffer academically. She also stated that after she tried to speak out she was threatened by the administration, who told her she could lose her campus job for being vocal about her attack. She told the Huffington Post that she later learned that her attacker went on to rape another woman a year later.

http://jezebel.com/7-women-file-complaint-against-uconn-for-failing-to-res-1450247823

[chervilant]

1. OMG!!! WTF?!?

"Women need to stop spreading their legs like peanut butter or rape is going to keep happening 'til the cows come home."

That male chauvinist needs to be fired! All rapists should face CRIMINAL CHARGES, and be expelled from the university upon a finding of guilty!!!

Geez, I guess I'd better say "alleged rapists," so the MRAs don't come unglued.

[ismnotwasm]

5. No you can call them rapists.

I don't care what our little nut job MRA's think.

And yes, enough is enough.

Andrea Dworkin wrote this how Long ago? And you can feel her exhaustion and despair in this speech;

I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce
During Which There Is No Rape
1983

I have thought a great deal about how a feminist, like myself, addresses an audience primarily of political men who say that they are antisexist. And I thought a lot about whether there should be a qualitative difference in the kind of speech I address to you. And then I found myself incapable of pretending that I really believe that that qualitative difference exists. I have watched the men's movement for many years. I am close with some of the people who participate in it. I can't come here as a friend even though I might very much want to. What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.

And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions. It is easy to say, "Ah, the statistics, somebody writes them up one way and somebody writes them up another way." That's true. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.

And it is happening for a simple reason. There is nothing complex and difficult about the reason. Men are doing it, because of the kind of power that men have over women. That power is real, concrete, exercised from one body to another body, exercised by someone who feels he has a right to exercise it, exercised in public and exercised in private. It is the sum and substance of women's oppression.

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIIIE.html

[redqueen]

7. It is so far past infuriating.

I can't come here as a friend even though I might very much want to. What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women's silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.

And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. Those statistics are not abstractions.

They simply don't get it. They don't want to get it. They keep it at arm's length. Abstract. Academic.

It makes me want to start two polls in GD.

One for women, one for men.

Have you ever been beaten by a partner or ex partner? Have you ever altered your behavior because you were afraid of being physically beaten OR KILLED by your partner or ex partner?

Are you aware of how many women ARE MURDERED EVERY DAY BY THEIR PARTNERS OR EX PARTNERS?

Have you ever, personally, known that you would be taking your life in your own hands, if you were to try to go to the police? Do you know that this is exactly why so many women don't do exactly that? Not because someone will smirk at them. Not because it's embarrassing. BECAUSE THEY COULD END UP DEAD.

But fuck it. Fuck it. No amount of talking will help, I'm afraid. Not to them. We have to talk to each other and liberate ourselves. Too many men have too much invested in NOT seeing this shit. It is a waste of time and energy to talk to them about it. Let the enlightened men do that. Men like Patrick Stewart. Men like Jackson Katz. We have to talk to each other.

And talking about all this makes me want to start ranting about how many women are in prison for killing their partners or ex partners IN FUCKING SELF DEFENSE.

Sick. This world is fucking sick to the core and over half the world is just fucking fine with it.

[niyad]

9. I wish I could say you were wrong, but, sadly, know that you are not.

[ismnotwasm]

11. It's heartbreaking

Andrea's speech grows more heartbreaking as each year passes and so little has changed.


And I agree, rather than discussing solutions, for the most part all we get are rape apologists-/who then deny being rape apologists.

[niyad]

10. she wrote this THIRTY YEARS AGO--and almost nothing has changed. the war on women continues

[Dash87]

18. This cop says what rapists say.

"This never would have happened if she didn't lead me on!"

Screw this jerk, and everyone else that thinks like him!

[niyad]

2. k and r for this thoroughly disheartening story. what the **** is the matter with that student

affairs guy? "expulsion for rape is too severe"?????? what, you woman-hating bastard, would you consider appropriate, not-too-severe punishment? or, maybe you think the rape survivor should be expelled? far more likely, it seems. I have a few ideas in mind for what might constitute adequate punishment, but am sure the mra's would scream hysterically were I to articulate them.

[redqueen]

4. Some colleges make them write a paper as punishnent. nt

[redqueen]

3. Eventually the socialization will no longer be as effective

and women will start taking matters into their own hands. If enough rapists are killed in self defense maybe that will actually affect lasting, meaningful change.

[Shampoobra]

14. My self-deleted post was in agreement with your thoughts, but

I think mine might have been locked if I had left it there. I'd better take a break.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Silent rec. (nt)

[niyad]

8. . . .

[Shampoobra]

12. I can't

post a single

thought

too many terrible ugly things I want to write

profane and violent shit

about this rapist and his UConn police pal

and MY GOD the fucking Vice President of Student Affairs was the judge and jury in this case?

Bury them alive, Ms. Allred.

[chervilant]

15. Where are the MRAs, and the rape apologists?!?

Are they skeered of bad ol' Gloria Allred? Are they bored by all this rape discussion? Are they thinking to themselves that we should "just get over it" and "move forward"!?! I've actually been told that -- multiple times, since I advocate for survivors.

...we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us.

I think too many men want to keep us there -- in their little "power over" box. There by their command, there to meet THEIR needs, there in our deafening silence...

[seabeyond]

16. too many men want to keep us there -- in their little "power over" box.

many would verbally argue, but cherv, i think you are right on. even the best of them, i think they like the power.

[redqueen]

17. Those are not the best of them. Far from it. nt

[niyad]

19. . . .