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Who Attacked Melissa Bruen?

Thomas

Woman fights back against rapist, mob sexually assaults her. UConn. Trigger warning.

There were no arrests, but somebody knows. Too many people have too many contacts at UConn, and if everyone cares, the secret will not stay secret.

Every man involved in the assault must be identified, and their names so publicized that they cannot apply for a job or an apartment without their role in this sexual violence coming up. UConn must hold them accountable. If the school does not condemn this, it condones it.

Update:

Working my own contacts, I spoke with a late-’90s RA at the rural Storrs campus, who said that Spring Weekend at UConn brings road-tripping students from all over the Northeast. The assailants on the trail that night could have been from anywhere. However, if they were from other schools, they were likely traveling in a group, and my experience with human nature is that they will talk. Please, folks, work your contacts as schools in the Northeast; keep an ear to the ground for guys bragging about groping a woman at UConn. They will talk; and if the UConn police get a lead, no matter where, they can investigate. Ask, listen, share. Please.

45 thoughts on Who Attacked Melissa Bruen?

  2. Her first person account says the campus police were unable to identify the assailants. But the people on that path, who were leaving a large party that the cops had shut down, were among friends and acquaintances. That means people will talk. If the hivemind is paying attention, folks at UConn will spill, and folks who read the feminist blogs can pick it up.

    Who are the men? Someone knows. Once the names are out there, either the campus police can investigate, or the survivor can sue civilly. But someone has to get a lead. My recollection of college is that stupid loutish boys do not keep secrets. Once some tipster puts names out there, there will be a witness or IMs or emails to confirm their involvement.

    There are no secrets, really. Someone knows.

    Do the right thing.

  3. In a lot of the porn out there, it seems that the men really hate the women while at the same time they’re f*#(ing them. The extreme lust and extreme hatred toward women that you can see in their faces AT THE SAME TIME is really scary. WTF is that about?

  4. How long ago did this happen? I can’t tell from the article. If UConn administration hasn’t taken serious action yet to investigate & condemn the actions, perhaps some collective action is in order. Group letter writing anyone?

  5. I went to UConn back in the late 80’s. Sexual assault on campus was prevalent even then. Every other woman in my dorm had a story to tell, although we usually kept quiet. This was before “date rape” was considered real assault, but even when things were reported, the administration always looked the other way. I had hoped things had gotten better since then. I guess not.

  6. Aaron, I think that people can work contacts to produce leads. UConn is a big school. Lots of people know someone who knows someone and can put the arm on them to pass along any information. If people press, the names will come out.

  7. Wait a minute—-campus police? Why aren’t the real police involved? It sounds to me like she got a damn good look at at least some of those attackers; have the “campus police” produced a reasonable look-alike drawing from an Ident-i-kit, and put posters up all over the campus with a “have you seen this man?” tagline?

    Color me cynical, but every time I hear of a campus rape or sexual assault and the actual police aren’t called, nothing happens. It’s not in the university’s best interest to be known as the campus to go get raped on, and it seems to my cynical self that investigations are purposedly fucked up and/or sat on until the charges are dropped or there’s “not enough proof” to warrant continuing an investigation, and then the university has an “out”. If there’s no conviction, the university can claim “he said/she said”.

    Or am I just too cynical for thinking that the campus police are under pressure by their employer to make sure cases like this get hushed up and disappear?

    What do feminist rape crisis groups recommend to college women who are victims of assault? In the aftermath of the assault, so that women have the best chance of seeing their rapist get convicted?

  9. La Lubu makes a good point. Campus Police at UConn, at least during my time there, were useless — really just higher paid security guards. They are housed in a university building and draw university paychecks. Their agenda is as much public relations as anything else. Their training is pathetic.

    When I was a junior, I was walking across campus. Alone. Really late. Kinda drunk. My friend and I had a fight and I had taken off. My plan was to go visit my brother in his frat house by the cow fields (I lived in South Campus). Well, my walk cooled me off, and I turned to go home deciding it best not to bother him. There was no curfew and there was no rule against being out alone, it was just probably not the brightest thing to be doing. Out of no where I was approached by a campus police officer. He got in my face and asked my name, I got scared and kept walking. I told him I was going home. I told him I had reconsidered my decision to visit my brother at his fraternity. He kept blocking my way and asking my name. I’m not sure why but I just didn’t feel comfortable telling him — and when I saw my dorm in sight finally I just tried to run for it. I was thinking if I could get to my dorm I would be safe. He ran after me and TACKLED me. He handcuffed me and dragged me to the clinic. He told them that he thought I had been sexually assaulted and was found “wandering” on campus. By now I was crying and he used this as evidence of my assault (I had not been assaulted). I was told I was lucky I had not been arrested for disobeying a police officer and not providing my name when asked. They called my brother who called my parents. My parents were told I had to stay the night because I was on suicide watch. It was traumatic and horrible.

    So anyhow, yea… campus police at UConn. Not a fan, and not expecting that in the 20 years since this happened that they have changed much.

  10. Manju: I totally agree. This story would’ve had a much happier ending if she had shot and killed (or seriously wounded) her assailant. Had that happened, the mob would’ve taken a moment, considered their actions, and realized that they had really behaved shamefully and go home with heavy hearts, as angry mobs tend to do.

    The point here is that a culture that laughs off sexual assault/rape makes self-defense unworkable.

  11. La Lubu said:

    Wait a minute—-campus police? Why aren’t the real police involved?

    On the campus where I am now, the police are special constables with the city police. They’re also in touch with the campus services that can help survivors. And they generally would turn over investigation of a sexual assault to the outside police. Here,I’d call campus police. At my last university, campus security wasn’t actual police, plus they were assholes. Campus women’s centers can generally suggest how helpful campus police are.

    I’d be more than a bit concerned about posting names on the internet without any way to verify the information or the source, but people with information should definitely be encouraged to report it to the local authorities/rape crisis centre, etc.

  13. Holy fucking shit. The idea that a crowd of people would just stand around and cheer like that…damn. I think about how far he probably could have gone before anyone would have intervened, and I just want to kick something. What the fuck is wrong with us?

  14. Damn. I hope those guys get arrested and put into jail, and get some nice anal ass reaming. F–king pigs.

    Yeah! The solution to rape is… more rape!

  16. I nabbed this from Feministing, posted by commenter ecpyrosis:

    Michael Hogan, the UConn president’s email address is president@uconn.edu, his professional website is http://president.uconn.edu/, his press release “blog” is http://blogs.uconn.edu/president/, and his phone number at work is (860)486-2337, his fax number is (860)486-2627, and his mailing address is:

    President Michael Hogan
    University of Connecticut
    Gulley Hall, Storrs Campus
    352 Mansfield Road, Unit 2048
    Storrs, CT 06269-2048

    Tell him what you think. While you’re at it, contact the campus police and tell them that the nation is watching how they proceed very carefully.

    Division of Public Safety

    Associate Vice President Robert Hudd
    (860)486-4806, fax (860)486-2430
    Public Safety Complex, Storrs Campus
    126 N Eagleville Rd., Unit 3070
    Storrs, CT 06269-3070

  17. So what the hell, gangs of men just can hang around UConn and grab women off the sidewalk, and no one does anything about it?

    This is the age of cell phones! Why didn’t a squad of cops converge on the scene immediately? Was no one around but this woman, her attackers and their rooting section?

    At the VERY least, the campus cops should step up patrols in that area, maybe use a female undercover. In my day, the campus cops were good for giving tickets to kids with no lights on their bikes, and little else. I guess some things about college life don’t change.

  18. Thought I’d share the brief letter I just sent to President Hogan:

    Dear President Hogan,

    I write to you as a woman who graduated from a large public university and as a former resident of Connecticut. Please take immediate and decisive action on the subject of UConn student Melissa Bruen’s recent sexual assault.

    First, publicly condemn the horrific assault. Second, publicly explain why you allowed a section of your campus to be so poorly lit and underpatrolled by safety officers that it was nicknamed “Rape Trail” by students. Third, publicly announce that you will direct every possible resource to finding Bruen’s attackers and prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law. Fourth, form a task force on student safety — and women’s safety — and come up with a concrete plan that will help to erode the misogynistic culture of rape that allowed this to take place.

    Above all, do not attempt to sweep this under the rug for fear of seeing your school criticized. Your school deserves criticism. Our entire society deserves criticism. Take this opportunity to right the wrongs you can, and to lead the way to a safer future for our nation’s best and brightest students.

    Respectfully, etc.

    Looking back over this, I’m not sure if I got the “Rape Trail” bit correct. Still, the name of that spot points to a major problem and it’s a failure of university leadership not to have addressed it sooner.

  19. Color me cynical, but every time I hear of a campus rape or sexual assault and the actual police aren’t called, nothing happens. It’s not in the university’s best interest to be known as the campus to go get raped on, and it seems to my cynical self that investigations are purposedly fucked up and/or sat on until the charges are dropped or there’s “not enough proof” to warrant continuing an investigation, and then the university has an “out”. If there’s no conviction, the university can claim “he said/she said”.

    You’re being real, not cynical. IME, most campus cops are there to give students a hard time to keep them “in line” for the college’s administration. With serious crimes, it is often in the administration’s best interests to downplay or cover up the crime unless it is too glaringly serious or publicized for it to be hidden…..along with being a lot less work/aggravation for the campus cops themselves.

    Moreover, depending on the school, the campus cops may be grossly underpaid and undertrained for the responsibilities the institution assigns them.

  20. I read the story and some of the depressing comments attached to it. I think that many people who trivialize rape are moral cowards who can’t deal with the possibility of their mother, sister, girlfriend, or themselves getting rape. So they’ll claim that the victim is a “ho” or that she was “asking for it” or that she’s “making it up.” It helps them sleep better at night.

    Taking an actual stand against rape requires the sort of courage that these people simply do not have. Screw them.

  21. that story makes me want to cry – seriously – sometimes I feel so defeated – that shit was happening when I was that child’s age …

    then I think, she FOUGHT back as my own daughter fought back against an assault she suffered a couple of months ago … but like Melissa – not one takes them BLOODY seriously!!

    this makes me ill – I truly hope pressure can be exerted so that these bastards are at least exposed to the public eye ..

  22. Shit, Thomas… that story’s a trigger for me, and I’ve never been sexually assaulted on a dark path. It’s just that awful.

    Moving on to another topic… We all seem to know how effective our campuses are at dealing with sexual assault and rape. Is there any way we as feminists can compile that information? A ranking of major universities not by safety, but by how seriously the administration takes the safety of female students?

    I don’t know if it’s workable, since there’s probably some pretty serious holes in the information, but I think it would be useful if we could, both for young women, and for administrations that might actually start doing something if they were going to be negatively affected by not doing anything.

  23. KAT: Campus Police at UConn, at least during my time there, were useless

    Not just during your time – i recently graduated from UConn and police are equally as useless now. I supported a close friend who was raped and she went through the UConn police and UConn judicial system… unfortunately no matter how clear cut her case (there was a witness, assailant had been an x b/f, etc) he remained unpunished. She faced him and the difficulty of talking about it over and over and still, nothing. I’m totally disheartened by UConn when it comes to them handling sexual assault and rape the right way, hopefully they can change my mind with Melissa’s case… but i’m not holding my breath.

  24. I want some feminist grassroots action on this. A march calling attention to the incident, or some sort of protest on campus. I feel so helpless.

  25. Sarah, what I want is people listening and reporting. A march pressuring UConn will just produce more lighting and more advice to women not to walk alone at night (i.e. to rely on male protectors and subject themselves to social disability, letting the terrorists win). In my view, what is needed here is for someone to hear these guys brag and get their names to the UConn police, so they can investigate. I know they have a very … mixed reputation. But if they get leads, then they can be held accountable to investigate those lead. If they get no leads, nothing happens. This is not about “campus safety.” This is about men; several individual men who sexually assaulted a woman, and whether they can simply slink off and hide in the population, or whether they will be surrounded by people waiting for them to make a mistake, willing to report them for the rapists that they are. Can rapists hide in the population, or will the hive mind ferret them out?

  26. I want people listening and reporting too, Thomas. But how will you let the folks on campus know they should be doing that without some loud action?

  27. Sarah, you may be right. Maybe the way to get people turning over rocks is a public action at UConn.

  28. We share the same end goal, Thomas. I just want to know how we’re going to get there or even let others know it’s a goal in the first place.
    I think it’s time we start holding demonstrations a la Al Sharpton’s Sean Bell protest. Get arrested, make noise, call for change and let people know WE EXIST!!

  29. The vast majority of the police present at Spring Weekend, when Melissa would have been talking to the officers, are Connecticut State Police brought in for those few days so no, they are not Rent-A-Cops.

    Additionally, aside from the 15,000 students who live at UConn, thousands of other non-students descend upon the campus as well. The police, potentially, are looking for several nondescript men, out of thousands of revelers, who were on the trail at that spot, at that time. A little bit of the needle in a haystack situation.

  31. (At the risk of stating the obvious, the tool posting as Thomas on the campus newspaper board is not me)

    This is one of the ways a rape culture works: the absolute certainty that, no matter what the facts, the victim will be attacked and the assailants defended if she tells her story.

  32. Wait a minute—-campus police? Why aren’t the real police involved?

    The campus police are technically state police. The kicker is that during Spring Weekend the campus police and other state police units have at least two checkpoints along the trail. How no one thought to run to the checkpoint or why no police heard the commotion is a complete mystery.

    I hadn’t heard about this situation until today and it shocks and embarrasses me.

    I keep getting the feeling that the administration doesn’t take sexual assault seriously. There was an incident last year where a student was raped by her ex-boyfriend in the dorms. He was arrested and charged, but Residential Life never evicted him from housing. The only thing they seem to be good for is expelling students for alcohol posession.

  33. Juan Stoppable:

    Most campuses don’t take rape seriously. The small, religious, liberal arts college I attended had reporting policies that made it pretty clear that their motive was not justice or the safety of their students, but keeping the reputation of the college pure so that the donors would keep the money coming.

    And no one thought to get the police because they were too busy enjoying the sight of a woman getting assaulted. Doubly so, because they had just witnessed her stop an assault. If she hadn’t gotten away from the second attacker, who knows how many other men, inspired by the cheers, might have decided to “take a turn”?

    I hold out little hope, even if the identities of the attackers are revealed, that justice will be done. ‘Cuz somehow, someway, the woman is always asking for it. *eyeroll*

  35. Grrr. I shared this story w/ a couple of friends. The guy responded w/ something along these lines: “Well, there was this couple, and they were walking home at night. The guy was drunk, so he kept making sexual passes at the girl. Y’know, doing sexual stuff. She told him to quit, or she’d scream rape. He said, ‘you wouldn’t dare’…four guys came, and beat him to death. She kept screaming for them to stop, but they wouldn’t…they got off w/ manslaughter.” I responded w/, “And if she’d just kept her mouth shut, it would’ve just been a nice, quiet date rape.” I’m still pissed. I really expected better from this guy.

  37. Knitting Clio, thank you. I probably should have mentioned the Clery Act, which I believe is systematically flouted by schools that deliberately underreport sexual assaults. I believe that, and there are sporadic indications of that, but it’s hard to prove as a pattern.

    Mustelid, I call bullshit on that guy’s story. According to him there were arrests and convictions, and it would have made the papers. If you ask him to back that up with a newspaper story, you’ll find out it was his cousin’s friend’s cousin’s friend in [somewhere far far away where the newspapers are unavailable for inspection] but he’s really truly sure it all happened just like he was told.

    It didn’t happen. If four guys beat a rapist to death and faced manslaughter charges, it would make national news and someone here would remember it.

  38. Thomas, that did occur to me after the post. Well, just that the story itself is too ‘neat’: Girl Who Cried Wolf Gets Loving Fiance Killed! Right now, I’m hoping not to speak to ‘that guy’ for the rest of the year. Though if the legend should come up again, I will try and remember to ask for backup info…

  39. I’ve been a lurker on a number of feminist sites for a while (here, feministing, curvature, etc), but this is the first time I’ve participated. I love what I read on these sites-the attitudes of the contributers feel like something out of an alternate dimension where I would actually feel safe…

    Anyway, I wanted to contribute to the larger discussion evolving here about campus rape culture. In my second year of college I dated a a guy named Jake for about a month, before I decided that I was feeling emotionally manipulated and pressured to engage in sex even when I really wasn’t interested. (In one instance he came into my room at 2am while I was asleep, crawled into my bed, and started fondling me. Sounds romantic? Is actually really unpleasant.) After I broke it off I mostly avoided him, but one night about a month later I was at a small party in a mutual friend’s room. I had been having a really bad week, and drank too much too quickly. When I decided to go to bed I was a little unsteady on my feet. Jake offered to walk me back to my room, and I shrugged and said sure. When we got to my room (I had a single) he helped me into bed, then crawled into bed with me. I blacked out after that. When I woke up he was gone and I was completely naked. I know for a fact that I got into bed with all my clothes on.

    When I woke up I didn’t quite know what to think. I was hung over, and confused by the gaps in my memory of the night’s events. But as the day went on and I started thinking more clearly, I realized that I was feeling OFF. I couldn’t stop thinking about, but I kept talking myself down. “You don’t know what happened, it was probably nothing, don’t be so dramatic, you’re just looking for attention.” This was happening inside my own head. Finally I called my mom, and though I love her dearly, she failed me that day. I told her what had happened and she basically said: You don’t really know what happened, you’re never going to know, there’s nothing you can do about it, so just don’t think about it.

    So for the next three years I avoided Jake like the plague, lost many mutual friends because of it, and tried hard not to think about what had happened. Despite all that, I did tell my next boyfriend a little of the story, and I said to him “I know he will rape someone someday.” But who could I warn? What would I say? He was charming and brilliant, and I had no proof. I wasn’t even willing to say that he had raped me, just that I knew he would someday rape someone.

    Fast forward to the fall of my senior year. One of my house mates is sitting in the living room, and I can tell something is wrong. It’s the middle of a week day and we’re the only ones home. I sit down to talk and all at once she tells me that she was raped last week. She had been dating a guy, and they had gone to her room to make out. She repeatedly said she did not want to have sex, but he pulled out a condom and put it on the bedside table “just in case”. Later, he took advantage of her trust and vulnerability to penetrate her after she had explicitly said she did not want to have sex (not bothering to use the condom, I might add). Guess who? Oh yeah, Jake.

    After hearing her story I sat in silence for a few minutes, and then told her my story. I’m afraid I didn’t do the right things to comfort her, but I tried to hear her, to tell her I believed and understood her story. She told me she was bringing the case to the college Honor Board, which was our sole judicial body on campus. I told her I would sit with her and tell my story if she needed me to.

    Later that day I went to two close friends in babbled out the entire tale, mine and hers. I had to tell someone, and in our tiny college there weren’t many people I trusted with this story. One of these friends made some discreet inquires based on her personal knowledge, and uncovered four other women who had been sexually abused by this guy since my drunken encounter three years before. Noe of us had ever told any authority figures, of even most of our friends. We were afraid to lose friends, afraid to be ostracized, afraid to be “that girl”, afraid to be told we were wrong to feel pain for what we had experienced.

    The Honor Board proceedings were agony. I had to give my testimony while Jake sat 10 seats away at the same table, and then he was allowed to cross-examine me. To make matters worse, my roommate who had been raped was on a year-long senior project team with Jake, the man who had raped her. It took the administration over a week to re-assign her to another team. Note that he was not re-assigned. Rather, she was moved. Because all the Honor Board proceedings were confidential by school policy, there was no announcement made of charges brought, no facts released by the administration. There was only swirling rumour that Jake was being attacked by a group of ex-girlfriends and accused of misconduct. Our statements were never released. Our class rallied to support Jake during his time of trial. One of my close friends said to me “There are two sides to every story.”

    When the Honor Board decision came back that Jake was going to be expelled, a few of the victims got together and wrote a letter asking that the sanction be altered to 6 semesters of suspension, and the possibility of returning to campus only with proof of psychological treatment and the positive recommendation of a psychologist. We were afraid that if Jake was just sent out into the world, he would quickly charm his way into some new position where he could continue abusing women. We hoped that the carrot of returning to college to finish his degree would empower the stick of required treatment. None of us ever discussed legal action. We had two murky date rape cases boiling down to he said-she said, and a defendant who was charming, handsome, and a sociopathic liar. We new what that court case would look like, and had no intention of subjecting ourselves to that pain, and the utter condemnation we would receive from our classmates and friends.

    In the end, Jake’s sanction was six semesters suspension, and readmittance only on the recommendation of a psychologist. He had three days to pack and leave campus. Then came the worst part. My classmates threw him a going away party. For the rapist. A big bash with lots of alcohol and teary farewells and best wishes. My friends went. Lots of them. A few people even asked if I was going. Apparently the narrative the school had decided on was that mistakes were made and everyone had suffered, but Jake needed our support because he was losing his college community. Somehow the fact that he was losing this community because he raped a woman didn’t quite filter though. That night I left my room to find the dorms deserted. Eventually I went back to my room and cried myself to sleep. I knew Holly was doing the same thing, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being with her. It just made the pain more acute. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that we might need support.

    The way the administration handled the situation was a disaster. The confidentiality clause meant that rumour and innuendo were the only sources of information for the community. Since Jake was telling his version of the story publicly, and I and the other women were not able to stand in front of a crowd and repeat what had been done to us in gory detail, his version became the accepted truth. He made a mistake, he didn’t realize, he didn’t mean to, in the heat of the moment, etc, etc. All just an unfortunate series of incidents with no one to really blame. But the worst part was what my classmates did.

    I went to a REALLY small college. 75 students per class. I’d literally lived in the same building with these people for 4 years, and they abandoned me, and abandoned my roommate. They offered us none of the support that they offered Jake, because they couldn’t stomach coming to grips with what had happened to us. When I go to alumni events and visit with people from school, I look at their faces and think “The night I cried myself to sleep alone in my room, you were at a party for the man who raped me.”

    This has turned into a really long post, and I’ve never actually told this story in public before. I just wanted to show that campus rape culture extends beyond administration inaction. It’s a tendency on the part of the community as a whole to look away from rape, to downgrade and trivialize it, because we don’t want to face it, or believe that people we like could be rapists. As victims, we hope that by downplaying the seriousness of what happened we can somehow spare ourselves the pain and trauma of our violation. But it just doesn’t work that way.

  40. I’ve been a lurker on a number of feminist sites for a while (here, feministing, curvature, etc), but this is the first time I’ve participated. I love what I read on these sites-the attitudes of the contributers feel like something out of an alternate dimension where I would actually feel safe…

    Anyway, I wanted to contribute to the larger discussion evolving here about campus rape culture. In my second year of college I dated a a guy named Jake for about a month, before I decided that I was feeling emotionally manipulated and pressured to engage in sex even when I really wasn’t interested. (In one instance he came into my room at 2am while I was asleep, crawled into my bed, and started fondling me. Sounds romantic? Is actually really unpleasant.) After I broke it off I mostly avoided him, but one night about a month later I was at a small party in a mutual friend’s room. I had been having a really bad week, and drank too much too quickly. When I decided to go to bed I was a little unsteady on my feet. Jake offered to walk me back to my room, and I shrugged and said sure. When we got to my room (I had a single) he helped me into bed, then crawled into bed with me. I blacked out after that. When I woke up he was gone and I was completely naked. I know for a fact that I got into bed with all my clothes on.

    When I woke up I didn’t quite know what to think. I was hung over, and confused by the gaps in my memory of the night’s events. But as the day went on and I started thinking more clearly, I realized that I was feeling OFF. I couldn’t stop thinking about, but I kept talking myself down. “You don’t know what happened, it was probably nothing, don’t be so dramatic, you’re just looking for attention.” This was happening inside my own head. Finally I called my mom, and though I love her dearly, she failed me that day. I told her what had happened and she basically said: You don’t really know what happened, you’re never going to know, there’s nothing you can do about it, so just don’t think about it.

    So for the next three years I avoided Jake like the plague, lost many mutual friends because of it, and tried hard not to think about what had happened. Despite all that, I did tell my next boyfriend a little of the story, and I said to him “I know he will rape someone someday.” But who could I warn? What would I say? He was charming and brilliant, and I had no proof. I wasn’t even willing to say that he had raped me, just that I knew he would someday rape someone.

    Fast forward to the fall of my senior year. One of my house mates is sitting in the living room, and I can tell something is wrong. It’s the middle of a week day and we’re the only ones home. I sit down to talk and all at once she tells me that she was raped last week. She had been dating a guy, and they had gone to her room to make out. She repeatedly said she did not want to have sex, but he pulled out a condom and put it on the bedside table “just in case”. Later, he took advantage of her trust and vulnerability to penetrate her after she had explicitly said she did not want to have sex (not bothering to use the condom, I might add). Guess who? Oh yeah, Jake.

    After hearing her story I sat in silence for a few minutes, and then told her my story. I’m afraid I didn’t do the right things to comfort her, but I tried to hear her, to tell her I believed and understood her story. She told me she was bringing the case to the college Honor Board, which was our sole judicial body on campus. I told her I would sit with her and tell my story if she needed me to.

    Later that day I went to two close friends in babbled out the entire tale, mine and hers. I had to tell someone, and in our tiny college there weren’t many people I trusted with this story. One of these friends made some discreet inquires based on her personal knowledge, and uncovered four other women who had been sexually abused by this guy since my drunken encounter three years before. Noe of us had ever told any authority figures, of even most of our friends. We were afraid to lose friends, afraid to be ostracized, afraid to be “that girl”, afraid to be told we were wrong to feel pain for what we had experienced.

    The Honor Board proceedings were agony. I had to give my testimony while Jake sat 10 seats away at the same table, and then he was allowed to cross-examine me. To make matters worse, my roommate who had been raped was on a year-long senior project team with Jake, the man who had raped her. It took the administration over a week to re-assign her to another team. Note that he was not re-assigned. Rather, she was moved. Because all the Honor Board proceedings were confidential by school policy, there was no announcement made of charges brought, no facts released by the administration. There was only swirling rumour that Jake was being attacked by a group of ex-girlfriends and accused of misconduct. Our statements were never released. Our class rallied to support Jake during his time of trial. One of my close friends said to me “There are two sides to every story.”

    When the Honor Board decision came back that Jake was going to be expelled, a few of the victims got together and wrote a letter asking that the sanction be altered to 6 semesters of suspension, and the possibility of returning to campus only with proof of psychological treatment and the positive recommendation of a psychologist. We were afraid that if Jake was just sent out into the world, he would quickly charm his way into some new position where he could continue abusing women. We hoped that the carrot of returning to college to finish his degree would empower the stick of required treatment. None of us ever discussed legal action. We had two murky date rape cases boiling down to he said-she said, and a defendant who was charming, handsome, and a sociopathic liar. We new what that court case would look like, and had no intention of subjecting ourselves to that pain, and the utter condemnation we would receive from our classmates and friends.

    In the end, Jake’s sanction was six semesters suspension, and readmittance only on the recommendation of a psychologist. He had three days to pack and leave campus. Then came the worst part. My classmates threw him a going away party. For the rapist. A big bash with lots of alcohol and teary farewells and best wishes. My friends went. Lots of them. A few people even asked if I was going. Apparently the narrative the school had decided on was that mistakes were made and everyone had suffered, but Jake needed our support because he was losing his college community. Somehow the fact that he was losing this community because he raped a woman didn’t quite filter though. That night I left my room to find the dorms deserted. Eventually I went back to my room and cried myself to sleep. I knew Holly was doing the same thing, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being with her. It just made the pain more acute. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that we might need support.

    The way the administration handled the situation was a disaster. The confidentiality clause meant that rumour and innuendo were the only sources of information for the community. Since Jake was telling his version of the story publicly, and I and the other women were not able to stand in front of a crowd and repeat what had been done to us in gory detail, his version became the accepted truth. He made a mistake, he didn’t realize, he didn’t mean to, in the heat of the moment, etc, etc. All just an unfortunate series of incidents with no one to really blame. But the worst part was what my classmates did.

    I went to a REALLY small college. 75 students per class. I’d literally lived in the same building with these people for 4 years, and they abandoned me, and abandoned my roommate. They offered us none of the support that they offered Jake, because they couldn’t stomach coming to grips with what had happened to us. When I go to alumni events and visit with people from school, I look at their faces and think “The night I cried myself to sleep alone in my room, you were at a party for the man who raped me.”

    This has turned into a really long post, and I’ve never actually told this story in public before. I just wanted to show that campus rape culture extends beyond administration inaction. It’s a tendency on the part of the community as a whole to look away from rape, to downgrade and trivialize it, because we don’t want to face it, or believe that people we like could be rapists. As victims, we hope that by downplaying the seriousness of what happened we can somehow spare ourselves the pain and trauma of our violation. But it just doesn’t work that way.

  41. mustelid,

    I couldn’t find this story on snopes.com, but then I didn’t look for very long. You may wish to look a bit more, to see if it’s already been debunked as an urban legend.

    Bast

  42. Kayline, I just wanted to thank you for sharing your story. It particularly got to me because your description of Jake (charming, handsome, and a sociopathic liar) reminds me so much of my rapist. I’m sending you internet hugs . . .

  43. I went to a REALLY small college. 75 students per class. I’d literally lived in the same building with these people for 4 years, and they abandoned me, and abandoned my roommate. They offered us none of the support that they offered Jake, because they couldn’t stomach coming to grips with what had happened to us. When I go to alumni events and visit with people from school, I look at their faces and think “The night I cried myself to sleep alone in my room, you were at a party for the man who raped me.”

    In many ways, our society has yet to move beyond the Old Testament attitude toward rape and toward the survivors of rape. Sure, we might not stone victims to death, but we certainly do condemn them, belittle them, shun them, pretend they’re not there, pretend that rape is not such a big deal after all.

    *hug*

  44. Kayline, thank you for sharing your story here. It fucking blows me away how brave you were and are. Huge internet hugs to you.

  45. Why is it again, as always, as soon as it is someone overindulged it is a horrible crime and everyone all of a sudden cares about what goeson, this is so ridiculous as always.
    Many many in this country live where noone would come if you could afford a way to call, when you can call noone comes, noone outside of the ghetto cares, as soon as it is some rich college chick everyone is all demanding action. Im not saying anyone should have to go through that at all but really, an adult woman getting all this attention when way worse crimes are going on with little kids in ghettos who cant leave and dont have a way to call anyone or anyone to call for that matter is ridiculous start with the ones who TRULY have no way to be safe, there are MANY ways for grown women to be safe and MONEY goes a long way with that, little kids dont have any choice and NOONE ever will give a voice to the ids in the ghetto.
    Ev erything about sexual assault is always about universties, with grown women with cells and money for ways to be safe, that is the biggest tradegy of all, those with choices are always the first to be cared about at the same time they ignore everyone who TRULY needs defense.

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