All sexual assault cases are different. But if we take a closer look at the kinds of cases that happen frequently on college campuses, they go a little something like this:

A girl goes to a party with her friends. They’re all drinking and having a good time. The girl ends up getting way too drunk. The guy that has been eyeing her all night notices that she’s messed up and offers to “help” her upstairs. There, he takes her into a bedroom and tries to have sex with her, whether or not she wants to. She may be blacked out and unconscious, she could still be conscious but too drunk to give consent or she could be conscious and make physical efforts for him to get off of her. Alas, the man prevails and proves his masculinity again.

When the girl wakes up the next morning and realizes she was raped, she has two options. She can go to the police or the hospital and report it, or she can choose not to. RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) estimates that 68 percent of rapes go unreported. Of the 32 percent that are actually reported, only 3 percent are referred for prosecution. The most disturbing statistic to me is that out of all the rapes that are referred for prosecution and are taken to court, which is a small number to begin with, only 2 percent of those scumbags face ANY form of judicial punishment. That means that 98 percent of rapists are walking around free.

Let me repeat that again. NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT OF RAPISTS WALK FREE.
No doubt about it, that number needs to majorly decrease.

“Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.”

The gold standard of innocence; beyond a reasonable doubt is the term that is used in courts to determine whether or not the accused is innocent. This law is excellent for when an innocent man is being accused of, say, murder: “Hm well, it looks like you were at the murder scene, and you had a motive, but your DNA wasn’t on the weapon. So it is reasonable to think that you didn’t commit this homicide.” But for rape cases it goes a little like this: “So you’re saying that this man held you down and forced you to have sex with him in the back bedroom of that party? Hm. And you have multiple witnesses that back your statement that he was in the room with you, and you have alibis that show your immense hysterical actions after the supposed ‘rape.’ Well the thing is sweetheart, he said that none of that happened, so we’re gonna have to let him go since it isn’t beyond reason that you’re lying about all of this and convinced your friends to back you up for it.

Infuriating isn’t it? I strongly advocate that there be a change in legislation for sexual assault cases. We as a society need to make the court system not only accessible for victims, but a place where the judge and jury will take their side and actually believe them. We need to lower the standards of “beyond a reasonable doubt” in sexual assault cases in order to put more rapists in jail where they belong.