I am a criminal justice major at an accredited college. In my educational endeavors, I am required to take a class on victimology prior to my graduation date. I opted to take victimology this year. Throughout the course, the ideas of victim blaming and victim precipitations were key themes that we dove into. These theories basically state that the victim was to blame for their peril and that he or she may have done something to cause their victimization. It came to the part of the course when we had to discuss a surprisingly controversial subject: rape. In my classroom, we were all pretty much in agreement that verbal consent was the only way to confirm that both parties involved were agreeing to whatever the act was. However, when I brought this topic up to several other people outside of my major, most of them did not agree. Then I read that Oklahoma decided that oral sex is not rape if the victim is unconscious from drinking, and that was the end of my silence on this topic.
For those of you not familiar with the case, it involved a 17-year-old boy driving home a 16-year-old girl that had been drinking to the point of unconsciousness. Two witnesses said that they had seen the girl nodding in and out of consciousness when they left her to be driven home by the boy. Somewhere during the ride home, the 17-year-old allegedly assaulted the female. When the female was brought home, still unconscious, her grandmother brought her to the hospital where they found that the girl’s blood alcohol level was well over .15. Medical staff performed a sexual assault examination and found that the young man’s DNA was found on the young woman’s body. The young woman did not have any recollection of anything that occurred after she left the park where she had been drinking.
The court of Oklahoma decided that this is not considered to be rape. Their reasoning was that force cannot be used on a person who is unconscious, and that they would not use the spirit of the law to “enlarge the stature beyond the fair meaning of its language”.
Okay. I cannot be the only one who feels uncomfortable with this. After dedicating my life to learning about the criminal justice system, I refuse to believe that we live in a society that could possibly agree with this ruling. The court’s argument that there was no evidence of force other than the fact that the young lady was too intoxicated to consent is INSANE. This is only the tip of the iceberg of ludicrous reactions to sexual assaults. On college campuses, when rape cases are reported, the student is often just placed on some sort of academic probation, IF THAT. More often than not, rape cases are kept under wraps, as they are bad publicity for the school. This allows rapists to walk free.
I do not think that anyone should have to feel unsafe when they are going out, man or woman. I do not want to live in a world where someone can assault me and see no consequence in return. It truly is OUR job to stand up against sexual assault and rape, because the law is no longer a tool for victims.
