Last Sunday, we published an article called “Survivors share their stories” — true stories from women who experienced sexual assault and harassment. One of the survivors, “Corrine,” shared her tale in a section called “The thin blue line,” about a man attempting to rape her at a barbeque attended by local law enforcement officers. The assailant wasn’t a cop, but he was friends with several of the officers in attendance.
Corrine had complained about her attacker’s inappropriate behavior prior to the attempted rape. She was dismissed. She immediately told the attacker’s friends — who were policemen — what had happened. These officers of the law defended the attacker and even went so far as to tell her, “He doesn’t deserve to have his life ruined because he got f****d up and tried to get with you.”
Corrine then recounted her multiple encounters with officers who dismissed rape victims as making it up because they got “caught cheating” or got blackout drunk and “regretted agreeing to have sex.” Corrine said the cops she’s spoken to will say “many” or “most” of the sexual assault complaints they receive are false.
We’ve spent much of the last year talking about police reform. About racial profiling in law enforcement and excessive use of force that has led to 292 fatal police shootings just this year. But we haven’t talked about the other systemic problem in policing: Downplaying or outright dismissing sexual assault complaints. And Corrine’s story shows just how prevalent the problem is.
A study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics that tracked about 140,000 rapes and sexual assaults from 1992-2000 found, in cases where a rape went unreported to law enforcement, almost 6% of victims said they didn’t report the rape because they believed police to be biased. That’s about 8,400 women who decided not to report they had been raped because they didn’t think law enforcement officers would help them.
A more recent statistic from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center shows that only about 25% of sexual assaults were reported to law enforcement in 2018. Of reported assaults, only 2%-10% were considered false reports.
That is not “many” and it certainly is not “most” of rape and sexual assault complaints.
Shame — both internal and external — is also a key factor in not reporting a rape or sexual assault. WVU associate professor of Sociology Karen G. Weiss said in her paper “Too Ashamed to Report,” “Women fearing they will be blamed, disgraced or defamed are often too ashamed to report sexual victimization to the police.”
And yet, the victim-blaming and dismissing continues — from the public and from law enforcement.
The #MeToo and #BelieveHer movements garner as much hatred as they do support, but their entire reason for existing is because rape survivors’ stories are too often buried, dismissed or never disclosed. The social media hashtags let survivors be seen and heard.
It takes a momentous amount of courage for a survivor to talk about their assault. That bravery should not be scorned by the very people who are meant to help that person get justice. Which is why, when we talk about police reform, we need to talk about what it will take to make reporting sexual assaults a safe and viable option for survivors.
