Prison Rape Elimination Act: Article Analysis

In “Crime and Punishment: The saga of Richie Parker” published in Sports Illustrated, Gary Smith helps to explain just how many people are affected by a single sexual assault case. He does this in a very unique style by giving 12 sections explaining the incident from different points of view and the effects of a single crime. One person affected was Jill Agostino, the sports copy editor for Newsday. Her unnamed colleague had given her a copy of an article he was writing on Richie Parker and called asking if she liked it. Little did he know, stories like his were keeping her up at night, reminding her of the time she was raped nine years earlier. Agostino was enraged because people were sticking up for Parker, saying things like, “boys will

“Every two and a half minutes, someone is sexually assaulted in the United Sates” (Hansen, 2011). With the crime of sexual assault, the victim’s body becomes part of a crime scene. When the victim reports the assault to the police, the person is taken to a hospital or crisis center. “At the hospital most of these victims consent to the collection of physical evidence from their bodies, or a ‘rape kit’ (Nat. Protocol/Sexual Assault Med. Forensic, 2004). There a doctor or nurse will conduct an invasive and exhaustive examination of the victim’s entire body. The victim’s body will be photographed, and swabbed for DNA evidence left behind by the attacker. This process takes about four to six hours to complete. The swabs and photographs becomes evidence, which is collected and preserved in a sexual assault evidence kit, commonly referred to as a rape kit.

The Rape Shield Law was enacted to protect the rights of rape victims and to encourage rape victims to come forward that might not otherwise do so for fear of their past sexual history coming to light. Some of these rape victims are afraid that their private sexual history or previous sexual encounters will be brought up in court or become public knowledge. Many times the fear of exposure and shame could prevent victims of rape from coming forward and making a complaint to the police against an assailant. With the introduction of the rape shield law a reluctant victim might be more willing to come forward and file a complaint.

The second narrative of a violent crime came from Paul Bernardo in his first interview with the police after his life sentence. Paul Bernardo is known as the Scarborough rapist who was convicted of killing two schoolgirls, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, and almost twenty sexual assaults.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver shows the women of the Congo as being the workers of the family. They take care of the children, going so far as to carry them around constantly once they reach a certain age, and they are responsible for all the housework. The females are seen as capable and have many responsibilities. In spite of this, the reality for the real women of the Congo is that they are in constant fear of being a victim of sexual violence. Sexual violence can happen anywhere, but in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) it occurs on a daily basis (Ganzamungu and Maharaj 737).

In society and college campuses, sexual assault occurs quite frequently. According to an estimation one third of women experience a forced sexual experience at least once in their life and most of the time it occurs in colleges. Men have also been reported to be victim of sexual assaults mostly by other men. Most of the time the sexual assault is planned and perpetrated by a third person, who is known to the victim of incident. Drug and alcohol use play role in this issue and contribute to the problem as most of the time the victim and perpetrators are under the effect of alcohol or any other drug during the incident. It looks scary how vulnerable the survivor can be at the time of assault. However, as long as the matter of violence is associated, the students at college campuses are safer than their non-college mates. Some training and education has been administrated to the students for awareness about the violence and sexual assaults. Even, with increased training and education, most of the college campuses have much longer way to go for decreasing the intensity and number of assaults and the incidents have immense negative impact on the society and people around us.

Angela Davis demonstrates the ongoing violent abuse as she quotes a report on sexual maltreatment in women’s prisons, “We found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally, and orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them” (Davis 78). However disturbing this blunt sexual contact that male officers take with the vulnerable prisoners may be, the officers adopt even more severe tactics to harass and abuse the women as they often utilize “mandatory pat-frisks or room searches to grope women 's breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas...” (Davis 79). To add insult to injury, women are virtually incapable of escaping from their abuser(s). Prison employees upkeep their inappropriate behavior as it is believed they will “rarely be held accountable, administratively or criminally” (Davis 78). Davis specifies that the lack of accountability for inappropriate behavior is caused by faulty administrative action as she explains, “Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist, are often ineffectual...” (78). Since women’s prisons were established, sexual abuse has been used as a form of punishment, although this is not formally acknowledged by prison officials, it is undeniable that women’s prison staff more than oftentimes engage in sexual

Why should anyone be worried about sexual assault? It’s not affecting them, right? Wrong. If you are a friend of the victim, you might notice that they don’t act the same anymore. They are constantly paranoid, depressed, and/or destructive. They might even seem so emotionally scarred that you blame yourself. According to RAINN, many relatives of the victim can feel “responsible” for what occurred. Also, a victim can become self-harming, abusive of substances, and suicidal (RAINN). This affects friends and relatives of the victim as they will never have

The United States is facing a growing problem that shows no signs of slowing: sexual assaults on college campuses. Possible reasons for this epidemic are explained by Janet Napolitano, the current president of the University of California. She describes that “young adults live independently and in close proximity to one another for the first time” while attending college (Napolitano 387). The college setting provides students with opportunities to take advantage of one another. As a result, sexual assaults have become an issue across universities in the United States. Sexual assaults are a problem because they can have lasting effects on victims. It is the job of both the government and colleges to find solutions to the problem, by preventing

One out of five females in the United States are sexually assaulted by a male at some point in their lifetime (Hildebrand & Najdowski, 2015, p. 1059) and college aged females are four times more likely to be a victim of rape than any other age group (Burnett et al.,

Society teaches people if they dress or act a certain way, they were looking to become a rape victim. Kaitlynn Kelly’s situation like the others started with a party. Since Kelly’s assailant was an alleged rapist he was not considered a criminal, “[A]re disciplinary proceedings rather than criminal proceedings”(94). This is respectable thing the court is doing for Kelly. It would be even better if they could charge the rapist with a crime. According to Kelly’s story suggest Calvin is a suspicious guy. After she was raped her roommate saw the horror, “[W]ith a horrifying look on her face. I then looked over and saw my sheets covered in blood”(73). Calvin sexually assaulted Kaitlynn multiple times and did not stop even when she woke up and told him to. What kind of guy thinks it is okay to have sex with a girl without consent. Experiencing the pain Kaitlynn did that night, she is most likely to suffer from PTSD. Victims should not have to through the struggles Kelly and Kerry went

In 1826, the first mention of prison rape in the history of the republic, Rev. Louis Dwight wrote that “Boys are Prostituted to the Lust of old Convicts” throughout the institutions he surveyed from Massachusetts to Georgia. Dwight, the founder of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston, a prison reform group, wrote that “Nature and humanity cry aloud for redemption from this dreadful degradation.” It was not until the 21st century that the nation saw its first anti-prison-rape legislation. Last year, congress passed the Prison Rape Reduction Act, which allocates $60 million to support rape-prevention programs run by federal, state, and local corrections staff and to aid investigations and punishment of perpetrators. The bill, which enjoyed

The 1960s: a time period that highlighted some of the most influential civil rights movements, but have we really improved since then? Since the beginning of time women have been treated unfairly; they are more prone to being sexually assaulted/raped, have ridiculous beauty standards to live up to, and overall are treated like objects of submission and erotic pleasure. Like men, women deserve the ability to choose the lives they want to live and be who they want to be without fear and judgement. The novel, God Don’t Like Ugly by Mary Monroe, analyzes the objectification of women and provides insight to issues in the 60s that are still prevalent today.

offenders face ridicule because of their offense and they are the most victimized group of

The Hunting Ground is a documentary film that captures students who have been sexually assaulted at their college campus. This documentary specifically focuses on two former University of North Carolina students, Andrea Pino and Annie Clark. They both share the same story of being raped on UNC campus. Throughout this documentary, viewers learn that many sexual assault cases happen on college campuses. However, many of these cases are often ignored by college administrators because universities want to keep rape statistics low and they have an financial incentive to do so.