Last summer BYU came under scrutiny for how it handles rape allegations. On the one hand you have some young women who reported that after they reported their rapes, BYU opened an Honor Code investigation against them. This can lead to women fearing for retaliation and not reporting rapes for fear of getting in trouble themselves. On the other hand, Dr. Darron Smith of the University of Memphis reports some situations of false rape allegations. How does BYU handle these two complex and sensitive issues? I asked him about some of these allegations last summer.
Darron: If the Honor Code is punishing the young women for something that they had no control over, had nothing to do with, that’s horrible. Again, it speaks to about the athletes. You’re having people make subjective decisions about other people based upon their own lens, their own way of seeing the world which may not congeal with a young woman who has alleged rape.
On the other hand, he is aware of some false allegations too.
Darron: You know when these young players in 2012? In 2004? Whatever, there was white college students at BYU who alleged they had been raped by these kids, these young players, and when it came down to it, they hadn’t been raped. She made it up. So these young guys went through it man. I don’t know if you heard about the trial that went on down here in Provo where this young woman alleged rape?
GT: I don’t know.
Darron: But at any rate, to make a long story short, she was playing off racial fears, that are so deeply ingrained around again, black sexuality. Praise God at the end of the day, truth came out.
The Salt Lake Tribune just came out with an article stating some women aren’t believed, and in one case of a BYU student, Madelaine McDonald, the police refused the press charges, but the young man had sexual assaults on three other women. What do you think about these issues? How would you rate BYU’s handling of rape allegations?
I have some high hopes for the newly formed committee which is as far as I’ll go.
BYU has a unique set of problems in addressing rape: a highly sexist culture in which women are not believed and are often blamed for any sexual misconduct (because of a belief that they are responsible to say no but that men are less capable of self-control) and some latent racism as well (alluded to in the above) due to lack of diversity among the student body and Utah in general. But it does have upside, too: lack of partying culture (less likely for drunken debauchery, a staple for campus rapes elsewhere).
As long as the school can quit patting themselves on the back for the things they do right and open their eyes to the ways their system can be exploited by rapists, they should be able to create a better environment. Unfortunately, there’s so much sexual naivete among the student body that training them about sexual assault, consent, and the like is difficult and fraught. We’ve sexualized dumb stuff like shoulders and razor stubble by creating all these hedges about the law. It’s hard to get kids who believe that leggings under a skirt equals being a harlot to see women as people.
I agree with Hawk. I have hopes, but not many, precisely because of what Hawk says in her last paragraph. There is such a preoccupation (dare I suggest, a pathology?) both in the church in general and at BYU in particular about maintaining a kind of naiveté about sex and sexuality that it’s obviously done more harm than good regarding this issue and others. In my opinion, it’s frankly bizarre, not to mention harmful to our young people, that we seem so invested in creating such a culture of fear and shame regarding sexuality. The irony, of course, is that if we lightened up on things like harmful modesty rhetoric and the abstinence part of the law of chastity, our young people would probably be healthier in general, not to mention more able to navigate the fraught and perilous waters of sexual assault. There are many reasons why the sexual revolution was a good thing; becoming more familiar with the legalities of sexual assault and consent is just one of the benefits of shedding a concept of sexual mores that’s rooted in the Victorian Age.
Like all serious crimes, there is a compelling need for evidence before a conviction. No compelling evidence = no conviction. It has to be this way.
Not sure why I never thought of it before but it seems the ultimate irony that you can have a situation coexist where a religious theology is so danming of sexual sin and an educational facility owned and run by the same church that raises its own policies and reputation above victims of the very same actions.
Get you facts right folks, BYU has the lowest rape rate (adjusted for it’s underreporting) for a campus of it’s size. And is doing a ton to prevent non-reporting.
President Kevin J Worthen (BA ’79, JD ’82) reiterated BYU’s commitment to creating “an environment where sexual assault is eliminated” and announced that the BYU President’s Council accepted all of the council’s 23 recommendations.
The university implemented five of the recommendations immediately:
• Create a new, full-time Title IX coordinator position to replace the existing part-time Title IX coordinator position.
• Create a victim advocate/confidential advisor position.
• Create a new space to house the Title IX Office separate from the Honor Code Office.
• Ensure that, unless the health or safety of others is at risk, the Title IX Office does not share information with the Honor Code Office about the complainant without the complainant’s consent.
• Adopt an amnesty clause.
https://magazine.byu.edu/article/sexual-assault-study/
What facts were not straight?