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In the wake of e-mails sent last week to the student body regarding the Oct. 27 sexual assault of a Northwestern student in Chicago, many questions lingered, especially after the incident was quickly declared “not bona fide” by the Chicago Police Department.
Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators held an educational panel about how the justice system addresses reports of sexual assault, and how the CPD identifies a crime as bona fide or not bona fide. About 30 students attended.
Dr. Donald Misch, NU Health Services executive director; Laura Stuart, sexual health education and violence prevention coordinator; and Renée Redd, director of the Women’s Center and Lisa Frohmann, professor of Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago, spoke on the panel. Stuart and SHAPE Student Directors Max Potter and Christine Stiehl led the discussion.
Stuart acknowledged that no information was available for the speakers beyond what was in the e-mails.
“There is no additional information that has been made public,” she said, “so none of us can say for sure what happened.”
Frohmann described the process of reporting a sexual assault to the CPD. When a victim reports sexual assault, police evaluate the incident based on a list of guidelines compiled by the FBI, she said. When evaluating a report of sexual assault, “Police have in their head ideas of what sexual assault looks like,” she said, which can cause an unintentional bias.
There are several ways in which a sexual assault report can be declared “not bona fide,” Frohmann added. In the legal system, this means an event is unfounded, but does not necessarily mean that it did not happen, Frohmann said.
”Saying ‘not bona fide’ makes it sound like (the alleged victim) was an out-and-out liar,” Mirsch said.
Many factors, including the likelihood of prosecutors to win a case in court, can impact the naming of a report as not bona fide.
“If that case isn’t winnable, a case could be unfounded,” Mirsch said, adding that factors like lack of eyewitnesses or physical evidence and difficulty in locating a suspect could discourage a prosecutor from taking a sexual assault case, because a conviction in those situations is unlikely.
“Prosecutors want convictions,” Frohmann said. “Taking on cases that will not produce convictions makes them look incompetent.”
Redd said false reports of sexual assault occur only 1 percent of the time, and victims can retract their reports out of a desire for privacy after the emotional trauma of rape. The demeaning myth that sexual assault victims file false reports is a “disservice to survivors,” she said.
The reasons for the e-mail’s content and promptness after the reported assault are due in part to the provisions of the Clery Act of 1990 passed after the sexual assault and murder of college student Jeanne Clery at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The law requires universities to report on-campus crime to students in a timely fashion.
The ambiguities of the law, however, led to a debate over the content of the e-mail sent out by NU alerts.
“I don’t know why there was so much detail in (the e-mail),” Mirsch said, adding that the descriptive account of the sexual assault could be construed as a violation of the victim’s privacy.
There were other concerns about the wording in the e-mails sent out to students, including the description of the assailant as an African-American male about 25 years of age.
Students questioned whether the description of the attacker as an African-American male was prudent.
“All black young men on campus become vulnerable to further suspicion,” Frohmann said.
Interim Dean of Students Burgie Howard attended the event and said some administrators plan to meet Monday to address the system of crime reporting at NU.
“(The e-mail) made a big portion of our community fearful,” Howard said. “We want to see if there is something better.”
Potter and Stiehl organized the panel immediately after they received the e-mails.
“We felt there was a lot of confusion and stress caused over the situation from last week,” Potter said of student response to the second e-mail.
“This served as a catalyst for continuing this discussion and a reminder of how closed-minded people can be about what sexual assault is and who is to blame,” Stiehl said.
czdzeba@u.northwestern.edu
Bank robbing exists, so it's OK to jail innocent people as bank robbers? Jailing innocent people on drug charges will stop when people no longer use drugs? That's YOUR idea of justice?False accusations MUST be halted. It is a CRIMINAL act to accuse another person of such a heinous crime. False accusers must be punished - severe prison sentences as well as Sex Offender Registration - there are, after all, HIGH recidivism rates for false accusers at this time. Why not? They simply get away with it.Yes, I said SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION. Putting another person (man or woman) through a false rape accusation is a HEINOUS a sexual assault - as any other.
Thu Nov 5 2009 15:21
"I believe the vast majority of women have husbands, sons, brothers, boyfriends, friends and men in general they deeply love and want protected from false rape accusations - although you don't hear much from them."Could this potentially be because false rape accusations are not as prevalent as you claim? No, no, silly me -- it's that darn feminist conspiracy again. Silly YOU! I didn't make any claims one way or the other how prevalent false rape accusations are. I specifically lamented the LACK of any verifiable numbers or stats on ANY claims being made here.And I asked why? Why is such important information being left to speculation?I have to ask, if the DOJ pronounced that 36% of all false rape claims are unreported, would you not want a little better verification?So strange, that in this information age, solid, verifiable information is simply not available.
1 : made in good faith without fraud or deceit
2 : made with earnest intent : SINCERE
3 : neither specious nor counterfeit : GENUINEWhat this suggests is that when the police term an allegation as “not bona fide”, they are, in fact, declaring it to be false – they're just being “diplomatic” about it. The term "unfounded" is frequently used when the issue is simply a lack of evidence. Thus, the choice to call it "not bona fide" quite clearly suggests that it was more than just a lack of evidence.2) If it is another case of a false rape allegation, then there is no way around it - the alleged victim is an out-and-out liar. I understand that for some, this is an uncomfortable fact, but there are plenty of women who do fabricate stories of rape - for attention and sympathy (plus, victims assistence money), for revenge, or to try to expalain away their discovered infidelities.3) Prosecutors do not call cases they cannot win “not bona fide”, they call them “unsubstantiated” or just “unwinnable”. Again, “not bona fide” is just a fancy way of saying that they know it's false.And, prosecutors do take seemingly unwinnable cases to trial – quite regularly, in fact. For rape accusations taken to trial, there is something on the order of a 40% conviction rate (IIRC). And, this includes all cases. If it were possible to break-out the “he said/she said” type, the rate of conviction would probably drop to perhaps 20% (or less).Why?Two reasons: The cases are taken to trial because the alleged victim (aka the complaining witness) insists that it be done; and, because juries are not inclined to send people to prison if they feel uncertain about what happened.When a woman is raped at knife-point, for instance, there is no doubt that consent wasn't given. However, in “he said/she said” scenarios, there is typically ample “room” for jurors to conclude that intent may have been signaled, even if not spoken.Some prosecutors are afraid to loose, it's true. Yet, others understand that it is often in the best interest of justice to loose a case. I am personally aware of numerous instances in which a complaining witness did not want the accused to be offered a plea deal*, but where it was obvious that either no crime had actually occurred, or the nature of the crime was greatly exaggerated, and the complaining witness was obviously being vindictive. Not wanting to have to answer for not following the wishes of the complaining witness, the prosecutor proceeded to trial, fully aware that an acquittal was inevitable.*This is also true in cases where the defendant refuses to take an offer – typically because they know they are innocent, and refuse to admit to doing something that they did not do.
So, to do as Frohmann has done, and insist that a dubious allegation may be true, but that a prosecutor simply doesn't want to take it to trial, is usually nothing more than a way to try to cloud the truth that the allegation was more than just “unfounded”, it was, in fact, “not bona fide”.
You're statistics are simply unfounded and your journalistic efforts a sham. Please come back when you're not an a**hole.
Love,
Northwestern