Despite a rise in awareness of rape culture through movements like Lady Gaga’s Oscar performance and the increase of sexual harassment sensitivity and awareness training at universities like LSU, we need to come together to address the evils of rape through our laws.
With the general public’s awareness of the ways rape can be perpetrated, why do punishers remain ignorant? There is a critical lack of understanding that the punishments, or lack thereof, that we extend in court have repercussions for future cases and victims.
Often, a prosecutor cannot obtain proper sentence because these cases are difficult to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt.” In fact, it’s extremely rare for law enforcement or prosecutors to press charges after the initial report by the victim — out of 1,000 instances of rape, only 13 get referred to a prosecutor and only seven lead to a felony conviction, according to the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network’s criminal justice statistics.
According to a report from the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Statistics college women report instances of rape less than 5 percent of the time.
Now, consider the 5 percent who report instances of rape paired with the 0.7 percent of convictions. This suggests that the majority of rapists never see a courtroom, much less a jail cell.
This discourages victims from reporting their assaults to law enforcement. When convictions are so light that rapists like Brock Turner, the Stanford athlete whose trial made national headlines, are out of prison after serving only three months, why would victims want to pursue a deeply emotional trial?
In August, 18-year-old David Becker, convicted of raping two classmates, was sentenced to just two years of probation and will not be registered as a sex offender. One of his victim’s impact statements read: “When I’m not having nightmares of rape, I’m having panic attacks.”
This lenient punishment prioritizes attackers over the mental stability victims.
Many prosecutors enter plea deals on behalf of victims because the evidence required to prove guilt is simply nonexistent. Unless a rape is reported almost immediately after it takes place, victims have most likely eradicated all biological evidence.
But even having the strength to report rape immediately after it occurs while resisting the urge to shower doesn’t guarantee evidence for an eventual trial. In March 2015, Louisiana had 1,333 untested rape kits, many of them years old, according to a Louisiana State Police Crime Lab Report. This number doesn’t include the more than 25 percent of law enforcement agencies that failed to report their backlog of untested kits.
Not only are we failing victims by barely punishing their attackers, but we aren’t even fully looking into victims’ claims.
Awareness has risen, and the pressure placed on law enforcement agencies to fully investigate rape claims has risen too. Yet we must take the third and final step: implementing stricter sentencing. As difficult as it is to get a prosecution in rape cases, you’d think we could at least punish the few rapists who are prosecuted more strongly than we do.
Ryan Thaxton is a 20-year-old sophmore from Monroe, Louisiana.