Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto

by Michelle Bowdler

people on the screen remind me what it feels like to be transported into different worlds with little preparation and no...

Surviving to the next moment becomes a ...

Studies estimate that between 80 and 90 percent of college students do not report their assaults to law enforcement.

A health practitioner’s job is to ask questions during a visit, but the nature of the query can feel like victim blaming to someone who is reeling and filled with self-doubt.

“Has this ever happened before?” may be a reasonable question if someone reports a blackout from drinking, but for someone describing an assault, it can be heard as focusing on their behavior rather than on what happened. “How well did you know this person?” is a question often heard as, “Don’t you have better judgment?”

Asking what kind of party it was might be interpreted as, “Why di...

harm’s way?” And being curious about why a student waited to make an appointment could be taken to mean, “You waited, and now you might be pregnant or have an ST...

Any insensitive question or improper response by a clinician can shut down the conversation. Well-meant but artless inquiries might repeat in someone’s head for years. I heard the voices fro...

Time is an imperfect healer, massaging the edges of an experience, but it is inadequate as a stand-alone remedy.

The fear one pushes down during a violent assault in order to survive takes up permanent residence in the synapses and nerves of the body—like the old man who lives in a rent-controlled apartment in New York City and intends to be there until they carry him out in a box. It is stubborn and determined; it will not be dislodged.

At the time, I thought it was shame I felt, but now I realize that there was rage bubbling

below the surface—anger at this crime’s impact, anger at all the ways I’d seen and heard it minimized, anger at the thunderous silence from the Boston police. And since there was no other place yet for this rage to go, it stayed inside of me—in every single cell, in my twitching back muscles, and in the tear ducts I struggled to keep dry.

The unmistakable parallel between how the students felt

about our failures as administrators and how I felt about society’s inadequate response to rape victims was an almost unbearable irony; I felt split in half and ashamed.

And I couldn’t be fully effective in my professional role if I was behaving in a way that affirmed that sexual violation was unspeakable.

“I’ll be honest—sexual assault isn’t something you survive and then fully move on from. It

never becomes only a thing that once happened to you. Parts of it may sit with me for the rest of my life, and I say that not because I want to dishearten the student or staff survivors in the room, but to acknowledge the personal challenges in the aftermath of assault and also the responsibilities of those charged with addressing sexual assault survivors’ concerns and needs.

In fact, 817 serial rapists were identified and 50 of them each had 10–15 “hits” among the evidence tested.

Estimates of how many evidence kits in the country had never been tested were as high as 400,000.

In fact, untested rape kits were often simply discarded in warehouses, trash depositories, or storage closets with no intention to ever test the contents of the kits.”

Over the next few years, Debbie became severely depressed, fearing harm would befall her family because she’d reported the attack. Only when the DNA from her rape kit was tested six years later did she learn that her rapist had been in jail for the last five years for another crime.

Had the match been discovered

sooner, she could have been spared years of torment. This very personal and painful lesson set Debbie on a mission to ensure that every single rape kit would be tested so that no victim would be denied the peace she had been given when her rape kit was processed and a match found.

According to a 2019 Washington Post article, “Nearly 200,000 DNA matches have been made … because of the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program.”

It is indisputable that when backlogged kits were tested around the country, matches were found and perpetrators identified.

This tells us the standards used to decide whether to investigate rape cases had no merit and were deeply flawed.

And there were

plenty of us already feeling twice victimized—by the crimes of violence that changed our lives and then by the news that no effort had been made to investigate.

If it were one dean at one college who thought that they didn’t need training to decide a sexual misconduct complaint because their untrained but clearly stellar judgment on these matters would surely suffice.

But it wasn’t just one. It was repeated dismissal and minimization over decades and throughout multiple systems,

without any larger societal understanding of how this neglect regarding crimes of rape and sexu...

Even where some progress was undeniable, the foundation of rape culture and misogyny continued to have a wide and unremitting

impact on rape investigations nationwide.

Los Angeles County, where over twelve thousand untested kits had been counted.

“I learned a lesson when I found out that the police had closed my case without even interviewing [the rapist], or testing the rape kit. I learned that you cannot trust that the justice system will bring hope to you or bring your rapist to jail. You cannot

hope that what went wrong will be righted.”

What I found, instead, endorsed the notion that the “backlog” exists in large measure because most rapes are considered baseline illegitimate and police turn away from them to solve crimes that no one doubts happened and whose harm is not being exaggerated.

One of the things trauma took from me was the sweetness of the earth.

My experience was not just a single failure by a single detective long ago. Closing a rape complaint without an investigation continues to the present day.

Why had I believed “solving” my attack would lead to individual healing, and what is the value of personal justice if not tied to systemic change?

How many more judges will make “unfortunate” comments about rape victims’ culpability as a way to justify ignoring sentencing guidelines?

A recent article in Forbes reported that in some business environments women are less likely to be hired for jobs where they are required to interact with men in one-on-one situations and that “attractive women” are especially impacted by this hiring bias.1

Given that estimates of false reporting are 2–8 percent, that the vast majority of rapes go unreported, and that those that are reported rarely go to trial or result in conviction, the idea that there is an epidemic of

men being falsely accused of and found responsible for sexual assault is simply inaccurate.

In order to avoid “ruining” a young man’s life, rape is often framed as a “mistake,” “youthful transgression,” or miscommunication rather than as an intentional, violent act.

What is too often articulated in the public sphere is the tragedy befalling the perpetrator, while victims and the consequences they suffer are rendered invisible.

A judge in Montana gave a high school teacher who had raped a freshman student a multiyear sentence and then required only thirty-one days be served, declaring that the victim looked older than her years and was “probably as much in control of the situation as was the defendant.

Apparently, the jury was swayed that what one puts on in the privacy of her home excuses a man of an attack begun before he had any idea of what underwear she was wearing, as if this has any relevance whatsoever.

Sex crimes are still uniquely minimized, the focus staying on whether the victim is lying, is seductive, is mistaken, is making a big deal out of nothing.

There remains no other felony crime where a victim must first pass a test of veracity and legitimacy before her complaint will proceed