Justice, Mercy, Rape, and the Honor Code

[Calm]

This specific to Utah report from 2007 reports 75% go unreported (they stated it as a quarter of rape victims report the crime to law enforcement).  That would make 2003's report of 40 rapes mean that there were likely 160, not 400 (doublecheck my math please).

http://nomoresecrets.utah.gov/Documents/RapeinUtah2007.pdf

[Stargazer]

5 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Well, that's certainly not an accurate description of what LDS doctrine is. Here it is straight from the horse's mouth....that would be Alma. The only way mercy can satisfy justice is if repentance is attached. So, in the story of this young lady, where does the repentance for violating the Honor Code she signed to get admission to the University happen? Is repentance waived because something bad allegedly happened to her? If that is the case, it would seem mercy robs justice. "Mercy claims the penitent."

I have read the various accounts of this controversy, and I have to conclude that we don't know anywhere near the whole story.  There is a lot of hyperventilating going on. There certainly are a lot of contradictions, retractions, and ambiguities in the various accounts. Much of what is know is simply reporting what this or that person said. 

Plus, we have a clear statement from a BYU official that no rape victim would be referred to the Honor Code Office:

There is also a lot of unfounded religious stereotyping going on. The Honor Code is being made to appear to be some sort of out-of-date repressive Puritanical (in the pejorative sense) straight jacket. Insinuations about the Honor Code and Title IX offices and workers make them appear to be sneering High Inquisitionors. Being a fan of Bernardo Gui, I know a little bit about Inquisitions, and this is not an Inquisition. No one in the Honor Code office has even hinted that the victim would be expelled from school. In fact, the code itself specifies a variety of remedies for violations from counseling to expulsion. 

Finally, the alleged rape and the alleged Honor Code violations are separate issues. If violating the Honor Code should not contribute to the victim's responsibility for the rape, then the rape should not be part of the consideration for violations of the Honor Code.

All your reasonable words will be wildly misinterpreted and turned against you.  Just watch.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Stargazer

[Bernard Gui]

48 minutes ago, JulieM said:

How sad.  How does that compare to other cities across the nation, do you know?

How sad? But is it true? There is no evidence given to support this claim. Having followed all the threads dealing with this issue and having read the news reports, I have to conclude that a whole lot of jumping to conclusions is going on without many facts being made public.

[Russell C McGregor]

30 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

There is also a lot of unfounded religious stereotyping going on. The Honor Code is being made to appear to be some sort of out-of-date repressive Puritanical (in the pejorative sense) straight jacket. Insinuations about the Honor Code and Title IX offices and workers make them appear to be sneering High Inquisitionors. Being a fan of Bernardo Gui, I know a little bit about Inquisitions, and this is not an Inquisition. No one in the Honor Code office has even hinted that the victim would be expelled from school. In fact, the code itself specifies a variety of remedies for violations from counseling to expulsion. 

No Bernard, that's not right. Anyone who thinks the Honor Code office shouldn't be completely excluded is only saying that because they want rape victims to be punished. Didn't you know that?

Quote

Finally, the alleged rape and the alleged Honor Code violations are separate issues. If violations of the Honor Code should not assign responsibility for the rape to the victim, then the rape should not be part of the consideration for violations of the Honor Code.

QFT.

However, it is unrealistic to expect consistency from the "rape culture" warriors.

 

Edited April 18, 2016 by Russell C McGregor

[Okrahomer]

16 minutes ago, Calm said:

This specific to Utah report from 2007 reports 75% go unreported (they stated it as a quarter of rape victims report the crime to law enforcement).  That would make 2003's report of 40 rapes mean that there were likely 160, not 400 (doublecheck my math please).

http://nomoresecrets.utah.gov/Documents/RapeinUtah2007.pdf

I think it goes like this:.

If X = the total

then 0.25X = 43

X = 43/0.25

X = 172

[Calm]

From the Utah report I linked to above, two stats that should make us cautious about assuming BYU is implicated in sexual assaults with the Utah report (the one in six women having a history of assaults)

78% reported being first raped before 18th birthday (iirc half reported being raped only once...but what this indicates to me is that sexual assaults were more commonly occurring prior to college years)

Rape history were higher for low income and low education groups.

I am not saying that BYU is exonerated, just that these stats demonstrate it is problematic to extrapolate to BYU from general statistics, either the earlier 90% that I don't know how it was originally determined or the 75% for the Utah atudy.  We need a study specifically dealing with BYU students and alumni to get good data.

[strappinglad]

To say that 90% of rapes in Provo go unreported is not verified and I suggest unverifiable without  a personal interview type of survey of about 1500 people. If such a survey has been done by a reputable firm , I am unaware of it. Wikipedia says that in some cities, over 30% of rape cases were ' unfounded' or false. Do we accept that stat as accurate? I may not be an expert on statistics but I know enough to say that how questions are asked and how a sample is obtained makes a huge difference to the outcomes.

[Calm]

14 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

How sad? But is it true? There is no evidence given to support this claim. Having followed all the threads dealing with this issue and having read the news reports, I have to conclude that a whole lot of jumping to conclusions is going on without many facts being made public.

This was going to go up last night before the glitch, don't have desire at this point to do more research being Monday and things to do:

Bernard, if I understand it correctly from the 2007 study, the reported rape stats for Utah were 10% higher than the national average of reported rapes.  And the study showed that only about 1 in 4 rapes were reported.  (I am not sure that all states use the same legal definition of rape so that can be a problem, ie. if some states use a broader definition, rape rate would be higher; narrower, lower.). I may or may not go looking for the national average of reporting rapes to see if it is higher or lower, I didn't read all of the study and it may have been in there.   If Utah is high in reported rapes, but has a lower percentage of unreported rapes, we might be better than national average of suspected rapes; if we are higher in percentage of unreported, we may be over 10% higher than national average.

It is important not to just use commonly accepted data like the 90% unreported number, especially if comparing local areas that may have unique characteristics.  The 2007 survey appears to be a good one, it was a random phone survey of over 1800 respondents.  I don't see it as divided into counties or cities though, which would have been helpful.  Perhaps rates of reporting are higher in large cities than rural areas because there is less fear of neighbours making one a topic of gossip or the reverse because victims feel less safe among more strangers...or maybe they feel more safe.  Can't know without data that we don't have.  If someone is interested in comparing, they need to use similar studies imo.

[ALarson]

16 hours ago, Russell C McGregor said:

For two reasons:

1. All the angst about the Honor Code office becoming involved when sexual assaults are reported; and
2. The fact that certain provisions of the Honor Code would tend to help to keep people safe, to the extent that they are obeying them.

Pretty slim evidence to conclude that most of the girls who are raped at BYU are not "fully observing the Honor Code".  

[Calm]

I lied about no doing any research...stuck in bed waiting for meds to kick in so hopefully will disappear midconversation soon:

Explains problems with data consistency, so in comparisons definitely need to ensure data gathering amd measures are comparable:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/21/rape-study-report-america-us_n_4310765.html

"The focal point of the study was the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) — an annual crime report conducted through household surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Justice Statistics — which counted 188,380 victims of rape and sexual assault in 2010. Another data source, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, counted nearly 1.3 million incidents that same year. Data from the FBI, which gathers its statistics on rape or attempted rape reported as a crime by local law enforcement, counted only 85,593 in 2010."

[Calm]

Another article referring to the same study:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/19/study-sexual-assaults-greatly-underreported-/3648197/

[Calm]

That study, which had some problems of its own (it is apparently in general a good one, but needs some better rules with administration, such as guaranteeing each survey is conducted privately), concluded that nationwide the unreported rate is 80%.  I don't know the error margin, but a 5% difference in reporting could account for the 10% over national average rate IF both studies and reported rapes are accurate and consistently defined across the studies/reports.

[mtomm]

49 minutes ago, Calm said:

I lied about no doing any research...stuck in bed waiting for meds to kick in so hopefully will disappear midconversation soon:

Explains problems with data consistency, so in comparisons definitely need to ensure data gathering amd measures are comparable:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/21/rape-study-report-america-us_n_4310765.html

"The focal point of the study was the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) — an annual crime report conducted through household surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Justice Statistics — which counted 188,380 victims of rape and sexual assault in 2010. Another data source, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, counted nearly 1.3 million incidents that same year. Data from the FBI, which gathers its statistics on rape or attempted rape reported as a crime by local law enforcement, counted only 85,593 in 2010."

This was the very first link I posted for strappinglad in the first honor code/rape thread and said you didn't need to go back to read it. But I'm glad you found it and the time to read it. It does make a lot of sense of why stats are not consistent. But mostly I feel pretty good that we both shared the same link, it's like being in an a pretty good club for a few minutes...heh. 

 

Edited April 18, 2016 by mtomm

[Bernard Gui]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

This was going to go up last night before the glitch, don't have desire at this point to do more research being Monday and things to do:

Bernard, if I understand it correctly from the 2007 study, the reported rape stats for Utah were 10% higher than the national average of reported rapes.  And the study showed that only about 1 in 4 rapes were reported.  (I am not sure that all states use the same legal definition of rape so that can be a problem, ie. if some states use a broader definition, rape rate would be higher; narrower, lower.). I may or may not go looking for the national average of reporting rapes to see if it is higher or lower, I didn't read all of the study and it may have been in there.   If Utah is high in reported rapes, but has a lower percentage of unreported rapes, we might be better than national average of suspected rapes; if we are higher in percentage of unreported, we may be over 10% higher than national average.

It is important not to just use commonly accepted data like the 90% unreported number, especially if comparing local areas that may have unique characteristics.  The 2007 survey appears to be a good one, it was a random phone survey of over 1800 respondents.  I don't see it as divided into counties or cities though, which would have been helpful.  Perhaps rates of reporting are higher in large cities than rural areas because there is less fear of neighbours making one a topic of gossip or the reverse because victims feel less safe among more strangers...or maybe they feel more safe.  Can't know without data that we don't have.  If someone is interested in comparing, they need to use similar studies imo.

Thanks. How many of the 1800 random contacts were rape victims? Seems to me that would be a tiny fraction, but what do I know?

[Calm]

34 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Thanks. How many of the 1800 random contacts were rape victims? Seems to me that would be a tiny fraction, but what do I know?

Sexual assualt victims were around 30% iirc.  iirc rape victims (including various forms of forced sexual activity) was around 17%.

This is a lifetime number, about half had been molested as children.  Being raped in the past year was .06% iirc.  

[Robert F. Smith]

On 4/16/2016 at 11:09 PM, MiserereNobis said:

It's disturbing in the Deseret News article that the man who gave the honor code office the police report said he was doing so because he wanted male athletes investigated, but the office used it to investigate the victim.  If his statement is true, his intent was to bring an investigation onto males who were inappropriate with women, yet the honor code office lumped a victim into their investigation.  Why?  Where are the priorities of justice?  Why not let the instance with the victim go and instead focus on the greater violation: the violation of divine dignity?

You make a lot of assumptions in your various scenarios, including this one.  The police and the Honor Code office are not allowed the luxury of assuming that they already know all the circumstances of any event or accusation.  They have no choice but to investigate.  That is their job.  Along with that job, however, are rules of confidentiality, and there are penalties for breaching those rules.  The City Police, for example, are prohibited from disclosing the name of a rape victim to the Honor Code office, while BYU Police may not work under the same strictures.  The Honor Code office may not publicly disclose the name of the victim or the accused.  At the outset, one does not know whether the accusations of rape are true, or an innocent man is being falsely accused.  Investigations, including rape kits, and careful interviews must take place.  The prosecutor must decide whether the accusations are actionable in court, or merely devolve into a he-said-she-said boondoggle.  Most rapes take place between people who know each other (unlike the silly Hollywood versions), and booze is often a major ingredient.

You appear to be shocked that someone gave the police report to the Honor Code office because he wanted to have athletes investigated, and implied that the Honor Code office was wrong to investigate the supposed victim.  Yet the Honor Code staff would be irresponsible not to investigate all concerned in order to determine what actually happened.  The Honor Code staff probably ought also to find out whether the source of that report was authorized to violate confidentiality, and if not whether he should be expelled from the university, or from his job, and  then blacklisted.  Your narrow response is heedless of both justice and mercy.   It is also unprofessional.

[Calm]

The problem, Robert, is there is nothing in any of the articles that explains how the alleged rape is connected to male student athletes.  The man accused is not a BYU student and all that has been said was that during a date, the two were at her apartment in her bedroom.  No one else has been mentioned being there, so the claim that this case somehow reveals something about male athletes isn't understandable.