College Rape Survivor Told Not to Report Her Rapist, Drops Out While Alleged Rapist Graduates With H

[polly7]

... With Honors.

Amherst is supposed to be a liberal institution. The mistreatment of a rape survivor shows just how pervasive rape culture is.

October 19, 2012 |

http://www.alternet.org/college-rape-survivor-told-not-report-her-rapist-drops-out-while-alleged-rapist-graduates-honors

A former Amherst student detailed her experience of on-campus rape and the college’s abysmal treatment of the situation, in a searing and painful essay . The piece in The Amherst Student by Angie Epifano, who left the college because of her experience, has focused a national spotlight on the elite liberal university’s treatment of rape and rape culture, raising questions about the treatment of sexual assault, victims and perpetrators on campuses around the country....

.....In short I was told: No you can’t change dorms, there are too many students right now. Pressing charges would be useless, he’s about to graduate, there’s not much we can do. Are you SURE it was rape? It might have just been a bad hookup…You should forgive and forget.

How are you supposed to forget the worst night of your life?… I was continuously told that I had to forgive him, that I was crazy for being scared on campus, and that there was nothing that could be done. They told me: We can report your rape as a statistic, you know for records, but I don’t recommend that you go through a disciplinary hearing. It would be you, a faculty advisor of your choice, him, and a faculty advisor of his choice in a room where you would be trying to prove that he raped you. You have no physical evidence, it wouldn’t get you very far to do this.

Epifano recounts how when she expressed a suicidal thought to her counselor, she was immediately committed to the local hospital’s psychiatric ward for five days where she says the doctor was no more supportive. “I really don’t think that a school like Amherst would allow you to be raped. And why didn’t you tell anybody?” she recalls the doctor suggesting. Epifano describes a rape by a student and an ongoing abuse by an institution. Eventually she withdrew from Amherst and remains sickened by the administration’s refusal to take rape seriously. She writes (citing unofficial statistics):

http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article%2F2012%2F10%2F17%2Faccount-sexual-assault-amherst-college

An Account of Sexual Assault at Amherst CollegeBy
Angie Epifano
,
Epifano is a former student of the class of 2014
Issue
142-6
| Wed, 10/17/2012 - 00:07

TRIGGER WARNING: This content deals with an account of sexual assault and may be triggering to some people.

When you’re being raped time does not stop. Time does not speed up and jump ahead like it does when you are with friends. Instead, time becomes your nemesis; it slows to such an excruciating pace that every second becomes an hour, every minute a year, and the rape becomes a lifetime.

On May 25, 2011, I was raped by an acquaintance in Crossett Dormitory on Amherst College campus.

Some nights I can still hear the sounds of his roommates on the other side of the door, unknowingly talking and joking as I was held down; it is far from a pleasant wakeup call.

I had always fancied myself a strong, no-nonsense woman, whose intense independence was cultivated by seventeen harrowing years of emotional abuse in my backwoods home. May 25th temporarily shattered that self-image and left me feeling like the broken victim that I had never wanted to be....

http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article%2F2012%2F10%2F17%2Faccount-sexual-assault-amherst-college

President Martin’s Statement on Sexual Assault

October 18, 2012

Dear Members of the Amherst Community,

I write in response to the recent news about an incident of sexual violence and misconduct on the Amherst campus and to reports that the College has failed to treat similar incidents with adequate transparency or seriousness. A student’s first-person account in this week’s Amherst Student is horrifying—her rape, her painful efforts to deal with it on her own, and her subsequent experiences when she sought help on the campus.

In response to her story, still more accounts of unreported sexual violence have appeared in social media postings and in emails I have received from several students and alumni. Clearly, the administration’s responses to reports have left survivors feeling that they were badly served. That must change, and change immediately. I am investigating the handling of the incident that was recounted in The Student. There will be consequences for any problems we identify, either with procedures or personnel.

https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/letters_president/node/436469