David Michael Miller
Here’s a sadly safe prediction: Some of the people starting school this fall at the UW-Madison are going to become victims of rape. Others will become rapists.
But to appreciate the full horror of the situation, here’s one more prediction to ponder: Neither the victims nor the perpetrators may recognize what happened for what it is.
That’s one of the many disconcerting realities driven home by Jon Krakauer’s new book, Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. Krakauer, known mainly as the author of adventure tomes including Into the Wild, is a superb reporter, as shown in his unsparing dissection on the Mormon Church, Under the Banner of Heaven.
Missoula is not on a par with these earlier achievements. But it is nonetheless an important work in that it attacks the problem of “date rape” at its core—our societal tolerance for these shocking crimes of callousness and opportunity.
The book recounts a series of sexual assaults in Missoula, Mont., from 2010 to 2012, that prompted a U.S. Department of Justice investigation. But Krakauer concludes that there is nothing extraordinary about what happened in this place during this time.
He crunches numbers to show that the 350 sexual assaults reported to Missoula police during a 52-month period were “slightly less than the national average.” (In 2013, a mandatory state report found 122 sexual assaults reported to UW-Madison police; UW police departments statewide reported 362.)
More shocking still is Krakauer’s insights into the mindset of campus rapists, often serial predators. He describes a fraternity member explaining how he and others would seek out “easy prey” — young women who “wouldn’t know anything about drinking, or how much they could handle,” or “anything about our techniques.” Then they would ply them with alcohol to get them so incapacitated they could be “fucked” without their knowing what was going on.
The young man telling this story was completely impervious to the idea that what he was describing was rape.
For the women, too, who emerge in Krakauer’s book as heroes, recognizing the truth of what happened and accepting the burden it puts on them is a painful and protracted process.
Krakauer focuses on cases involving members of the University of Montana football team, who enjoy the full presumption of innocence. “I don’t think a problem exists,” declares one gridiron booster, as the star quarterback faces trial for rape on the heels of another player pleading guilty to raping a childhood friend as she slept.
And then there’s Missoula prosecutor Kirsten Pabst, who not only declined to charge one alleged campus rapist but showed up at a college disciplinary hearing to put in a good word for him. Pabst becomes a defense attorney who gets another accused rapist off the hook, then wins election as Missoula County district attorney.
Krakauer’s account of the revictimization of rape victims was no surprise to me.
Between 1998 and 2006, I wrote dozens of stories for Isthmus, as well as a book, about a case in which a legally blind woman was raped, disbelieved by Madison police and pressured to recant, then charged with a crime for going back to her original account. The woman, Patty, fought for years to vindicate herself, and eventually succeeded when her rapist was convicted based on DNA evidence.
In that case, the entire local justice and political system turned against Patty. She was vilified and berated. Some of the players in her drama, like the female prosecutor who proclaimed that the police who used lies and coercion to get Patty to recant “ought to be proud of what they did,” eventually apologized. Others, including the lead detective, Tom Woodmansee, now a police lieutenant, never did.
No violation is more profound, or more routinely unpunished, than sexual assault. Only a small percentage of rapes are reported, and only a small number of these lead to successful prosecutions.
Rape victims are rightfully reluctant to report. You may get a cop who disbelieves you. You may get a prosecutor who won’t go to bat for you. You may get a judge or a jury more sympathetic to your rapist than to you.
But the takeaway message is not “Don’t report.” It’s “Protect yourself.” The local Rape Crisis Center (608-251-7273) can provide an advocate to be present for the sexual assault exam and any questioning by police. That is absolutely a good idea.
Patty’s story and the cases in Krakauer’s book offer another, more optimistic message for victims of sexual assault: You can do it. You can stand up to people who think it’s okay to have sex with someone unconscious. You can withstand the indignities that the justice system heaps upon you. And maybe, in the process, you can help make the world a safer and less ignorant place.
Bill Lueders is associate editor of The Progressive.
