A stunning, detailed account of a string of sexual assaults at the University of Montana, written by best-selling novelist Jon Krakauer. These tales shed light on the human drama that lies beneath the widespread problem of school rape throughout the country.
Missoula, Montana, is a quintessential college town, home to a prestigious state institution, picturesque environs, an active social scene, and a fiercely passionate football club (the Grizzlies).
350 reports of sexual assault to the Missoula police between January 2008 and May 2012 were looked at by the Department of Justice. Very few of these attacks were appropriately dealt with by the municipal or university authorities. Missoula is likewise typical in this regard.
According to a DOJ study published in December 2014, 110,000 women between the ages of 18 and 24 are raped annually. It is evident from Krakauer's horrifying account of the events in Missoula why rape occurs so often on American colleges and why victims of rape are often afraid to come forward.
Rape by acquaintance is a unique kind of crime. In contrast to other felonies such as burglary or embezzlement, the victim is sometimes viewed with more mistrust than the putative offender. This is particularly true if the victim engages in sexual activity, if she has alcohol consumption previous to the attack, and if the guy she is accusing is a member of a well-known sports team. Her statements in the press are often dismissed as a result of the very rare but well reported instances of false charges. Defence lawyers will have unrestricted access to the woman's whole personal life if the matter proceeds to trial.
This harsh reality helps to explain why the greatest underreported crime in America is acquaintance rape. Its victims often experience severe psychological harm in addition to physical trauma, which results in feelings of humiliation, emotional paralysis, and stigmatisation. Rape victims are reported to have a 50% PTSD rate, which is greater than that of troops returning from combat.
In Missoula, Krakauer details the agonising experiences of multiple women in Missoula, including the nights they were sexually assaulted, their subsequent fear and self-doubt, how the police, prosecutors, and defence lawyers handled them, their public humiliation and inner turmoil, and their bravery in moving forward despite the costs.
A few of them approached the cops. Some chose to pursue remedies via the university, which has its own non-criminal legal system when a student is accused of rape, rather than calling the police or filing charges. In two instances, the district attorney consented to bring charges and the police agreed to file charges. One case ended in an acquittal, the other in a conviction. The women who dared to report their incidents or file accusations were vilified in the media, on Grizzly football fan sites, and/or in front of them. Three of the alleged rapists were expelled by the institution, but in a covert process, state authorities brought one back. At his university hearing, a district attorney provided testimony on behalf of an accused rapist. Later on, she left the prosecutor's office to successfully defend the star quarterback for the Grizzlies in his rape trial. In each woman's instance, the agony of being raped was heightened by the way the legal system operated and how the community responded.
Krakauer's unbiased, well researched story of the suffering these women went through breaks through the vacuous, ideological argument around university rape. Women in college are not sexually assaulted because they are intoxicated, promiscuous, give confused signals, feel bad about having casual sex, or need attention. They are the victims of a horrible crime and should get justice from an obviously flawed legal system as well as sympathy from society.