By Aaron Miller-
Disturbing reports of sexual assaults in American and some British colleges and universities have been circulating on instagram as students return to higher education.
Student allegations of rape, sexual assaults and harassment have been circulating on instagram. Accounts at University of Aberdeen University, and several others have alarmed observers. Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, claim that 23% of undergraduate female students and 5% of undergraduate males experience assault through physical force, incapacitation, or violence while in college.
The shocking revelations leads to important questions, most important of which is why the complaints have not been investigated by cops. The complaints only apply to a minority of universities
Many victims apparently don’t report their experiences, choosing instead to share it on social media. One of the reasons presented for the low criminal complaints is a lack of evidence which victims perceive will only worsen their fate in the event of an unsuccessful investigation.
The instinctive expectation is for victims to report their ordeals when they experience it, but even for an intellectual environment like University, American females are still in fear of reprisals from unpredictable men in a society like U.S where crazy people come in all shapes and sizes. A final year student from, Joseph Matthews, and English student from University of Arizona told The Eye Of Media.Com: ” the allegations are disturbing, but we must remember there are many possible reasons females could allege sexual assault.
In some cases, you have females who get dirty when drunk, then become embarrassed when they realise what they have done. In other cases, they simply can’t remember what happened. There are also cases in where the so-called victim has been caught cheating, and chooses to allege assault. Not all the allegations can be trusted”
Another student, Sophia Moore, from the same university said: ”The allegations are disturbing and should not be taken forgranted. Many
The news shared on CBS news has led to many new students being extra alert, especially in these times of Covid-19.
“We want to try and raise awareness of the intricacies of sexual assault, because often it’s painted as something that’s very black and white,” said the founder of the Durham University Survivors Instagram account at northeast England’s Durham University. “Our experiences of sexual assault were a lot less black and white than that.”
“We really felt that we needed to show not just the school, but our fellow classmates and campus community members that we really did have our stories to share and that it wasn’t just a few of us,” said a female student who co-founded Gettysburg Survivors with another student.