One Voice: Summit on Sexual Assault Creates Important Conversation on College Rape

Sharon Stone nearly choked up Friday while reading the words of Emily Doe, a young woman who was raped while unconscious at a party on the Stanford University campus nearly two years ago.

Stone, an award-winning actress and activist, read the heart-wrenching letter at One Voice, an event organized by District Attorney Jeff Rosen and held on the Santa Clara University campus. The goal of the day was to combat sexual assaults on college campuses, and to create an environment that encourages victims to speak out and gives them the benefit of the doubt.

“It has been some months since I was sitting in court, listening to Emily Doe address her attacker face to face,” Rosen said, noting the sentencing hearing for Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, who spent just three months in jail for raping Doe. “Her words have echoed from that courtroom in Palo Alto to across the world. It brought us to talk, listen and learn how to combat campus sexual assault.”

Other speakers included Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who criticized how poorly sexual assault victims are often treated. Speier noted examples of incidents on college campuses where she tried to help victims, and in some cases the schools involved were more concerned with protecting the rapists than the victims.

“There are women and men across this country every single day that endure the same fate as Emily Doe,” Speier said. “I have talked to many of these people. All the studies that have been done clearly illustrate that 95 percent of those who come forward and report being sexually assaulted are telling the truth.”

Doe’s letter was published by The Washington Post, Buzzfeed and many other outlets, helping to raise national attention to how victims of sexual assault are treated by their rapists, the media and, in most cases, universities that went into damage control.

The average number of sexual assaults that are reported hover between 15.8 and 35 percent, according to the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MCASA). The organization also suggests that women and men who have been sexually assaulted usually don’t come forward due to a fear of reprisal or being re-victimized by the criminal justice system.

Kevin Powell, who has written articles for Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Huffington Post and CNN, spoke about the need for society to better respect women. He shared his experiences about growing up in poverty with a single mother and a father who was in and out of his life. Powell said that it is important for men to be taught to respect women at a young age.

“What are we willing to do in our communities? I feel like there should be male circles in every single community in this country where we are reading and learning about gender and redefining it,” Powell said.

After a small break, a movie showed hypothetical sexual assault cases. An open panel discussed the film and general topics regarding on-campus sexual assaults.

DA Rosen and the rest of the One Voice sexual assault committee also signed a memorandum that will bring more accountability and fairness to the process in which colleges and law enforcement respond to sexual assaults.

“As a District Attorney and as a father, I do everything in my power to make sure that my daughters and every other young woman who walks onto campus leaves a graduating student, not a survivor,” Rosen said. “Let us use this short time together to share ideas and network. Let’s make our campuses safer. Let’s make the next Brock Turner think twice and walk away. Let’s comfort and care for the next Emily Doe. Let’s speak together with one voice about campus sexual assault and most importantly, let’s be outstanders.”

24 Comments

  1. “I feel like there should be male circles in every single community in this country where we are reading and learning about gender and redefining it.”

    Rape is horrible, a crime that deserve harsh punishment.

    But you are not going to redefine my sons’ gender, I think you guys have gone far enough.

  2. As a Father, my heart goes out to the victims who have had to suffer under the hands of these predators. I do not think that there is sufficient punishment for the perpetrator…becuase they have scared there victims for life…scars and wounds that may never heal.

  3. Sexual assault as a condemnable societal offense will NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER be taken seriously in this society as long as the Democrat Party establishment, the Democrat Party voter base, and the dominant entertainment and news media continue to EXCUSE and PROTECT William Jefferson Clinton.

    Don’t sexual assault perpetrators go to jail? Has William Jefferson Clinton spent any time in jail? Is it because Judge Aaron Persky gave him a light sentence?

    Any REAL conversation on sexual assault MUST include authentic truth telling and serious moral judgement of William Jefferson Clinton’s predation on and exploitation of women AND full accountability for his actions.

    Anything short of this is just political posturing and advantage seeking.

    Hillary Clinton: hypocrite
    Sharon Stone: hypocrite
    Jeff Rosen: hypocrite
    Jackie Speier: hypocrite
    Taylor Jones: hypocrite

    Nothing new here. Same hypocrisy as yesterday. Nothing has changed.

    • Wait, did you just turn another neutral topic into a diatribe against the Dems? In other news, water continued to be wet today, and glue continued to feel sticky.

      I know you get your mojo from acting and feeling besieged. But you are no longer the voice crying in the wilderness. You guys own the place now. If old Bubba Clinton is that bad, get Jeff Sessions to indict him or something. You got noone else to blame.

      • > You got noone else to blame.

        Not true!

        I still have you to blame because you are still trying to pretend that William Jefferson Clinton has nothing to do with sexual predation, and you are giving YOUR political shamans a free pass and excusing them from doing anything.

        You are a sexual predation enabler every bit as much as Hillary Clinton.

        Neither you nor Hillary take sexual assault seriously. For the both of you, it’s “just a campaign issue”.

        • 》You are a sexual predation enabler.

          You are a head case and an alt right control freak. You need Prozac like the rest of us need food and water. You will go through the Trump presidency every bit as unhappy as you were during the Obama presidency. Because your thing has nothing to do with Trump or Obama. It has to do with you. You are just unhappy.

          You are a walking ad for Gleemonex. Makes you feel like it’s 72 degrees inside your head all the time. Go watch Brain Candy if you missed that reference. If a movie makes you less unhappy for a couple of hours, I’m all for it.

          • CALMHER:

            You’re behaving like you’ve never heard anyone criticize the Clinton’s before.

            Have you been in a nunnery or in solitary confinement?

          • Dear daughters,
            My advice to young women trying to keep their virtue intact.
            Don’t dress like a tramp.
            Don’t go to frat parties on left wing college campuses, and don’t get stinking drunk if you you do.
            You can not suppress male hormones in teenage and twenty something men, you will only enrage them with your provoitive behavior.

            Take a tip from the Muslim community on this one.

          • The Bill Clinton thing makes me uncomfortable. The tough thing is that this seems to exist in every segment of society at some rate (Hollywood has Roman Polanski, the list goes on and on).

            If I don’t throw a tantrum everytime I watch a movie, am I enabling?

            We have a criminal justice system. We should reform it.

            But Bill Clinton doesn’t mean Democrats can’t ever speak up on this important issue.

  4. > Don’t go to frat parties on left wing college campuses, and don’t get stinking drunk if you you do.

    I don’t know if I’m giving out a male secret, but . . . . I think it has ALWAYS been true for every generation of males that college age males like to join groups that include LOTS of liberal women on the theory that the chances of getting laid are much greater.

    You know. Groups like the Bernie Sanders campaign. The Hillary Campaign. The Sierra Club. Etc. etc.

    What? You didn’t know? You thought they just liked socialism, radical feminism, and big government?

  5. And a corollary . . .

    To reduce campus sexual assaults and rapes, shut down the campus liberal activist groups like the Sierra Club, the Bernie campaign, the anti-nuke groups, etc. etc.

    Hormone crazed horndogs will have to start going to church groups to meet women.

  6. Bubbles says: “Have you been in a nunnery or in solitary confinement?”

    I have been in the theater. I hear your man says it’s always a “safe and special place.” You should try it when you feel like you need a safe space, Bubbles — i.e., every 5 minutes or so.

  7. You people in the “rape industry” make me sick.

    “95 percent of those who come forward and report being sexually assaulted are telling the truth”. Really? 95%?

    In the single most infamous case of its kind, in November 2014, journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely asserted that at least five members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity gang-raped a female freshman student. On January 12, 2015, the University of Virginia reinstated the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity after the police investigation concluded that no incident had occurred at the fraternity.

    In April 2013, former University of Florida student Tanya Borachi lied to police about getting bound and gagged in a Gainesville apartment complex parking lot. Police later charged Boarchi with filing a false police report.

    In April 2013, University of Wyoming student Meg Lanker-Simons, then 28, anonymously posted a rape threat directed at herself on a Facebook . A school official immediately denounced the supposed “rape culture.” Police investigated the incident, quickly determining that Lanker-Simons posted the message on herself on her computer.

    In the fall of 2009, Hofstra University Danmell Ndonye voluntarily had sex with no fewer than five men in a dormitory bathroom. Ndonye, 18, accused the men of gang rape after her boyfriend found her looking “like she just finished hot sex,” As a result of Ndonye’s lies, four innocent men were arrested and jailed. (A fifth remained on the lam.) The four men were only saved because someone had filmed the orgy on a mobile phone. Ndonye’s story crumbled because the video showed that the sex was consensual.

    In November 2004, Desiree Nall, a student at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. told police that two men raped her in a bathroom on campus. Nall, 23, eventually recanted her fake rape allegations.

    Back in 1993, at Oberlin College, a “take back the night” group posted a number of signs on campus labeling an apparently randomly-chosen, innocent freshman as “Rapist of the Month.” “So many women get their lives totally ruined by being assaulted and not saying anything,” Lloyd explained. “SO IF ONE GUY GETS HIS LIFE RUINED,MAYBE IT BALANCES OUT” (!?!)

    Back in April 1991, Princeton University student Mindy Brickman falsely accused a fellow Princeton student of raping her, Once Brickman’s claim fell apart, she wrote that she only intended to “raise awareness for the plight of the campus rape victims.”

    In 1990, Mariam Kashani, then a sophomore at George Washington University, weaved a giant, racist fiction about a campus rape. When her story crumbled, Kashani said she was really sorry and insisted that she “had hoped the story, as reported, would highlight the problems of safety for women.”

    The police are not allowed to question a rape victim the same way they are a victim of any other crime. No other crime has its own advocacy group. If a rape victim claims that she was raped by little green men who abducted her into their space ship, got her drunk and raped her, the police will take a report. That is the policy. Take the report no matter how obviously false the accusation then kick it upstairs to the Detective Bureau. That’s how it works.

    By the way,the woman who falsely accused three Duke University lacrosse players of rape, Crystal Mangum, will now be known as a convicted killer. She killed her boyfriend. But who the hell cares, he’s probably just another rapist anyway, I mean, after all, he was male.

    • Hmmmm.

      Couldn’t all of these false rape stories be categorized as “fake news”?

      NEWS BULLETIN: People lie. People lie to get money. People lie to get jobs. People lie to get social and political advantage. People lie to get into the country. People lie to stay out of jail. People lie to be able to vote. People lie to have sex. People lie NOT to have sex.

      Personally, I think lying is wrong. And condemnation of lying is part of our religious tradition. (“Thou shalt not bear false witness”)

      But the sad fact of the matter is that lying is really normal and natural human behavior. As far as I can tell, in the absence of clear and seriously embraced religious principle, most people DO NOT think that lying is “wrong” if it helps get you what you want.

      That’s why it is important to know the “character” and ethical and moral principles of people you deal with in daily life. That’s especially true of politicians and public officials.

      In a country that professes to embrace “separation of church and state”, i.e. a country that devalues religiously based moral principles such as truth telling, public and private institutions need to take affirmative actions to elicit and test the truthfulness of people claiming benefits or privileges. Example: the privileges of U.S. citizenship and the right to vote.

      It is absurd to let anyone claim to be a citizen, walk into a voting both, and vote when we KNOW that lying is common place, natural, normal, and that truth telling is affirmatively disparaged.

    • There was a not guilty verdict in a case of false sexual assault in San Jose last week. The man’s name is ruined and the woman goes scot free. That is a shame.

  8. Part II:

    [a] There’s no way anyone can know even close to exactly how many real rapes and sexual assaults happen, and hence even close to exactly how many complaints of same are true or false (again, deliberately or mistakenly).

    [b] Even if that figure is true…so what? Maybe 95+ percent of people get around without wheelchairs, should we abolish ramps and similar accommodations? In all probability, well over 95 percent of people are cisgender, do we throw transgender folks under the bus?

    [c] Even the study trotted out by campus rape activists, the one done by David Lisak (the one who thinks our campuses are crawling with serial rapists) et al, allows that up to 10% of rape reports may be false.

    [c1] Again, just because a given complaint isn’t *false* doesn’t mean that it isn’t mistaken. There’s mistaken identity, mistaken but legitimate belief by the defendant that the complainant had consented, mistaken if legitimate belief by the complainant that she (or he) had not manifested consent, etc.

    [c2] Finally, the official definition of “false” for these purposes is a report that has been *proven* false.

    An accusation is considered true until proven false…in places like North Korea and Cuba.

  9. Since this window expands beyond a certain point and covers the Post Comment button, I’ll post this in two parts.

    Part I:

    Either San Jose Inside has seriously misquoted Congresswoman Jackie Speier, or she is seriously lacking in the due process department.

    First off, in any proceeding there are more people than just rapists and victims. There are also innocent falsely (or otherwise wrongly) accused people and mistaken (or lying) accusers. That’s why we have proceedings in the first place (at least theoretically) instead of just punish anyone who is accused — to see who has actually done what.

    Secondly, “All the studies that have been done clearly illustrate that 95 percent of those who come forward and report being sexually assaulted are telling the truth” is off balance in multiple ways:

    • > Since this window expands beyond a certain point and covers the Post Comment button, I’ll post this in two parts.

      If you’re using Google Chrome, try using a different browser like Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Safari, or Firebox.

      I suspect that it’s a Google problem and it’s something that Google needs to fix.

  10. Do story on people who have been wrongly accused and acquitted of sexual assaults.It ruins their lives just having the existence of the false allegation. It happened last week in San Jose!

    • Well, if the male person who has been accused of sexual assault or anything else for that matter is an “undocumented immigrant”, have them call

      > Authorities urged victims of immigration fraud to call its Notario Investigations Unit at 408.808.4599 or send email to [email protected].

  11. Soy to confuse you with facts, it was not rape. Why do you continue to perpetuate falsehoods?
    It is difficult enough without your hyperbole.

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