A Different Set of Rules: The Story of a Date Rape

My entire high school, everyone who graduated, came to U of I, went through the Greek rush, and it was just everybody did it, and I never thought, you know, twice, so I came through a clutch. I was so excited, I couldn't wait, you know, wait to be in the house. I guess it went pretty much along with what I thought a lot of people drinking beer and hanging out and I don't know the dances. In 1989, when Chris was a sophomore, she was raped by someone she knew. It was me, he was out with me, he knew me, he was, you know, we'd been friends, he'd talk to me, he knew what I was, you know, knew somewhat what I was about and the things I was interested in. Like Chris,

roughly one of every three women at the University of Illinois will be raped or sexually abused before she graduates. I mean these are people's lives, and these are women whose lives will never be the same, ever, ever, ever. What happened to Chris isn't unique, but her willingness to talk about it is, according to a 1989 study of sexual assault at the University of Illinois, about 2,500 undergraduate women then on campus had been date raped. The problem and the statistics repeat themselves on and off campuses across America. I don't know that this right now can change any men's ideas, but just hopefully help a woman that it's happened to you and say, you know, if it's a real problem, something really horrible happened to you, go get help.

Chris is now a senior. When she came to the University, Chris had the same expectations about college life as any other freshman. She wanted to get a good education. She wanted to have fun, and like hundreds of other new students, Chris thought that the best route to fun and friendship was through the Greek system, so she joined a sorority. For a while, Chris's social life was everything she had expected it to be. She went to dances. She had fun. She made new friends, but like too many other young women, Chris's expectations were shattered. It was one of my sorority dances, and I had asked them to go because we've been friends for a long time, and I wasn't really seeing anybody at the time, and I, you know, if he was a friend, so I figured we'd have a good time. I could take him and hang out with him. He'd be alright. But it wasn't all right. Chris was raped. Her trust had been violated as well. He was a good friend. It happened in his fraternity house. I do remember saying before anything, I'm really good started. You know, I like to be

clear. I want you know, I don't have any intentions of sleeping with you this evening, or having sex. The next day, I was really upset by what had gone on, and I stayed very upset for the next couple of days. I kind of wanted him to explain what had happened, and like make things okay, and he didn't. He's like, well, you know, get an abortion if you're turned out to be pregnant. For a long, long time, I felt really, really bad about myself, periods of depression, wanting to commit suicide. The rape was the second sexual experience I'd ever had. What happened to Chris, a rape by a fraternity man, is not uncommon. In 1989, in a comprehensive survey, University of Illinois researchers asked undergraduate women about their experiences with sexual assault and acquaintance rape. Among the findings

of the sexually stressful events survey was that more than half of the acquaintance or date rapes, 63% were committed by fraternity men, a group that makes up less than one quarter of the male student population. The result highlighted not only the magnitude of the problem, but the brutality. Mary Ellen O'Shaughnessy was the co-author of that survey. Well, in our study, we had three instances of gang rape, where the woman was raped by more than one man, and I think one it was five and four and four, I think. And in all those instances, the men were affiliated with fraternities. A former fraternity member agreed to talk about the problem of acquaintance rape, on condition that his identity be protected. Many, many times, there were things that were used to call shell cases, where somebody would a guy would pick up a lemon at a party or whatever, usually a party in the house. Both, you know, parties would be drunk, take her to a room where usually it would be

a ground floor room where there could be people outside looking through the window, and some kind of light would be left on so they could see in the room they really couldn't be seen on the outside. And then, you know, they'd have sex or whatever, they'd be, you know, 10 to 20 people watching. The only person unaware of what was happening was the woman. There are some common characteristics of date rape. There's usually alcohol. There is trauma. And there is power. The act is less about sex than about power, less about gratification than about domination. The story that I'm thinking now was where two guys late at night, one of them was already drunk. They got her more drunk, and then they had her drink urine out of a beer can. And then I think giving her shots of, you know, some kind of booze, strong booze. And

she then ended up, I believe, passing out there and was somebody at intercourse. The Greek system at the University of Illinois is the largest in the nation. There are 53 fraternities, 27 sororities. What is it about the system that leads to such a high incidence of date rape? The focus of fraternity life is social. Men and women in the Greek system meet at parties called exchanges. They also socialize after hours. That's where the trouble begins. In the survey, nearly half of the women who said they were raped or abused belong to sororities. And they may have been raised in a home where people were trustworthy. So they go up to this room. And when the man says, let's go up and look at my fish tank, these women think they're going to go look at fish. I mean, by the time they're seniors, they figured

out there's no fish up there. There's just one shark. On this campus, that would be the amount of women who've been victims of rape or attempted rape. Todd Denny is a graduate student in social work. In his work for the university, Denny tries to raise the male awareness level about rape. He focuses his efforts on a series of rape awareness seminars at fraternities. To be fair with the Greek system, it is a very social system. They have a lot of parties. They're often the center of the attention. That draws a lot of people within them. But I feel like, along with them being a social center on campus, that the norms and more within the Greek system are a reflection of actually an exaggeration of those expectations that men have in our culture. When I look at a Greek system and I see a need for men that are athletic, that are big, that are willing to drink alcohol, that are supposed to convey the sexual proudness, I feel

like that can be a contributing factor to violence against women. The question is, man, who is like, come on, what are you going to do this? What's the problem? He was like, all right. He was like, really, that was definitely a pair of pressure. Within a group context, we find that men often will go along with things they wouldn't do as an individual because of fear of ostracation or not being a part of the group. I'm sure there was a lot of people by thought, I'm comfortable about the stuff that went on, but I didn't avoid some of my opinion because of the need to want to be accepted. I think I joined in the first place because I had some insecurities about myself, low self-esteem, whatever, in order, and I joined it to be a part of, to be accepted, to be lodged in this group, and so I went along with the things that happened there like the abuse of women so that I would continue being accepted.

Men in these groups have sex for other men. I mean, that's part of how they define their masculinity to other men, not to women. These guys weren't raping this girl for themselves. They were doing it for the other guys in the room. I think the need to prove that your man is the common thread for all men within our culture. I think that's emphasized or exaggerated even more so within the Greek system. One of the things that I've heard is Saturday mornings, breakfast is a traditional time to talk about what happened Friday night, who got laid, who didn't, who got turned down, who worked a no into a yes. There's a problem in the system, but it's not in every fraternity, it's not in every fraternity man, not every fraternity turned someone into a rapist. There are problems within the system, it might be a little worse than society, but it is still a societal problem. One of the messages that men in our society are getting, and how do these messages contribute

to the rape problem? American culture often portrays women as accessories. These ads reinforce negative stereotypes in both men and women. Louise Fitzgerald is a professor at the University of Illinois, whose research deals with the sexual victimization of women. I think we definitely live in a rape culture. You see it not only in popular entertainment, but you also see it in advertising. You see it in videos, and music videos, and rock albums.

I guess as the mother of three sons, I really begin to wonder about what it is we are teaching young men in our society. I think I have more to worry about than mother's daughters. It's my sons that are the potential people in terms of committing this crime, but as I look around at their world, it really is frightening that as young men, the messages they get. My husband and I are working very hard to give them different messages, but you and I know the research is going to tell you that what becomes most important is the peer group and the greater society. And to me, our greater society, their messages, our boys will be boys. Aggression is supported. We socialize little boys, and it's okay to be aggressive, dominant, you know, to compete, to win, to conquer, war is okay. You know, and we teach little girls a whole different set of rules, and you cooperate and share, and I think it's all in our socialization. A different set of rules. In this culture, we're taught early that men are the aggressors.

Women are seen as objects, valued for their looks and sexual appeal. The culture teaches them to make themselves attractive and desirable, submissive and trusting. They are warned to be careful, but they are also programmed to be vulnerable. And both genders share a problem. Women, like men, are confused by the messages they receive in the socialization process. Louise Fitzgerald's current research focuses on how women's and men's attitudes are shaped by romance novels and magazines. Most of there were many of them, a great many of them, are essentially rape sagas. There's this juxtaposition of some sort of romance and eroticism on the one hand with violence and sort of savagery on the other. You know, he's been throwing it down on the bed and ripping her clothes off and saying, you've been asking for this for a long time, and I'm really going to show you now, and this kind of thing. And she's fighting and struggling, and she says, I hate you, I hate you. And then she experiences the strange warmth. And

all of a sudden, you know, her bones just go to butter. I think what those stories do to women is that they confuse women about their own, they confuse us, about our own experiences and about whether or not we've been raped. There's another critical item of confusion involved in rape. What constitutes consent? Okay, go ahead. Then involved in the quite grains, a quaint gramps, always seem like they have a situation for what they do. I was wondering what they're thinking is, like if a girl comes up to their room or whatever, they automatically assume that that's okay. What are the men's presumptions? Jesus, so I'll turn out that she doesn't say no, okay? All right. So, but the bottom line is, is that she didn't say yes, and that's what you guys are saying. But what's yes? I mean, to be one, to be one, to be one, to be one, to be one. She's like helping me get into the land. You know, I'm thinking, so much more of a yes to why I need.

Most men that I talk to, if I were to say, if you're to hold a woman down and have sex with her with that be all right, would say, of course not, that's not all right. But then if you ask the same man, if it's okay to try to work a knowing to yes, if perhaps both of them have been drinking, that that's okay. If a woman finally gives in, then that's part of the game. Two young men that came in to see me and indeed were three young men, and it was devastating to them when they finally got it, that what they had done was a quaint in shape, and all those men sought treatment on their own. But I would say for the majority, some of them don't even know that they sexually assaulted the young woman. Some of these men I think would be stunned. According to Illinois law, knowing consent requires the individual to freely give agreement and to be in full possession of his or her faculties. In other words, not saying no is not enough. There has to be a clearly stated yes. That's the law. But there are some problems.

Before she's saying yes, yes, the next day she can walk away and say, God, that was stupid and walk into a police station safe. This is what happened last night, I was reading. And then the guy is screwed for the rest of his life. She's just going to say it and it's not going to be true. This notion that women lie about rape and which I think is horrible, like myth. No woman wants to say she's raped and have to deal with repercussions of that statement. After the law, doctors assaulted by the victim must inform the police of any crime. But the victims are not forced to prosecute. Captain Crystal Fitzpatrick interviews victims and in her words, arms them with every resource the campus has to offer. We're not there to tell them what to do or to force them into anything. We want the victim to know her options. She has the option of making a formal police report and we will attempt a complete follow-up investigation with our objective being an arrest and a conviction.

The fact is there are a few prosecutions. One of the reasons is that the victims blame themselves, not those who rape them. When they are victimized, they end up feeling worse about themselves than they do about the perpetrator. And I don't think there's many crimes you can say that about except crimes that involve women as victims that have to do with abuse. Chris was abused, but she decided to take no action against the student who raped her. But I'd been grilled. It would have been my word against his. And, you know, I didn't want to have to go, I had already been through enough. I didn't want to have to go through that experience as well. I didn't want to like ruin his life. But some women do choose to report the assault to the university. There's a unit that reviews student violations of the university code. It's made up of students and faculty members. In the hearing on rape, both the victim and the accused perpetrator are allowed to confront each other. And for many victims, the opportunity to confront their assailant is just as enough.

Just this year, we had one woman who said, I don't, I really don't want a full disciplinary, but I want to sit in a room and tell this guy what he did to my life. The university has taken other steps to deal with a acquaintance rape. These include the care program, care stands for campus acquaintance rape education. The program is an innovative workshop series designed to get students to open up and talk about the problem. First, men and women meet separately. Then, they talk together, women taking it with something that they get. I mean, like, should we stop trying to turn a girl on? I mean, you guys really think that that's going to happen when they go out and meet somebody. What do they get? What does it add to a come from? Is it wrong then, for a guy that they have sexual thoughts about a girl? I mean, how are we supposed to change our approach? What do women really expect from us? It's part of why a woman doesn't want to come up to you and say that, you know, she wants to go up stairs or something. She's going to seem like a slut. It's great not really about sex, but it's about violence and power and control. The strength of the care program is that it involves peers influencing peers inside the university

within the local community. A group of men have banded together to fight a queen's rape. They call themselves men against sexual violence. They try to recruit other men to take an active role in fighting sexual stereotypes. Some men come because friends of theirs or girlfriends of theirs have been victims of sexual assault. Other men come with just a sense of it being a problem with them wanting to be involved. We feel like if you're not working against the problem, you're sorry for the problem. Some believe that there are still too many males who simply don't understand the problem. What is the mayor, as we haven't gotten enough for turning men that are willing to look at themselves in the mirror honestly, that are willing to give up some of their power, that are willing to give up their belief in dominance to get involved in the movement? I would challenge men within the Greek system and men in general on this campus to begin

to look internally, to look within themselves, to ask questions of how as a male in my role in our culture, how that contributes to violence against women. It's easy to talk about statistics, but when I'm hoping that by saying something myself and being a face that goes with the number, it'll seem more real. But I think until women stand up and tell their stories so that their fathers hear those stories, the brothers hear the story, their cousins hear the story, their boyfriends hear the story, there really isn't going to be an understanding of what that does to women. I say I'm definitely still in the healing process. It's been really difficult for me.

There was a period when I felt like I had a, I was building like this patchwork quilt around my soul. I was kind of like stitching here and stitching patches here, but I was holding everything in and I've had to like let it out and de-earth it and I think I've learned that I can be strong, that I can get through this hopefully, I'm still trying to learn how to take care of myself and to find sources of empowerment for me. Thank you. I'm

To find the Rape Crisis Center nearest you, contact the Illinois Coalition against Sexual Assault, 123 South 7th Street, sweet 500, Springfield, Illinois, 62701, phone 217-753-4117. As an additional service of Channel 12, this program is available on VHS tape.

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