Utah rape stats

[_asbestosman]

This statement in particular:

Among female rape victims, 61% are under the age of 18.248

Makes me wonder if Utah’s high rape rate is due to a higher than average rate of child molestation.

Does Utah have a higher-than average rate of child molestation? Is it connected with polygamy?

Also, if it were higher child molestation rates, then I would expect Utah to have a higher rate of males being raped. Do we have anything to back that up?

Finally, if the church were fostering this rape epidemic (albeit indirectly since the church despises sexual abuse), then do we have any stats on the perpetraitor's religion? I would think that would help us to identify whether it's because of the LDS church. Granted it wouldn't be proof. It could be that somone with LDS friends would be influenced by it too. Still, those sort of stats seem doable if the victim knows who the perp was as many seem to.

[_beastie]

Does Utah have a higher-than average rate of child molestation? Is it connected with polygamy?

Also, if it were higher child molestation rates, then I would expect Utah to have a higher rate of males being raped. Do we have anything to back that up?

Finally, if the church were fostering this rape epidemic (albeit indirectly since the church despises sexual abuse), then do we have any stats on the perpetraitor's religion? I would think that would help us to identify whether it's because of the LDS church. Granted it wouldn't be proof. It could be that somone with LDS friends would be influenced by it too. Still, those sort of stats seem doable if the victim knows who the perp was as many seem to.

I'm still looking for more information about child molestation. I'm leaving shortly so it may have to wait.

I have not found any stats on religion at all. They have stats on income and race, but not religion, as far as I can find.

Another article about rape in Utah:

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,515039389,00.html

PROVO — More than 90 percent of rapes in the city go unreported, according to the lead rape investigator for the BYU Police Department.

BYU officer Arnie Lemmon said only 43 rapes were reported last year in Provo, leaving the actual number of rapes estimated at more than 400 during 2002.

Lemmon spoke to a group of women on the BYU campus Thursday night as part of a monthlong lecture series titled "What's Lurking in Utah Valley?" to raise awareness

"The sexual predator is alive and well in this community as well as over the world," Lemmon told the women. "I don't want you to feel like this is Rapeville, USA, because it's not. . . . We try to do everything we can to combat it, but it happens."

Four sexual assaults were reported on the BYU campus last year, and Lemmon said there is a rape reported nationally every 5.8 minutes.

Lemmon said most Provo residents are religious and have a tendency to stigmatize discussion of sexual assault and sometimes to demonize the survivor.

He said he developed this opinion about 25 years ago when he moved to Provo and investigated the case of a first-semester freshman — the most common profile of a BYU rape victim — who was abducted while walking home from the campus library. The man took her inside his car and drove to Kiwanis park where he raped and sodomized her and threw her out of the car. It was nearly two years before the woman was emotionally stable enough to talk to Lemmon about the rape. "She said something that blew me away. She said, 'I should have died before I let him do that to me,' " Lemmon said. "I was troubled that she had to believe that."

Lemmon read from a letter written by a BYU rape victim who shared a similar belief.

"I'm a perversion to the good saints of my church," wrote the victim, who said she wished she were dead. Tragic thoughts like these are common among rape victims in Provo, Lemmon said.

Lemmon said rape survivors need to understand that God still loves them, that they are still "clean and pure," and that they have their whole lives ahead of them.

Otherwise, he said, "We're sending women the wrong message. We're saying 'You should be dead. You're a sinful woman because you survived. In a rape setting, there is no loss of virtue or chastity.' "

What really bothers me about this is that back in the dark ages, when I was a student at BYU, we also had this problem - young women thinking they should fight even at the risk of losing their lives rather than "allow" themselves to be raped. I know this was a problem because the local police dep't arranged educational meetings for young women, in which the female detective emphasized to us that this thinking is distorted. Yet I remember some of us talking among ourselves afterward and just not being able to let go of this idea, which Kimball's statement I quoted above demonstrates. I mean, who are you going to believe? A cop or the prophet of God?

And, by the way, this idea is also enshrined in LDS scriptures: Moroni 9:9

And not withstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was mot dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue –

And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel fashion.

[_beastie]

Here is some information on child abuse in general, with a pie chart showing the percentage of sexual abuse.

http://www.preventchildabuseutah.org/CA ... itics2.pdf

In the year of 2003, 19,633 referrals were investigated by Child and Family Services, and 7,408 (38%) of those
referrals were supported/substantiated.

This substantiation rate is slightly higher than the national average of 32.3%. Average investigation completion time for all referrals was 34 days.

[_beastie]

Trying to catch up with my thoughts before leaving - the one state that FAR exceeds the national rape average is Alaska, hardly a liberal state, and hardly a state where females are dominating men in general. So what's that all about?

[_asbestosman]

Here is some information on child abuse in general, with a pie chart showing the percentage of sexual abuse.

http://www.preventchildabuseutah.org/CA ... itics2.pdf

Interesting. 45% of victims were male, but I wonder if that is also true of the 15% of cases that were sexual abuse. It'd be nice if the categories had the breakdown too.

[_beastie]

Interesting. 45% of victims were male, but I wonder if that is also true of the 15% of cases that were sexual abuse. It'd be nice if the categories had the breakdown too.

I think it's going to take a lot of searching to find that sort of break-down.

Polygamous communities skewing the average occurred to me, too, but they would be even more susceptible to underreporting and not being accessible to surveys.

[_harmony]

Trying to catch up with my thoughts before leaving - the one state that FAR exceeds the national rape average is Alaska, hardly a liberal state, and hardly a state where females are dominating men in general. So what's that all about?

In Alaska, I think can think of several factors that may contribute: isolation, very few women, extremely stressful living conditions (weeks of 24 hrs of daylight, then weeks of 24 hrs of darkness), animosity towards the Native culture (which make up the majority of available women in some areas), macho culture.

Utah, though? Not quite as easy to figure out.

[_beastie]

In Alaska, I think can think of several factors that may contribute: isolation, very few women, extremely stressful living conditions (weeks of 24 hrs of daylight, then weeks of 24 hrs of darkness), animosity towards the Native culture (which make up the majority of available women in some areas), macho culture.

Those reasons make sense, but not within the paradigm Charity has set up, that an increase in rape is due to an increase in female power.

I'm not saying that an increase in female power would NOT cause an increase in rape, but I think the causes are much more complex than just this factor alone, which charity seems to think is THE only factor.

Male disdain towards females in general, outside of feeling disempowered by women in particular, is bound to be a factor. And a sense of entitlement would be a factor. In child sexual abuse, for example, family members preying on children sexually may have the sense that they are entitled to have their needs met, at anyone's cost.

[_charity]

Now it’s clear that all along you’ve understood that when you throw out assertions or stats that demonstrate patriarchal societies have less rape than liberal societies, you have understood all along that the pollution of cultural definitions impacted the discussion.

If this is how you teach sociology to your students, you ought to be fired.

Your ethnocentric attitude colors your view on this.

Any cross cultural study of the incidence of one particular phenomenon should control for the impact of varying cultural definitions. In other words, you have to have an accepted standard for comparison, even if that requires not accepting the culture’s own definition. I did not major in sociology, but took enough basic courses to know THAT.

And who gets to set the "standard" definition? Again, please examine your ethnocentrism.

You asserted that you had access to information that controlled for underreporting, although you have yet to support that assertion. Once you share that information, I want to know how they controlled for the variant definitions of rape.

No, I said all studies worth their salt control for under-reporting. You were making a counter claim.

It’s already been demonstrated that one of the ways they [powerless men] get back at their oppressors is to defile their women. But you have conveniently chosen to ignore that tragically obvious reality. . . .Yes, but once again, you ignore the fact that in a patriarchal society, women are seen as possessions of men, and one way to attack powerful men is to defile their women. Kind of like how someone in our society may “key” someone’s car.

In extremely patriarchal societies, men protect their "possessions" jealously. Let's use your car metaphor. These men would keep their cars in locked garages, or if out on the street have policemen to protect them. Occasionally a man will be careless with his "possession" and his car will be keyed. But not that often.

I fail to see the logic here. If women are put into the power heirarchy, then more men end up at the bottom. So the liberal society has more powerless men, logically. In an extremely patriarchal society, all men come ahead of all women. In the liberal society they are intermixed.

And where is your data on this "mixed answer" for Utah? What studies are you referencing?

You fail to see the logic because you fail to take other factors into consideration, such as the defilement of the woman as possession. That was discussed at the very beginning of this thread, but you refuse to factor it into your considerations.

You can't use possession as a rape issue. This is what drives me batty about this extreme feminist argument. All things are rape. Burglary. Reading your diary. This demeans women who have been brutally raped. No, it isn't rape.

The article I read wasn’t about Utah in particular. I’ll try to find and link the article again. In the meantime, how about some of your studies that I’ve repeatedly requested?

Have you read the George Mason link? You didn't respond to it. Probably because it did not support your argument. Oh, well.

My earlier comment:

I read a comment in a paper that made sense, which stated that the societies that actually seem to be the worst at creating a climate in which rape escalates is one that mixes patriarchy with liberal values. So the men are being exposed to the idea that sex can and should be happening to them, but yet, due to their patriarchal system which is linked to a sexually conservative religion, it is not. Then their rage and frustration escalates. That sounds a lot like the situation would be in states like Utah.

You anti-'s keep telling us that nominal church membership does not mean active, committed LDS. So if Utah is 55% Mormon, but less than half of them are active, as you guys often say, then that means that 25% of the state is patriarchal, and the other 75% isn't. So how is a higher than avereage incidence of rape in Utah a statement about patrairchal societies in the first place?

Charity:

Except that you forget rape is not about sex. It is about power. Also you forgot that most stranger rapists have wives or girl friends. Sex is happening for them. They don't rape because they aren't getting enough sex.

Except that you forget that sex is also power. I also seriously doubt that you have actual studies that demonstrate in that, in extremely patriarchal societies, most rapists have wives and girlfriends. I doubt you can demonstrate it because I doubt that information is even accessible from these societies, which, as you admit, use their own specialized definitions of rape in the first place. I suspect you are using information obtained from Western societies to draw conclusions about extreme patriarchal societies, which is flawed methodology.

Marriage rates among Muslims, whom I suppose your would find extremely patriarchal, are higher than in any major western country. The Q'ran teaches that marriage is a ncessity of the faith. Ths isn't infor from western societies.

I did not insinuate anything. I asked for data. Information upon which to base ideas. You see to want to just jump out of the airplane without your parachute.

Who gets raped? And who rapes? Those are essential questions. I worked with criminal justice programs in two colleges and absorbed quite a bit of ciminal investigation protocols. You always have to know who the victim is, and that doesn't just mean the name. And you have to know the demographics of the perpetrators. If you were to be able to show that the number of individuals who raped were disproportionally represented in one population or the other, then you might be able to start the discussion you have thrown out here. But until you have those numbers, you can't make any such statements.

Baloney. Each time you respond that not all of Utah is Mormon, you are insinuating that the high stats are due to nonmormons, as you insinuate when you emphasize the need for details about the rapists. If we’re talking about whether or not Mormon patriarchy could possibly be a factor in high Utah rape rates, and you respond that Utah is not all Mormon and we don’t know details about rapists, you are insinuating that we might find that the majority of rapists are nonmormons.

And your claim is that Mormonism creates an environment for rape. You have absolutely no grounds to state that. I have repeatedly asked for data to back up your claim. You have provided none. Because you can't.

Another interesting element in Charity's examples of false rape charges:

Charity keeps insisting that the crucial determination in "rape" is whether or not the woman thinks she's been raped. Yet she then tells stories in which the women clearly thought they were raped, but they were not.

Beastie, I am only one person here trying to keep up with pages long shotgun posts by you and monikder. If you want me to respond back, post the whole thing. I am not going back over 7 pages to find some small little thing. If you want me to answer, ask the whole question, not just a "what about it" fly by.

If there is some social environment in the background that allows women to think they were raped when they were not, is it possible that some social environment in the background also allows women to think they were NOT raped, when, in fact, they WERE?

Such as, perhaps, a religious law that says rape can only be demonstrated if there were four witnesses, otherwise it's adultery?

Please do not confound things. What is rape and what is provable in a court of law are two different things. Do you think a person is only guilty if the jury finds him so? Sounds like the ditzy student I had who thought O.J. really didn't kill his ex-wife and friend because the jury voted him not guilty. What a laugh.

If the woman knows she has been raped, it doesn't matter whether or not police will prosecute it, or if a jury will convict.

[_charity]

Actually Charity, if a woman is incapacitated and someone had sex with her that is rape. That is NOT a false rape charge. I was clearly illustrating times when consent was not available to women. I never spoke of women that at first gave consent and later retracted consent. YOU were the one to do that! YOU were the one to first bring up false rape charges with this quote (my "story time" started after yours):

Oops. I have to make a small caveat on that. I had a student in one of my human sexuality classes come in to talk to me in my office after the topic of rape was discussed in class. She said, "I think maybe I was raped once. There was this guy and we were just kind of fooling around. I thought he really liked me, but he had another girl friend. If I had known he had a girl friend, I never would have done that. So I think I was raped."

You then go on to insinuate something about women that have multiple sex partners -- are you saying they are raped? I say they are not and yet I am wondering since you label them mentally ill you believe these young woman are raped? How very, very confusing!

Charity, none of my scenarios are in anyway false rape charges. You are the one that brings that in. Please quote me ONCE where I mention a false rape charge, unless of course you consider women that are not able to give consent as people that were not really raped.

Moniker, it might help you if you read one paragraph at a time. You are really confused about what I said.

Please settle down and listen. If a woman is intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness, then she falls into the medically compromised category. No consent is possible. If she is drunk, but conscious, she is still capable of making a decision. If a person gets drunk and drives, they aren't let off the hook because they couldn't make a good decision not to drive. As long as a woman is conscious, if she aquieses to sex, that isn't rape. Got it?

Then another idea: Since you believe that mentally challenged people cannot give consent, and are therefore raped, how is that different from a neurotic woman who has multiple sex partners? Can a really neurotic person give consent? And I answered you specifically that it wasn't the fact of having muiltiple sex partners, but the reason WHY.