‘Believe The Victim’? Maybe — But Protect The Rights Of The Accused, Too

Article here. Excerpt:

'“Nearly one in five women have been raped in her lifetime,” according to the White House Council on Women and Girls. Is that a fact? Or is it allegation or an estimate based on self-reporting surveys?

Interestingly, the White House asserts that the same number of women, one in five, “has been sexually assaulted while in college.” Is that a fact? Not exactly: It’s a statistic derived from “a web-based survey of undergraduates,” which means that one in five women has reported suffering a sexual assault. Maybe their reports are absolutely, unassailably accurate. Maybe not.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that one in five women has been sexually assaulted on campus or “in her lifetime,” and I shouldn’t be surprised that the administration, with its dismal record on civil liberty, is oblivious to the difference between allegations, estimates and facts.  Still it’s a little shocking to read a White House report that effectively assumes all accusations or reports of rape are true, and all of the accused are guilty.

These assumptions are implicit in the language of the report: “Despite the prevalence of rape and sexual assault,” (“apparent prevalence,” I’d have written) “many offenders are neither arrested nor prosecuted.” Then how can we be sure they were offenders? All we can say with certainty is “many alleged offenders are neither arrested nor prosecuted.” In fact, since only 36 percent of sexual assaults are reported to the police (according to a National Crime Victimization Survey) and since reporting rates on campus are described as “very low,” we can’t even talk about “alleged offenders,” while so many remain unidentified.
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Considering its record, the administration seems unlikely to consider this essential perspective on justice in devising its promised recommendations on sexual violence on college campuses. The White House has reached out to anti-violence activists, who are understandably pleased with the latest initiative: Michelle Obama’s chief of staff and executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls reportedly called a student activist when the council’s report was released to congratulate and thank her for her work. Civil libertarians concerned with the rights of the accused don’t need to be stroked (and shouldn’t wait by the phone), but they do need to be consulted and had better demand to be heard. Justice isn’t a zero sum game.'