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Sexual assault

Sexual Assault is:

Forcible Sex Offenses: Any sexual act directed against another person without the consent of the Complainant including instances where the Complainant is incapable of giving consent.
- A “sexual act” is specifically defined by federal regulations to include one or more of the following:
  - Rape: Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person without the consent of the Complainant.
  - Sodomy: Oral or anal sexual intercourse with another person, forcibly, and/or against that person’s will (non-consensual), or not forcibly or against the person’s will in instances in where the Complainant is incapable of giving consent because of age or because of temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity.
  - Sexual Assault with an Object: The use of an object or instrument to penetrate, however slightly, the genital or anal opening of the body of another person, forcibly and/or against that person’s will (non-consensual) or not forcibly or against that person’s will in instances where the Complainant is incapable of giving consent because of age or because of temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity.
  - Fondling: The touching of the private body parts of another person (buttocks, groin, genetalia, breasts, or the clothing covering those areas) for the purposes of sexual gratification, forcibly and/or against that person’s will (non-consensual) or not forcibly or against the person’s will in instances where the Complainant is incapable of giving consent because of age or because of temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity.
Non-Forcible Sex Offenses:
- Incest: Non-forcible sexual intercourse between persons who are related to each other within the degrees wherein marriage is prohibited by the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia. (See Va. Code §18.2-366).
- Statutory Rape: Non-forcible sexual intercourse with a person who is under the statutory age of consent in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which is 17.

Consent

Consent is given by voluntary words or actions that communicate a willingness to engage in a specific sexual activity. The existence of consent will be inferred from all of the facts and circumstances. Consent may be withdrawn at any time. Silence, in and of itself, is not consent. Lack of protest or resistance is not consent. Consent to one form of sexual activity does not imply consent to other forms of sexual activity. A previous or current relationship does not imply consent to sexual activity. Past consent does not imply future consent.

Consent cannot be obtained by the use of force to include physical violence, threats, intimidating behavior, and/or coercion.
- Physical violence means that a person is exerting control over another person through the use of physical force. Examples of physical violence include hitting, punching, slapping, kicking, restraining, choking, strangulation, and brandishing or using any object as a weapon.
- Threats are words or actions that would compel a reasonable person to engage in unwanted sexual activity. Examples include threats to harm a person physically, to reveal private information to harm a person's reputation, or to cause a person academic or economic harm.
- Intimidation is an implied threat that menaces or causes reasonable fear in another person. A person's size, alone, does not constitute intimidation; however, a person can use their size or physical power in a manner that constitutes intimidation (e.g., by blocking access to an exit).
- Coercion is the use of an unreasonable amount of pressure to gain sexual access. Coercion is more than an effort to persuade, entice or attract another person to engage in sexual activity. When a person makes clear that they do not want to participate in a particular form of sexual contact or sexual intercourse, that they want to stop or that they do not want to go beyond a certain sexual activity, continued pressure may be coercive. In evaluating whether coercion was used, the frequency of the application of pressure, the intensity of the pressure, the degree of isolation of the person being pressured, and the duration of the pressure are all relevant factors.
If an individual knows or reasonably should know someone is incapable of giving consent, it is a violation of this policy to engage in sexual activity with that person.
Consent cannot be given by the following individuals:
- Individuals who are asleep or unconscious
- Individuals who are incapacitated due to the influence of drugs, alcohol, medication, or other substances
- Individuals who are unable to consent due to a mental or physical condition
- Individuals who are minors
Incapacitation: An incapacitated person is incapable of giving consent. Incapacitation means that a person lacks the ability to make informed, reasonable judgments about whether or not to engage in sexual activity. An incapacitated person lacks the ability to understand the who, what, when, where, why and/or how of the sexual interaction. A person is not necessarily incapacitated merely as a result of consuming alcohol, drugs, medications and/or other substances. The impact of alcohol, drugs, medications and/or other substances varies from person to person. o Incapacitation is not synonymous with intoxication, impairment, blackout, and/or being drunk.
Alcohol, medications and other drugs: The use of alcohol, medications and other drugs by the Respondent is not an excuse for being unable to assess if the Complainant gave consent.

Prevalence and Statistics of Sexual Assault

Below is a list of research findings on the incidence rates of sexual assault and intimate partner abuse among college students. These statistics were provided by the Red Flag Campaign.

A study that surveyed more than 6,000 students at 32 colleges and universities in the U.S. found that¹:

One in four women had been victims of rape or attempted rape.
84 percent of those raped knew their attacker, and 57 percent of the rapes happened on dates.
Only 27 percent of the women whose sexual assault met the legal definition of rape considered themselves rape victims.
42 percent of the rape victims told no one about the assault, and only 5 percent reported to the police.

The National College Women Sexual Victimization Study (n = 4,432) found that for those women who had been raped and sexually assaulted²:

Nine out of 10 offenders were known to the victim (boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, classmate, friend, acquaintance or co-worker).
60 percent of completed rapes occurring on campus took place in the victim’s residence, 31 percent occurred in other living quarters on campus, and 10.3 percent took place in a fraternity.
Off-campus victimizations also were more likely to occur in residences.

Other statistics show

Four out of five students have experienced some form of sexual harassment during their school years³.
22 percent of all rape victims are between the usual college ages of 18–24⁴.
75 percent of male students and 55% of female student involved in date rape had been drinking or using drugs⁵.
10–20 percent of all males are sexually violated at some point in their lives⁶.
In Virginia, one in four women and one in eight men have been sexually abused at some point in their lives⁷.
32 percent of college students report dating violence by a previous partner, and 21 percent report violence by a current partner⁸.

Sources:

Warshaw, R. “I Never Called it Rape": The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting, and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.
Fisher, S., Cullen, F., Turner, M., The Sexual Victimization of College Women. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.
Hostile Hallways: The AAUW Survey on Sexual Harassment in America’s Schools. AAUW Educational Foundation, 1993.
Kilpatrick, DJ, Edmunds, CN, Seymour, A., Rape in America: A Report to the Nation, Arlington VA: National Victim Center, 1992.
Koss, K.P., Hidden rape: Incident, Prevalence and Descriptive Characteristics of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of College Students. Rape and Sexual Assault, Vol. II (ed.) A.W. Burgess. New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1998.
Virginia Department of Health brochure: Sexual Violence, A Men’s Issue; Developed by The Men’s Rape Prevention Project in Washington, D.C.
Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance and Virginia Department of Health Center for Injury and Violence Prevention; 2004 General Assembly Report.
C. Sellers and M. Bromley, “Violent Behavior in College Student Dating Relationships.” Journal of Contemporary Justice, 1996.