This book discusses sexual assault on campus from a women's perspective. Many sexual assaults go unreported and this book was meant for the silent victims to have their voice heard through 26 college women. These are stories from sexual assault survivors and how they transitioned back into the real world. This book discusses how they dealt with their assault and how family and friends reacted.
Lauren J. Germain is is the director of evaluation, assessment and research at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She examined these women's experiences and put their stories into this book to highlight the trauma that these women have to endure for the rest of their lives. The point of this book was to empower women to speak out against violence and to stand strong together.
Key Concept: "campus sexual assault is prevalent, institutional responses have not been effective, and campus cultures are fraught with dangerous social norms related to sexual violence," (Germain 2).
Quotes:
"Three common rape scripts were identified among participants' responses and 30 percent or more of the sample described each type of script: (1) violent stranger rape; (2) drug- or alcohol-facilitated rape; (3) date rape," (Germain 6).
"Title IX was part of the Education Amendments passed in 1972 and is a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in all educational programs or activities that receive federal funding," (Germain 9).
"I know people who did [press charges though the institution] and nothing happened... like i guess I should have tried myself, but...there are still a lot of people who were like, 'yeah, that doesn't work, my friend tried that and the person doesn't get kicked out,'"(Germain 34).
The material in this book is very helpful in narrowing down my research topic. This book holds the real experiences of women and what they did after they were sexually assaulted. They also discussed how the assailant was not always a stranger but sometimes the people who were closest to you. I want to use this book to connect to the Stanford rape case because I believe a lot of the misconceptions of rape victims are explained directly by the victims in both situations.
