Opinion

For all my rape victims

We all have secrets that we hope never come to light.  Things we hold within because the public does not need to know. But rape, the forcing of unwanted sex, must not stay as one of those acts we continuously hide.  

Rape has been around for centuries as men or women take advantage of victims for things such as power, control and dominance.  There are different forms of rape that people encounter: date rape, statutory rape and acquaintance rape to name a few.

Not to mention these forms of rape do not only happen to women, even though a higher percentage of rapes happen to women, men still experience this tragic experience.

On college campuses alone, every 21 hours there is a report of a rape in the United States, and that is just of the rapes that go reported.  According to the Crisis Connection, the United States has the world’s highest rape rate of all countries that publish their data.  

So why is the world so silent about rape?  With all the statistics presented it proves to be a crisis in the United States, yet 68 percent of all rape cases go unreported to the police and 80 percent of rapes on college campuses go unreported.  Sadly, a reason cases go unreported is due to the fact that, according to the RAINN organization 98 percent of rapists never spend a day in jail.  

With knowing your attacker can walk around free without the mental scars you have, it is not hard to understand why people keep this under wraps.  Many women do not want to relive the event that was already traumatizing to begin with and many times an attacker is someone a victim knows, so the attacker can easily plan revenge.   NFL player Darren Sharper admitted to sexual assaulting a woman in Arizona but he will only receive nine years in jail, making him a free man in less than a decade.

We have to break all the stereotypes about rape, and let victims know it is never their fault. And as we are on a college campus, if rape ever happens to you, you must not let your attacker get away with it.