When The Date Turns into Rape

By John Leo

Susan, now 22 and a college senior, was raped almost three years ago on a first date. She met the man in a cafeteria at summer school and went to his dorm that evening to watch television news and get acquainted. After 45 minutes of chitchat about national affairs, he began pawing and kissing her, ignoring her pleas to stop. "You really don't want me to stop," he said, and forced her to have sex.

The attack was an all too familiar incident of date rape. Like many victims, Susan was unwary and alone too soon with a man she barely knew. It took her 18 months to confront the reality that she had, in fact, been raped. Now she is more aware, and her thoughts run to the dangers of dates between women raised to be politely passive and aggressive males who sometimes assume that no means yes. "Women are taught to be nice, to be attractive and appealing," she says, "but we should also teach women to speak up more and teach men to listen more."

+ Date rape, according to some researchers, is a major social problem, so far studied mostly through surveys of college students. In a three-year study of 6,200 male and female students on 32 campuses, Kent State Psychologist Mary Koss found that 15% of all women reported experiences that met legal definitions of forcible rape. More than half those cases were date rapes. Andrea Parrot, a lecturer at Cornell University, estimates that 20% of college women at two campuses she surveyed had been forced into sex during their college years or before, and most of these incidents were date rapes. The number of forcible rapes reported each year -- 87,340 in 1985 -- is believed to be about half the total actually committed. Experts say the victim knows the assailant in at least a third of all rapes. Says Koss: "You're a lot more likely to be raped by a date than by a stranger jumping out of the bushes."

Acquaintance rapes are not always reported because many victims do not define themselves as having been raped. Koss found that 73% of the women forced into sex avoided using the term rape to describe their experiences, and only 5% reported the incident to police. Psychologist Barry Burkhart of Auburn University explains, "Because it is such a paralyzing event, so outside the realm of normal events, they literally don't know what happened to them."

Date rape sometimes occurs after the victim has taken drugs or one drink too many. Whether under the influence or not, victims frequently classify the rape as a hazy, regrettable experience that was somehow their own fault. "And because often they don't even see it as rape, they fail to seek support professionally," says Burkhart. "They are left without a way of understanding it, so they bury it, feeling guilty and ashamed."

The use of drugs or alcohol is likely to cloud the issue of consent in a criminal trial. Says Linda Fairstein, a Manhattan district attorney in charge of the sex-crimes unit: "The defense will say she gave consent and just doesn't remember."

In a widely publicized incident last fall, a female student at the University of California, Berkeley, filed a complaint saying she had been gang-raped by a football player she once dated and three of his teammates. The case was dropped, partly because the victim had been drinking. Said Detective Greg Folster of the University of California, Berkeley, police: "I have no doubt that this was a sexual assault, but I don't think the judicial system is quite ready for acquaintance rape."

Researchers compiling profiles of both victims and victimizers find that date rapists are more sexually active than other males and more likely to have a history of antisocial behavior. The rapists and their victims are usually in the 15-to-24 age group. The women are often alone in a new environment, like a college campus. Compared with other women, the victims generally suffer from lower self-esteem and are not very good at asserting themselves. One woman, raped by her date at a fraternity party, said she decided not to scream for help because she did not want to embarrass the rapist.

One theory of date rape is that men and women tend to misread each other's signals, particularly a soft-spoken no that many males assume means yes or at least maybe. Says one student at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.: "There are different kinds of nos. 'Noooo . . .' is one thing. 'NO, get your filthy hands off me!' is another." Some feminists argue that the U.S. has a "rape culture" in which males are encouraged to treat women aggressively and women are trained to submit. Some surveys back up that dark ideological view of male sexual behavior. In Koss's study, one male in 13 admitted attempting or committing at least one rape. In a 1980 report at UCLA, half the male students admitted that there could be some circumstances under which they would force a woman to commit a sexual act if they were sure of not being punished.

Many campuses and rape crisis centers sponsor speeches and programs aimed at preventing date rape. At Cornell, student actors play the roles of date rapists and victims, then stay in character to restage the scenes along new lines suggested by members of the audience. An increasing number of college campuses now have anti-rape programs. However, as Bernice Sandler of the Association of American Colleges, points out, "many schools are still unsure about whether date rape is rape or not. Schools just don't know what to do about it." But times may be changing. Pi Kappa Phi fraternities around the country now put up posters of The Rape of the Sabine Women saying TODAY'S GREEKS CALL IT DATE RAPE. Underneath in smaller type it says, AGAINST HER WILL IS AGAINST THE LAW.

With reporting by Charles Pelton/San Francisco