Sexual Encounters: What´s Date Rape?

Sexual encounters is a touchy subject and often poses many questions that create controversy. Time and time again there are cases of women, and occasionally men, who have been raped or sexually assaulted by those close to them and arguments that say because they were acquaintances that it was not rape. Rape is defined as “the penetration, regardless of how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of someone else without the consent of the victim”( ). Now with that being the Federal Bureau’s definition of rape, that term holds so much power that its interpretations are just as wide as its definition. With stories of cohesion, when someone is being pressured into sex, stories of under the

We live in a time where women are expected to “give it up” after being wined and dined making date rape so hard to prove. Date rape is a form of acquaintance rape and the two phrases are often used interchangeably because they correspond highly with one another. The difference is that date rape specifically refers to a rape in a romantic or possibly sexual relationship between man and woman. Date rape is currently one of the most common forms of sexual assault and the most prevalent scenarios because of societies shift on how they view the relationships and friendships of men and women this day in age. According to attorney Vaughan C. Jones, 84% of women who were raped knew who their rapist was; 5% of all college women are victimized in any given year, concluding that, over the four years a woman is in college, one-fifth to one quarter of them will be sexually assaulted before they graduate from college (Jones). In rape cases, there are only two people who truly know what occurred during the situation, the victim and the defendant. When a trial comes down to which witness is more credible, the skill sets of the challenging counselors can be the key factor between guilt or innocence of the perpetrator. Also, rape victims are commonly unpersuasive witnesses. Myths surrounding the "typical" reaction of a rape victim upsets prosecutions. Jurors expect rape victims to act in an unambiguous way (Jones). In the eyes of the jurors, the rape victim is expected to be emotional and crying, excessive tears, emotionally distraught, a certain disconnect; and if she is unable to portray these expected emotions, her story is considered falsified or not as impactful (Jones). Because it is common to see that man victims who know the person who raped them, the “he said, she said” situation creates reasonable doubt for many to believe that it “was not really