A s members of UNC’s sexual assault task force continue to negotiate and bring in outside opinions regarding sanctioning in sexual assault cases, it should heed the advice of several committee members and not create varied sanctions based on the “severity” of the rape.
The issue at hand is whether or not the sexual assault sanctioning body will have the ability to deal out different sanctions to offenders based on the severity of the case .
Guilt, however, is not the question. Prior to the sanctioning body receiving the case, an investigation will have already been completed to determine exactly what offense the offender is guilty of.
Allowing the sanctioning body to discern between different levels of guilt based on criteria such as intent or penetration versus non-penetration makes room for a high level of subjectivity. This would both allow the sanctioning body to bring in bias regarding the situation of the case, despite the investigative body’s final decision, and discriminate based upon other aspects of the involved parties, such as race, gender and class.
Furthermore, granting the sanctioning body the ability to differentiate between degrees of assault displays an inherent distrust in the investigative body’s ability to report objectively and fairly. Such a lack of confidence weakens the legitimacy of the whole set of policies and the work of the task force.
Many, if not most, sexual assault experts will agree that rape is rape, end of story. Sexual assault offenders often attempt to legitimize their case by attempting to poke holes in this by making arguments regarding sobriety, intent and other extraneous factors .
UNC’s task force should not allow the sanctioning body to discern between varying levels of “guilt” in offenders and weaken the system before it is even created.
