How Conservative Christian Colleges Treat Sexual Assault On Campus

[cbayer]

http://www.ibtimes.com/how-conservative-christian-colleges-treat-sexual-assault-campus-1749980

By Zoe Mintz
December 15 2014 1:13 PM


Findings from an independent investigation into sexual abuse claims at evangelical Christian school Bob Jones University were released Thursday. Wikimedia Commons

Melissa Tanis knows the "abstinence speech" very well. She heard it at home, in church and in high school. And it didn’t stop when she reached college.

“Ladies, you're princesses, and when you give pieces of your heart away to boys, you only have half a heart left. And what kind of prince wants half of a heart? No, you need to keep yourself pure. You need to keep yourself whole. Because you can't get those pieces of your heart back. So think twice before you kiss a boy,” Tanis, 25, said, remembering the sermon she heard as a student at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri.

On conservative Christian campuses across the U.S., the refusal to admit that their students have sex is hurting victims of sexual abuse.

According to a recently released report by an independent watchdog group, Bob Jones University, a leading conservative Christian university in South Carolina, discouraged victims from filing police reports, rarely punished the abusers and blamed victims for their "involvement" in the crime. “Deal with your own sin” and do “not be selfish” were some of the comments students said they heard from school counselors when denouncing sexual assault.

more at link

[Jim__]

1. Even if they want to hold the victims of sexual abuse somewhat culpable for what happened ...

... you'd think they'd have some interest in holding the abuser partially responsible too.

[cbayer]

2. You would, but they don't. It's sickening really.

[trotsky]

3. What's the biblical view on rape?

Oh yeah.

http://www.alternet.org/gender/what-bible-says-about-rape

The Bible never teaches that women should have a choice about sex. The Bible makes a clear distinction between forcible stranger rape and other forms of nonconsensual sex, condemning the former while sanctioning the latter in many, many circumstances.

...

Male female relationships in the Bible are determined by a property ethic. The punishments for rape have to do not with compassion or trauma to the woman herself but with honor, tribal purity, and a sense that a used woman is damaged goods. A woman herself may be killed for voluntarily giving up her purity. A rapist can be forced, essentially, to buy her.

..

God’s purpose for women in the Bible is childbearing. Martin Luther, who brought us the concept of “ sola scritura” meaning Christianity based solely on the authority of the Bible, had this to say: “Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house and bear and bring up children. If a woman grows weary and, at last, dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing; she is there to do it." He drew his scripturally informed opinion from the biblical record broadly but most specifically from the words of Paul’s letter to Timothy: “Women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” (1 Tm. 2:15).

...

The Bible is loaded with divinely sanctioned rape babies. The Bible both depicts and scripts a world in which women have no choice about who they are given to. Daughters can be given in marriage or sold outright, slaves can be sent by their mistresses to bear proxy babies, virgin war captives can be claimed as wives, widows can be forced to submit to humping by their brothers-in-law until they produce sons. Presumably any of these women can be laid at any time, at a man’s discretion, much as is the case in parts of Afghanistan or analogous Iron Age tribal cultures today. In such a world, a significant portion of babies conceived will be the product of non-consensual sex. In other words, rape.

Much more at link.