An Account Of Sexual Assault At Amherst College
inthecac.com
inthecac.com
Summary for those who don't have time to read (it's long): she was raped, when she tried to report it was discouraged and told to go for counseling instead, did so. Since no one was listening to her she was upset and depressed. She was then declared mentally ill and forcibly institutionalized. The college then tried to use the hospitalization to block her from returning, claiming substance abuse (which wasn't true), until someone at the hospital pointed out to them that they were punishing the victim while the rapist goes free. So she was allowed back, but administration thwarted all her academic plans, while continuing to use the forced hospitalization as an excuse to control her life. In essence she was raped a second time.
It's not isolated either, a couple of other former students confirm similar handling of their own sex assaults in comments in the original published article. 'Daniel' reports the school trying to send him to a psychiatric hospital after reporting an assault. 'Kirby' reports similar attempts to shame her into not pressing charges. These reports suggest this is not an isolated incident but is an unwritten policy. http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article%2F2012%2F10%2F1...
These stories are similar to other accounts I have heard of how rape victims are treated. It's clear many institutions have policies of containment, and disenfranchisement, and will use forced institutionalization as a weapon to create someone who is then quite easy to completely discredit, by simply bringing up that they had been institutionalized. Makes the nasty rape statistics go away and the college gets to maintain its record of low crime incidence.
Worth noting Amherst is named after Lord Amherst, who was the insidious individual who approved the idea of giving smallpox infected blankets to indians as a form of germ warfare. (for skeptics, here is an actual letter in his handwriting saying so: http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/34_41_114_fn.jp...)
Amherst lives up to its namesake, but unfortunately many other colleges work the same way.