Here is how administrators at Patrick Henry College handle rape reports.
In late November 2006, four years before Claire’s experience, another young woman reported a sexual assault to Sandra Corbitt, who was then the dean of women. Sarah Patten cried as she recounted how, the previous Saturday night, a boy named Ryan (whose name has been changed) had sexually assaulted her.
“I know him,” Sarah remembers Corbitt saying. “He’s a nice boy. Are you sure you want to report this?”
Sarah described what she could remember: coming in and out of consciousness, her limbs feeling heavy and paralyzed, Ryan on top of her, his hands groping her all over, waking up disoriented.
Sarah says Corbitt grilled her on certain details: What was she wearing? Had she flirted with him or given him mixed signals? “The entire line of questioning was basically like, ‘Did you make it up? Or did you deserve it in some way? Or was it consensual and now you’re just lying about it to make him look bad?’ ” recalls Rachel Leon, Sarah’s roommate who had accompanied her to Corbitt’s office for support.
Listening to Sarah from across her desk, the dean was as polite as ever. But she didn’t seem to believe Sarah’s story at all. “If you were telling the truth about this,” Sarah remembers Corbitt saying, “God would have kept you conscious to bear witness to the abuse against you.”
Wow. God confers resistance to date rape drugs.
Un fucking believable.
If you’re suffering a “legitimate rape”, god wouldn’t do fuck-all to stop it. But he’d sure as hell make sure you experience every second of it so you don’t forget any of it.
Religion makes me sick in so many ways.
God stood by, arms folded, and watched.
This tack always reminds me of the way that the Inquisition would torture confessions out of people by ‘reasoning’ that, if you were innocent of the charges, god would protect you from the pain.
.
What is it about the slutz? They want it they want it but they hate the nice boys who give it to them./snark
” named Ryan (whose name has been changed)…” wtf
Sufficient reason all by itself to be born again.
God likes to watch.
@thelifeofbrine:
I missed that. Rape culture, this is where you are
I live relatively near Patrick Henry College and have met some of the students there. All of the ones I have met have struck me as being woefully unprepared to deal with the real world. I have met a few of the faculty as well. All of them have struck me as being truly evil people who know they are misleading children, but think that it is okay because they are doing it for the benefit of said children.
Sandra Corbitt is evil.
BTW, the article mentions that Patten remembers praying: “Please, God, make it stop.”
This name occurs many, many times in the article; it’s a useful shorthand, I guess.
We shouldn’t be so smug. If this story didn’t make religion look bad, then a large proportion of atheists would be enthusiastically blaming the victim.
“Children”.
From the article:
“With just more than 320 current students and 590 graduates to date, Patrick Henry is a tiny school with an outsized influence as a training ground for the religious right and a pipeline to conservative jobs in Washington. The Bush-era White House had about as many interns from PHC as Georgetown, the journalist Hanna Rosin wrote in her 2007 book, God’s Harvard. Students in the school’s Strategic Intelligence Program can graduate with security clearances from their summer internships, making PHC a feeder school for the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, various branches of the military, and intelligence contractors. Many students go there with dreams of becoming a senator or the Supreme Court justice who helps overturn Roe v. Wade. A prospective student pamphlet quotes George W. Bush, saying, ‘The College holds a vision for the future of America.'”
“Children”.
@David Marjanović:
From Fred Clark at Slacktivist, a Christian who’s been blasting against the Religious Right folks for years, and his comment on this same article:
The only people who call Patrick Henry College ‘God’s Harvard’ without irony are the PR people for Patrick Henry College.
God and rape: Well, the whole christian religion got started when their god, or god’s agent in the form of a “holy spirit,” came to earth exactly in order to rape Mary and so impregnate her.
.
I have never thought of that “visitation” as anything other than rape and forced impregnation. Repugnant way to start a religion.
.
So yeah, seems that God is into rape.
As more than one person has said elsewhere, “The difference between me and your god is that if I could stop a rape, I would.”
Their god is an immoral being.
Why don’t we name god in the complaint as an accomplice? He can do miracles so why doesn’t he stop rape? If you stand by and watch you are just as guilty.
Sorry excuse for a god if you ask me.
Steve in OK
Isn’t that obvious?
Luke 1:38: “And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.”
“The Bush-era White House had about as many interns from PHC as Georgetown, the journalist Hanna Rosin wrote in her 2007 book, God’s Harvard. Students in the school’s Strategic Intelligence Program can graduate with security clearances from their summer internships, making PHC a feeder school for the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, various branches of the military, and intelligence contractors.”
A lot of this appears to also be the blather of the College’s PR people. Note that Bush is no longer in office. How many Patrick Henry interns do you think the Obama administration has? The idea that the school is a “feeder school” for the CIA, FBI, or any other Federal agency is PR fluff.
another fine example of the result of believing in impossible fantastic stories as real. The complete inability to accept and face reality when it is right in front of you .
uncle frogy
Unless they mean in the sense of “feeder goldfish.”
hyperdeath,
Oh, they may yet still make it by this comment section to remind us all to be skeptical of the victim’s testimony.
– If you wish to be still more disturbed and possibly up past bedtime pacing and mumbling, look for “God’s Next Army” online. It’s a documentary. I saw it about a year ago. I can still taste it.
– For me, watching it was like being encased in plaster in the walls of the place, silenced and forced to watch as a slowly churning yet stagnant world bathed itself in intellectual and emotional novocaine, in a place where automaticity is the root of virtue, and beauty is product on the shelf of some cosmic 7-11, prepackaged by God for the perfunctory pleasures of man. Possibly next to the condoms, the experience of which is also defined and described and dictated a priori.
Why is it that when a student reports a felony, such as a rape, these asshats don’t have to immediately report it to the real police? They would be obliged to if it was a murder, I presume.
Somebody ought to sue them for everything they’ve got over failure to report crimes.
I guess the sad lesson learned here is “when speaking to a college administrator about sexual assault, either record the conversation or bring someone with you as a witness so when they say shit like this, you can lawyer up and sue the endowment out from under this craphole of a university.” Not just at the Jeebus schools either, the state schools don’t handle it any better.
I desperately hope so.
Almost the first step into the black book pit is a little child being told they are bad inside and Jesus loves them. The rape begins long before fuckhearts like the apostle Ryan arrive. Jesus loves you, so do you really want to say something bad from your bad? That’s very bad. Let’s kneel down and bare our necks well. We don’t need our evil heads anyway. Oh Jesus take away our brains Lord, all the bad ideas. More you and less me, Lord… Chop it with your holy spirit. Fuck me sideways with a gawd-damned papal toy. To think I actually tithed. Gag me gag me…We carry the weight of our histories honestly only when they become real by being said out loud, when they are spit as poison out of our mouths. What better way to create obedience than to take free choice from a child. Do it young so they forget what it is and call ‘being saved/baptized’ their choice. Mind fuck that leads to PatrapesHenry College.
Does this Patrick Henry College have any origin in the Patrick Henry University of Atlas Shrugged? Ayn Rand’s writings were known for being pretty damn rape friendly, too. Is Patrick Henry just the go-to patriot for rape lovin’ conserva-droids?
nich@27: Well, there’s the whole ‘give me liberty or give me death’ thing (which, edited to fit on a licence plate, is the motto of the state of New Hampshire, where rich folks from Massachusetts flee so they can avoid paying their taxes), plus his being an anti-federalist, his opposition to the US Constitution, support for the Alien and Sedition Acts, and owning slaves and running a plantation — so, yes, pretty much a conservative icon.