
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 15, 1991                   TAG: 9104160464
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SENATE STUDY/ OF VIOLENT CRIMES, RAPE UP THE MOST

AMERICA has always been a violent society, never more so than now. Especially, it appears, in sexual assaults. More than 100,000 women reported being raped in 1990, a nationwide record. The number was up by 63 percent in the District of Columbia, 23 percent in Maryland, 21 percent in West Virginia, 17 percent in Virginia.

This is not merely a regional phenomenon. A Senate Judiciary Committee study says the rate across the nation is rising four times faster than the increase in overall crime.

Just how many rapes actually occur is problematical; all indications are that most rape victims keep silent rather than subject themselves to the public shame, suspicion and trauma that often come with reporting an assault. The committee report suggests less than 10 percent of rapes are reported.

But the committee also contacted rape crisis centers, where women can go for counseling and medical help without having to identify themselves to police. Those centers reported greater increases. For instance, Michigan police statistics showed a 4.7 percent rise in reported rapes; state rape crisis centers showed a 36 percent increase.

Attitudes about rape are changing, but not fast enough. There still are males who joke about this cruel crime. There still are males who refuse to take no for an answer. There still are police who, by their line of questioning, make victims feel like criminals.

There still are jurists like Judge Kenneth Leffler of Sanford, Fla., who declined last year to imprison a confessed rapist because the judge knew the victim from an earlier divorce case and "Anyone who could be so stupid to take up with this woman deserves some consideration." The thinking persists: Women invite (or deserve) rape.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., has introduced a bill he calls the Violence Against Women Act. It would double federal penalties for rape (which would affect only a small fraction of such offenses) and authorize $300 million for local law-enforcers to combat sex crime. Most interesting is his provision to define rape as a "hate" crime, which would allow victims to bring civil-rights suits against assailants.

There's logic in that. The writer Susan Brownmiller called rape a political act by which men intimidate women and keep them subjugated. Making rape a civil-rights offense might snare some males who escape the criminal net because society remains too tolerant of brutality against women.

by CNB