Yesterday’s Utah Statesman contained the perenial article about sexual assault and abuse, including rape and date rape.   SAAVI has also continued to make the following astonishing claim:

Amber Hebdon, an intern at USU’s SAAVI Office, said nationally, one in four girls has either been raped or experienced attempted rape since their 14th birthday.

In Utah, Hebdon said that number is even higher, with one in three girls a victim of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14.

Does your intuition naturally want to question that statistic?  If so, pat yourself on the back because your intuition is 100% correct.

The smoking gun:

Of the rape studies by nongovernment groups, the two most frequently cited are the 1985 Ms. magazine report by Mary Koss and the 1992 National Women’s Study by Dr. Dean Kilpatrick of the Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center at the Medical School of South Carolina. In 1982, Mary Koss, then a professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, published an article on rape in which she expressed the orthodox gender feminist view that “rape represents an extreme behavior but one that is on a continuum with normal male behavior within the culture” (my emphasis).[6] Some well-placed feminist activists were impressed by her. As Koss tells it, she received a phone call out of the blue inviting her to lunch with Gloria Steinem.[7] For Koss, the lunch was a turning point. Ms. magazine had decided to do a national rape survey on college campuses, and Koss was chosen to direct it. Koss’s findings would become the most frequently cited research on women’s victimization, not so much by established scholars in the field of rape research as by journalists, politicians, and activists.

Koss and her associates interviewed slightly more than three thousand college women, randomly selected nationwide.[8] The young women were asked ten questions about sexual violation. These were followed by several questions about the precise nature of the violation. Had they been drinking? What were their emotions during and after the event? What forms of resistance did they use? How would they label the event? Koss counted anyone who answered affirmatively to any of the last three questions as having been raped:

8. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?

9. Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?

10. Have you had sexual acts (anal or oral intercourse or penetration by objects other than the penis) when you didn’t want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force (twisting your arm, holding you down, etc.) to make you?

Koss and her colleagues concluded that 15.4 percent of respondents had been raped, and that 12.1 percent had been victims of attempted rape.[9] Thus, a total of 27.5 percent of the respondents were determined to have been victims of rape or attempted rape because they gave answers that fit Koss’s criteria for rape (penetration by penis, finger, or other object under coercive influence such as physical force, alcohol, or threats). However, that is not how the so-called rape victims saw it. Only about a quarter of the women Koss calls rape victims labeled what happened to them as rape. According to Koss, the answers to the follow-up questions revealed that “only 27 percent” of the women she counted as having been raped labeled themselves as rape victims.[10] Of the remainder, 49 percent said it was “miscommunication,” 14 percent said it was a “crime but not rape,” and 11 percent said they “don’t feel victimized.”[11]

In line with her view of rape as existing on a continuum of male sexual aggression, Koss also asked: “Have you given in to sex play (fondling, kissing, or petting, but not intercourse) when you didn’t want to because you were overwhelmed by a man’s continual arguments and pressure?” To this question, 53.7 percent responded affirmatively, and they were counted as having been sexually victimized.

The Koss study, released in 1988, became known as the Ms. Report. Here is how the Ms. Foundation characterizes the results: “The Ms. project-the largest scientific investigation ever undertaken on the subject-revealed some disquieting statistics, including this astonishing fact: one in four female respondents had an experience that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape.”[12]

More:

“One in four” has since become the official figure on women’s rape victimization cited in women’s studies departments, rape crisis centers, women’s magazines, and on protest buttons and posters. Susan Faludi defended it in a Newsweek story on sexual correctness.[13] Naomi Wolf refers to it in The Beauty Myth, calculating that acquaintance rape is “more common than lefthandedness, alcoholism, and heart attacks.”[14] “One in four” is chanted in “Take Back the Night” processions, and it is the number given in the date rape brochures handed out at freshman orientation at colleges and universities around the country.[15] Politicians, from Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, a Democrat, to Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, cite it regularly, and it is the primary reason for the Title IV, “Safe Campuses for Women” provision of the Violence Against Women Act of 1993, which provides twenty million dollars to combat rape on college campuses.[16]

When Neil Gilbert, a professor at Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare, first read the “one in four” figure in the school newspaper, he was convinced it could not be accurate. The results did not tally with the findings of almost all previous research on rape. When he read the study he was able to see where the high figures came from and why Koss’s approach was unsound.

He noticed, for example, that Koss and her colleagues counted as victims of rape any respondent who answered “yes” to the question “Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?” That opened the door wide to regarding as a rape victim anyone who regretted her liaison of the previous night. If your date mixes a pitcher of margaritas and encourages you to drink with him and you accept a drink, have you been “administered” an intoxicant, and has your judgment been impaired? Certainly, if you pass out and are molested, one would call it rape. But if you drink and, while intoxicated, engage in sex that you later come to regret, have you been raped? Koss does not address these questions specifically, she merely counts your date as a rapist and you as a rape statistic if you drank with your date and regret having had sex with him. As Gilbert points out, the question, as Koss posed it, is far too ambiguous:

What does having sex “because” a man gives you drugs or alcohol signify? A positive response does not indicate whether duress, intoxication, force, or the threat of force were present; whether the woman’s judgment or control were substantially impaired; or whether the man purposefully got the woman drunk in order to prevent her resistance to sexual advances…. While the item could have been clearly worded to denote “intentional incapacitation of the victim,” as the question stands it would require a mind reader to detect whether any affirmative response corresponds to this legal definition of rape.[17]

Koss, however, insisted that her criteria conformed with the legal definitions of rape used in some states, and she cited in particular the statute on rape of her own state, Ohio: “No person shall engage in sexual conduct with another person . . . when . . . for the purpose of preventing resistance the offender substantially impairs the other person’s judgment or control by administering any drug or intoxicant to the other person” (Ohio revised code 1980, 2907.01A, 2907.02).[18]

More:

For Gilbert, the most serious indication that something was basically awry in the Ms./Koss study was that the majority of women she classified as having been raped did not believe they had been raped. Of those Koss counts as having been raped, only 27 percent thought they had been; 73 percent did not say that what happened to them was rape. In effect, Koss and her followers present us with a picture of confused young women overwhelmed by threatening males who force their attentions on them during the course of a date but are unable or unwilling to classify their experience as rape. Does that picture fit the average female undergraduate? For that matter, does it plausibly apply to the larger community? As the journalist Cathy Young observes, “Women have sex after initial reluctance for a number of reasons . . . fear of being beaten up by their dates is rarely reported as one of them.”[22]

Katie Roiphe, a graduate student in English at Princeton and author of The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus, argues along similar lines when she claims that Koss had no right to reject the judgment of the college women who didn’t think they were raped. But Katha Pollitt of The Nation defends Koss, pointing out that in many cases people are wronged without knowing it. Thus we do not say that “victims of other injustices-fraud, malpractice, job discrimination-have suffered no wrong as long as they are unaware of the law.”[23]

Pollitt’s analogy is faulty, however. If Jane has ugly financial dealings with Tom and an expert explains to Jane that Tom has defrauded her, then Jane usually thanks the expert for having enlightened her about the legal facts. To make her case, Pollitt would have to show that the rape victims who were unaware that they were raped would accept Koss’s judgment that they really were. But that has not been shown; Koss did not enlighten the women she counts as rape victims, and they did not say “now that you explain it, we can see we were.”

The report from the Utah Foundation can be accessed here: http://www.utahfoundation.org/img/pdfs/rr674.pdf

We get a lot of emails down at KVNU from people seeking to promote all kinds of things on the air, especially books.  Most of them are not notable or interesting.   However, an email that was sent to KVNU today seemed quite humorous:

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Obviously some (who call themselves fundamentalist) Mormons do believe
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We’ve had a handful of callers over the last month mention a 2003 Conference talk given by LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley immediately following the invasion of Iraq.

From that sermon:

In a democracy we can renounce war and proclaim peace. There is opportunity for dissent. Many have been speaking out and doing so emphatically. That is their privilege. That is their right, so long as they do so legally. However, we all must also be mindful of another overriding responsibility, which I may add, governs my personal feelings and dictates my personal loyalties in the present situation.

Some could read into President Hinckley’s talk an endorsement of the War in Iraq, but I certainly do not see that anywhere in the text.   If anything, an overriding theme seems to be the renunciation of war and avoidance of conflict.

I mentioned on the air last night another Conference talk that other people read the exact opposite conclusion into from the previous October by Apostle Russel M. Nelson:

Now, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what does the Lord expect of us? As a Church, we must “renounce war and proclaim peace.” As individuals, we should “follow after the things which make for peace.” We should be personal peacemakers. We should live peacefully—as couples, families, and neighbors. We should live by the Golden Rule. We have writings of the descendants of Judah as now merged with writings of the descendants of Ephraim. We should employ them and expand our circle of love to embrace the whole human family. We should bring divine love and revealed doctrines of restored religion to our neighbors and friends. We should serve them according to our abilities and opportunities. We should keep our principles on a high level and stand for the right. We should continue to gather scattered Israel from the four corners of the earth and offer the ordinances and covenants that seal families together forever. These blessings we are to bring to people of all nations.

As always, we can count on CNN for accurate reporting of all things LDS.  Here’s how much “the most trusted name in news” read into Apostle Nelson’s talk:

The Mormon church issued a strong anti-war message at its semiannual General Conference, clearly referring to current hostilities in the Middle East, advocating patience and negotiation, and urging the faithful to be peacemakers.

“As a church, we must renounce war and proclaim peace,” said Russell M. Nelson, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which acts under the direction of church President Gordon B. Hinckley.

Nelson never directly referring to Iraq or current moves toward war, but he mentioned the conflict in the Middle East and said “resolution of present political problems will require much patience and negotiation.”

The Golden Rule’s prohibition of one interfering with the rights of others was equally binding on nations and associations and left no room for retaliatory reactions, Nelson said at the meeting Saturday.

Descendants of Abraham — Christians, Jews and Muslims — “are in a pivotal position to emerge as peacemakers,” he said.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume for a moment that President Hinckley really did intend to endorse the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.   2003 was long ago, both in time and significant events in the War in Iraq.   We now know that the initial reasons the U.S. went to war in Iraq were completely factually wrong.   We have now learned that there were no weapons of mass destruction.   We now know that Saddam did not collaborate with al-Quada on 9/11 or even in a broader more informal sense- infact we know that Saddam was unweary of al-Quada and viewed their religious militancy as a threat to his secular dictatorship.    Public opinion  has changed dramatically since then.   My personal opinion has changed as more information became available to the public.  It is not unreasonable then to allow for the possibility that President Hinckley’s opinion might have changed as well (given that he was actually for the war to begin with).

The only official statement made by the LDS Church that I could find was a politically neutral statement by President Hinckley:

The Church has made no official comment on the war in Iraq beyond this parenthetical statement of the Church president at an assembly of students and faculty at Brigham Young University on 18 March, to announce a new university president:

“It appears that the nation, of which most of us are citizens, is inexorably moving toward war. These are solemn and perilous times. If there be any of our number in the reserves or National Guard who have been called to duty, we extend our greatest appreciation and our love and respect to them and to the families they have left behind. We pray with earnestness and with faith that God will watch over them and preserve them and return them unharmed to those who love them most. In such times as this we feel the great inequality of sacrifice when men and women are called to active duty in behalf of the country.

“May those of us who are spared of such sacrifice never be proud or arrogant, but rather humbly grateful for those who lay their lives on the line in time of war.”