'Frightening and High': The Frightening Sloppiness of the High Court's Sex Crime Statistics

This paper (Frightening and High ...) is severely flawed in its accusation of misrepresentations by the Solicitor General way back in 2003. This paper reviews what occurred in 2003 in today's light, 2015, using stats known today which were not known in March 2003 (and beforehand when case was prepared), that in of itself is a misconstruction. Any review of past occurrences must be with what was known then, not what is known today.

Further, when any lawyer presents research to support his/her position, that ACT is not a false act. If someone else does not believe the research presented, and cites their research which has a different opinion, that does not make the other Lawyer's research FALSE or the Act of presenting it, a misrepresentation.

While I do not agree with the 2003 decision, the way it occurred was not a misrepresentation by anyone. Court cases handled then are still handled the same way today. To accuse lawyers in the past of misrepresentation one must accuse lawyers today as well. The judicial process as it occurs then and today is not flawed. If readers are interested in knowing the real problem in 2003 then read this 2005 paper "Special Report: Misquoting of Prentky's 1997 Long Term Recidivism Study: Affecting a MAJOR US Supreme Court Decision."

June 2015:

Abstract:
This brief essay reveals that the sources relied upon by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Doe, a heavily cited constitutional decision on sex offender registries, in fact provide no support at all for the facts about sex offender re-offense rates that the Court treats as central to its constitutional conclusions.

This misreading of the social science was abetted in part by the Solicitor General’s misrepresentations in the amicus brief it filed in this case. The false “facts” stated in the opinion have since been relied upon repeatedly by other courts in their own constitutional decisions, thus infecting an entire field of law as well as policy making by legislative bodies.

Recent decisions by the Pennsylvania and California supreme courts establish principles that would support major judicial reforms of sex offender registries, if they were applied to the actual facts. ..Source.. by Ira Mark Ellman and Tara Ellman

Centers for Disease Control Should Remove Flawed Rape Survey, Says Washington Post Editorial

January 2012:

Washington, DC/January 31, 2012 -- A growing number of commentators are questioning the legitimacy of the CDC’s claims about rape and sexual assault. An op/ed published in the Washington Post exposes the scientific flaws in the study and calls outright for its retraction: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/cdc-study-on-sexual-violence-in-the-us-overstates-the-problem/2012/01/25/gIQAHRKPWQ_story.html

Columnist Christina Hoff Sommers concludes that the CDC’s findings are “wildly at odds with official crime statistics.”

Sommers does not exaggerate: The CDC reports 70 times the number of sexual crimes that the FBI’s gold-standard National Crime Victimization Survey does. Sommers makes the case that the political pressure of the domestic violence industry, whose interests are served by exaggerated statistics, is largely responsible for the CDC’s irresponsible sexual violence research.

Writing in December, Robert VerBruggen explained just how the CDC achieves its inflated statistics: “Researchers ask women about their sexual experiences, and then classify some experiences as ‘rape’ that most people, including the women themselves, do not consider to be rape.” http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/285936/re-sexual-assault-and-college-robert-verbruggen

Analyst Carey Roberts laid out commonplace New Years Eve scenarios in a recent column, and then explained how the CDC would have classified them all as rapes. “Rigging definitions to create bogus victims is old-hat to the abuse industry,” he said. http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/111229

The CDC’s exaggeration may be well-intended, these experts concede: the agency may believe that it is shedding light on the plight of victims. But as Sommers explains, “survivors of sexual violence would be better served by good research and sober estimates -- not inflated statistics and sensationalism.”

In early January, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments sent a 12-page letter to CDC director Thomas Frieden outlining numerous concerns with the survey definitions, methods, and recommendations. Abuse prevention programs based on dubious research findings divert scarce resources away from true victims of violence, SAVE notes.

..Source.. by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments is a victim-advocacy organization working for evidence-based solutions to partner violence: www.saveservices.org.

A response: How the CDC is overstating sexual violence in the U.S.

January 2012:

The recently released findings from the Center for Disease Control & Prevention’s (CDC) National Intimate Partner & Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) recognized that almost 1 in 5 American women have been raped in their lifetime. This is a wake up call to recognize how sexual violence is widespread. However, last week, in a Washington Post opinion column, Christina Hoff Sommers claims this report is comprised of “inflated statistics and sensationalism.”

Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has a long history of criticizing information about violence against women in her articles and books such as “Who Stole Feminism?” In the Washington Post article, she argues the validity of the CDC’s research in comparison to the number rapes reported to the F.B.I. (which used a definition that recently changed because it was too restrictive) and those reported on the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey. Sommers writes,

The [CDC's] figures are wildly at odds with official crime statistics. The FBI found that 84,767 rapes were reported to law enforcement authorities in 2010. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, the gold standard in crime research, reports 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults on females and males in 2010. Granted, not all assaults are reported to authorities. But where did the CDC find 13.7 million victims of sexual crimes that the professional criminologists had overlooked?

The CDC survey finds so many more victims than the criminal justice-based statistics because it asks about people’s actual experiences. It is a strength of this survey that it asks behavior-specific questions and includes many types of unwanted sexual violence experiences, in addition to rape. The FBI — until this month — only recorded statistics of vaginal rape that are voluntarily reported by the police departments. The National Crime Victimization Survey asks only about rape as part of series of questions regarding various crimes. The CDC has developed a survey that recognizes sexual violence is not only a crime, but it is also a public health problem.

At the same time as these crimes are continuing to occur, funding is in jeopardy for rape crisis centers across the nation. There are already more survivors than social service agencies have the ability to serve. In order to provide services to more survivors — and also to do the primary prevention work to stop violence before it occurs — the rape crisis centers need to increase funding.

Whether your rape statistic is 84,767 or 188,380, sexual violence is still happening, which should make this a priority issue for rape crisis centers, media, funders and other social service agencies. This survey suggests that the problem is even bigger and requires more attention.

Instead using energy that minimizes the prevalence of sexual violence, let’s put our energy toward creating more programs to prevent sexual violence and opportunities to support survivors in their healing. ..Source.. by Jessica Renee Napier

A welcome expansion of the definition of sexual violence

January 2012:

What is rape? Most people picture a man physically overpowering a woman and forcing her to have intercourse. While that certainly is rape, most sexual assaults don’t fit that stereotype.

In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report shedding light on how widespread sexual violence is in this country. Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, objected in an op-ed [“A false portrait of U.S. sexual violence,” Sunday Opinion, Jan. 29], saying that the CDC defined sexual violence in “impossibly elastic ways.” But think: If you asked 10 friends whether they have ever been raped, you likely wouldn’t get many yeses. If you asked whether they’ve ever had sex against their will or had been coerced into sex, or had unwanted sexual contact, the number would probably be much higher.

Consider: A teenage girl is pressured into having sex for the first time to keep her older boyfriend happy.

Consider: A man puts his hand on a young woman’s thigh as she sits next to him on a bus. He moves his hand up and touches her genitals.

The open-ended questions that the CDC asked in its survey get at the real problem. Do we care only about stopping women from being assaulted by men and forced to have sex? No. The questions are vague and broad because the reality of sexual violence is vague and broad.

Do you want to know the size and complexity of the real problem? Or do you want, as Ms. Sommers did, to blame feminists and the CDC for “send[ing] scarce resources in the wrong directions”? I choose the former. ..Source.. by Lauren R. Taylor, The writer is a member of The Post’s editorial page staff and an anti-violence trainer.

How the CDC is overstating sexual violence in the U.S.

January 2012

Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Her books include “Who Stole Feminism?” and “The War Against Boys.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a study suggesting that rates of sexual violence in the United States are comparable to those in the war-stricken Congo. How is that possible?

The CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that, in the United States in 2010, approximately 1.3 million women were raped and an additional 12.6 million women and men were victims of sexual violence. It reported, “More than 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hailed the report for giving “a clear picture of the devastating impact these violent acts have on the lives of millions of Americans.”

In fact, what the study reveals is the devastating impact that careless advocacy research can have on truth. The report proposes an array of ambitious government-sponsored “prevention strategies” and recommends “multi-disciplinary service centers” offering survivors psychological and legal counseling as well as housing and economic assistance. But survivors of sexual violence would be better served by good research and sober estimates — not inflated statistics and sensationalism.

The agency’s figures are wildly at odds with official crime statistics. The FBI found that 84,767 rapes were reported to law enforcement authorities in 2010. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, the gold standard in crime research, reports 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults on females and males in 2010. Granted, not all assaults are reported to authorities. But where did the CDC find 13.7 million victims of sexual crimes that the professional criminologists had overlooked?

It found them by defining sexual violence in impossibly elastic ways and then letting the surveyors, rather than subjects, determine what counted as an assault. Consider: In a telephone survey with a 30 percent response rate, interviewers did not ask participants whether they had been raped. Instead of such straightforward questions, the CDC researchers described a series of sexual encounters and then they determined whether the responses indicated sexual violation. A sample of 9,086 women was asked, for example, “When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever had vaginal sex with you?” A majority of the 1.3 million women (61.5 percent) the CDC projected as rape victims in 2010 experienced this sort of “alcohol or drug facilitated penetration.”

What does that mean? If a woman was unconscious or severely incapacitated, everyone would call it rape. But what about sex while inebriated? Few people would say that intoxicated sex alone constitutes rape — indeed, a nontrivial percentage of all customary sexual intercourse, including marital intercourse, probably falls under that definition (and is therefore criminal according to the CDC).

Other survey questions were equally ambiguous. Participants were asked if they had ever had sex because someone pressured them by “telling you lies, making promises about the future they knew were untrue?” All affirmative answers were counted as “sexual violence.” Anyone who consented to sex because a suitor wore her or him down by “repeatedly asking” or “showing they were unhappy” was similarly classified as a victim of violence. The CDC effectively set a stage where each step of physical intimacy required a notarized testament of sober consent.

The report also called for more research on “sexism” and urged “collective action” against media messages that “objectify and degrade women.” In the familiar jargon of feminist theory, the CDC said: “It is important to continue addressing the beliefs, attitudes and messages that are deeply imbedded in our social structures.”

Why is the CDC using methods of advocacy research that are anathema to genuine social science? The answer is suggested by a posting on the White House Web site this month by Lynn Rosenthal, a presidential adviser on violence against women:

“Early in the Administration, the Vice President convened federal agencies to assess trends and identify gaps in our response to violence and abuse. We identified data collection as one of the biggest challenges we face in understanding and combatting these crime. Thanks to the hard work of [Attorney General Eric] Holder, the FBI, law enforcement leaders, and the women’s organizations who have long advocated for this change, we are one step further towards meeting that challenge.”

While that passage referred to the FBI’s recently revised definition of rape — and not the CDC survey — it shows how the study fits into the administration’s effort to apply the advocacy agenda of the women’s lobby to rape research. That would explain how feminist theory found its way into the report. But why would CDC officials, who are experienced in resisting political pressure, cooperate?

Perhaps they felt the study would draw needed attention to the genuine problem of sexual violence. That is an understandable but recklessly misguided conclusion. Faulty studies send scarce resources in the wrong directions; more programs on sexism, stereotypes and social structures, for example, are unlikely to help victims of violence. Defining sexual violence down obscures the gradations in culpability that are essential to effective criminal law, and it holds up a false mirror on our society. The CDC should recall this study. ..Source.. by Christina Hoff Sommers

Nearly 1 in 5 Women in U.S. Survey Say They Have Been Sexually Assaulted

December 2011:

An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought.

Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.

“That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey.

“I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population,” she said.

The study, called the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, was begun in 2010 with the support of the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Defense. The study, a continuing telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 16,507 adults, defines intimate partner and sexual violence broadly.

The surveyors elicited information on types of aggression not previously studied in national surveys, including sexual violence other than rape, psychological aggression, coercion and control of reproductive and sexual health.

They also gathered information about the physical and mental health of violence survivors.

Sexual violence affects women disproportionately, the researchers found. One-third of women said they had been victims of a rape, beating or stalking, or a combination of assaults.

The researchers defined rape as completed forced penetration, forced penetration facilitated by drugs or alcohol, or attempted forced penetration.

By that definition, 1 percent of women surveyed reported being raped in the previous year, a figure that suggests that 1.3 million American women annually may be victims of rape or attempted rape.

That figure is significantly higher than previous estimates. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimated that 272,350 Americans were victims of sexual violence last year. Only 84,767 assaults defined as forcible rapes were reported in 2010, according to national statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But men also reported being victimized in surprising numbers.

One in seven men have experienced severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner, the survey found, and one in 71 men — between 1 percent and 2 percent — have been raped, many when they were younger than 11.

A vast majority of women who said they had been victims of sexual violence, rape or stalking reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as did about one-third of the men.

Women who had experienced such violence were also more likely to report having asthma, diabetes or irritable bowel syndrome than women who had not. Both men and women who had been assaulted were more likely to report frequent headaches, chronic pain, difficulty sleeping, limitations on activity, and poor physical and mental health.

“We’ve seen this association with chronic health conditions in smaller studies before,” said Lisa James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, a national nonprofit group based in San Francisco that advocates for programs to end violence against women and girls.

“People who grow up with violence adopt coping strategies that can lead to poor health outcomes,” she said. “We know that women in abusive relationships are at increased risk for smoking, for example.”

The survey found that youth itself was an important risk factor for sexual violence and assault. Some 28 percent of male victims of rape reported that they were first assaulted when they were no older than 10.

Only 12 percent of female rape victims were assaulted when they were 10 or younger, but almost half of female victims said they had been raped before they turned 18. About 80 percent of rape victims reported that they had been raped before age 25.

Rape at a young age was associated with another, later rape; about 35 percent of women who had been raped as minors were also raped as adults, the survey found.

More than half of female rape victims had been raped by an intimate partner, according to the study, and 40 percent had been raped by an acquaintance; more than half of men who had been raped said the assailant was an acquaintance.

The public release of the report was postponed twice, most recently on Nov. 28. The findings are based on completed interviews lasting about 25 minutes each; they were conducted in 2010 with 9,086 women and 7,421 men. ..Source.. by RONI CARYN RABIN