Contact: Teri Stoddard
Telephone: 301-801-0608
Email: teristoddard@saveservices.org
Commentators Ridicule Campus Sex Bill, SAVE Says It Will Harm Victims
WASHINGTON / March 11, 2014 – Editorial writers are criticizing Senate Bill 967 for removing due process protections and encouraging false allegations. Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, a victim advocacy group, says the bill’s broad definitions would serve to dissipate scarce resources and make it harder for victims to be believed.
SB 967 would require students contemplating any form of “sexual activity” to express their prior consent through “clear, unambiguous actions.” SB 967 also encourages partners to reaffirm consent on a continuing basis throughout the sex act.
National columnist Cathy Young reveals the notion of mandating verbal consent to sex has been “widely ridiculed as political correctness gone mad.” “With the California bill, we now have a state legislature effectively mandating how people—at least college students—should behave during sex,” Young notes. “Whatever happened to getting the government out of the bedroom?” http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2014/02/want_to_have_sex_sign_this_con.html
Civil rights expert KC Johnson believes SB 967 embodies a clear “hostility to due process” by mandating the “preponderance-of-evidence threshold in branding a student a rapist.” http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2014/02/a_deceptive_california_bill_on.html
By expanding the definition of sexual assault, the number of persons charged with sexual offenses would be likely to increase exponentially. Columnist Hans Bader asks, “How will classifying most consensual sex as rape help rape victims?” http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/03/09/california-activists-seek-redefine-quiet-consensual-sex-rape/
“The California bill would flood the system with students falsely accused of sexual assault,” notes SAVE spokesperson Sheryle Hutter. “This would make investigators more skeptical of persons claiming to be raped, and leave real victims less likely to report the crime. Who in their right mind would want that?”
For more information, see SAVE’s Ten Steps to Turn Any Student into a Sex Offender: http://www.saveservices.org/camp/affirmative-consent/
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments is a victim-advocacy organization working for evidence-based solutions to domestic violence and sexual assault: www.saveservices.org