Contact: Gina Lauterio
Email: info@saveservices.org

SAVE Calls for Removal of Bogus ‘One-in-Five’ Rape Statistic from The Hunting Ground

WASHINGTON / April 2, 2015 – Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, a national organization working to end campus sexual assault, is calling on producers of The Hunting Ground to remove a rape statistic featured in the movie that is known to be false. The Hunting Ground makes the claim that 20% of college women are sexually assaulted.

Numerous authoritative sources have refuted the 20% number:

1. The U.S. Department of Justice reports a college woman’s risk of sexual assault is under 1% each year (1).

2. The Washington Post Fact Checker assigned a single Pinocchio to the one-in-five claim (2).

3. The New York Times Editorial Board described the source of the statistic as “a flawed 2007 study based on undergraduates at just two unnamed public universities.” (3)

4. Writing in Time magazine, Christopher Krebs, lead researcher of the cited 2007 study, explained:
“First and foremost, the 1-in-5 statistic is not a nationally representative estimate of the prevalence of sexual assault, and we have never presented it as being representative.” (4)

Numerous editorialists have also commented on the sheer implausibility of the one-in-five number (5).

“First and foremost, any movie that claims to be a ‘documentary’ must get its facts straight and tell the truth.” notes SAVE spokesperson Sheryl Hutter. “Producers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering need to do the right thing and edit out the false numbers.”

Other key claims in movie have been disputed or shown to be false (6). SAVE has launched a media awareness campaign, “The Hunting Ground: Cut the Lies,” calling for removal of the flawed sexual assault statistics.

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments is working to promote effective solutions to campus sexual assault: http://www.saveservices.org/

1. http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5176
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/17/one-in-five-women-in-college-sexually-assaulted-an-update/
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/confusion-about-college-sexual-assault.html
4. http://time.com/3633903/campus-rape-1-in-5-sexual-assault-setting-record-straight/
5. http://www.saveservices.org/sexual-assault/editorials/2014-2/
6. http://www.saveservices.org/sexual-assault/hunting-ground/