# Is it sexual assault? (Columbia Mattress Girl Related) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 22, 2015, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576 "2015-05-22T10:40:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2015, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/41 "2015-05-22T22:22:38Z")
'll. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2015, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/42 "2015-05-22T22:54:50Z")
> [@sleestak](#): > > That is true. And in the cite I provided there is no question,\* the allegation was false\*. That is one of the incredibly rare circumstances where a false accusation resulted in a conviction. > [@sleestak](#): > > I happen to think that, unless one is personally involved\*, the best answer is 'We don’t know what happened. She said X. He said Y. We don’t and can’t know which is true given the evidence." Destroying someones life based on an unprovable allegation seems to me to be highly questionable. If you are fine with doing so then I doubt I will ever change your mind. > > Some people do assume that. I don’t. However, you are making the same mistake that ‘many people’ make and just reversing it. Instead of “Well, the courts couldn’t prove it so the accuser must have lied” you are falling to “Well, the accusation was made so the alleged rapist must be guilty”. Both of which are illogical knowing that rape does happen and also that false allegations happen. Firstly, it is very common that there are cases where there’s a very large amount of circumstantial evidence that the rape did in fact occur, just not quite enough to get a conviction, or the state fails to get a conviction because of whatever vagary of the legal system. We should have absolutely no problem behaving as if the rape _did_ occur in those cases. More generally, though, yes it would be very nice if we could all be evenhandedly agnostic when the situation truly is he-said-she-said, but unfortunately that’s not the way it actually goes in the real world. People are far more willing to believe that women made up an accusation for whatever bizarre reasons (jealousy, attention-seeking, etc) than that a rapist might in fact be guilty and there’s simply not enough to convict. > [@sleestak](#): > > I am not sure that being falsely accused of rape, being sent to prison, losing a scholarship and a shot at playing professional football is better than being falsely labeled as a rape accuser. Of course, YMMV. The false rape reports are, as best as I can tell, are between 5 and 10%. It is a hard number to pin down for the same reasons that rapes are hard crimes to prosecute. > > Until we have a universal truth machine that knows all and can dispense justice flawlessly, the best answer seems to be to take each case on its own merits and to not assume one way or the other. I would agree with that in the, again, extremely rare situation where a false accusation results in a conviction. In the more usual case where the accusation goes nowhere, people are usually willing to say “well nothing was proved…” about the rapist while characterizing the accuser as some sort of crazy person. The other thing with the statistics are that even though 5-10% of accusations might be false, only a tiny fraction of real rapes even make it that far. We should be encouraging more victims to report rapes and both society and the justice system’s excessive skepticism of accusations is the major detriment to that. Innocent until proven guilty should certainly be the standard in the courtroom, but the police and society should assume rape victims are telling the truth by default unless some compelling evidence to the contrary emerges. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2015, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/43 "2015-05-22T23:40:40Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > That is one of the incredibly rare circumstances where a false accusation resulted in a conviction. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2015, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/44 "2015-05-22T23:58:09Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I will say that if the anonymous poster’s story is true (and it’s neatly unverifiable since campus records are protected by privacy regulations) it’s further evidence that schools should not adjudicate issues which are criminal acts, even as a matter of the disciplinary code. Education is too integral a part of society for them to be allowed to conduct kangaroo courts. For acts which are crimes their only role should be to forward the reports to police, and to have policies about how to punish students convicted of crimes. University “courts” are only appropriate for adjudicating issues of things like the academic honor code, dorm room behavior rules and etc, not matters that are crimes. Other people said the same things in previous threads, and it’s dumb. You are effectively saying that the worst offenses should get the least attention. ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/45 "2015-05-23T00:04:15Z")
Yes to it being sexual assault to the extent that the details are exactly as she remembered and conveyed them. That doesn’t even take an understanding of sexual assault like some college policies where every contact basically requires explicit and verbalized consent each and every time even in an existing relationship. There wasn’t a whole lot of reason to believe there was implied consent at the point of the first contact. We could create hypotheticals and go way down the rabbit hole about not having a clear answer before the first contact. We don’t need to. He didn’t stop after the initial contact. She clearly did not give consent and tried to end the contact. He didn’t let go at that point until she actively pushed away. **He got no for an answer and ignored it.** That’s sexual assault. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/46 "2015-05-23T00:04:31Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > There is simply no way legal or in common usage, the act of temporarily holding someone in a place for a few seconds against their will, without any sexual touching or violence, can be called sexual assault. Stipulating that your interpretation of NY’s legal code is accurate, there’s a third way of looking at the phrase “sexual assault.” It can be looked at: 1. According to statutory definition, which I’ve stipulated you’re correct that it doesn’t meet. 2. According to common definition, which I’ll now stipulate (emphasizing the provisional nature of stipulation) that it doesn’t meet. 3. According to Columbia’s definition, which is, according to the OP, “Any intentional sexual touching, however slight, with any object without a person’s consent.” If this definition is the one Columbia’s code of conduct includes, it strikes me as the most relevant definition for the phrase, and a definition met by the behavior in this incident. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/47 "2015-05-23T00:11:33Z")
Okay, we have a few questions here. Let’s start with the easy one- did this situation happen as described? The answer to that is that we don’t know. We just don’t know. Fine. Next question- is it okay to keep touching someone who told you to stop touching them (barring cases where you are stopping them from walking into an oncoming car or something)? This seems pretty obvious to me. Someone tell you to stop touching them-- you stop touching them. Why people choose this particular hill to die on, I don’t know. People-- why do you want to touch people who don’t want to be touched by you? Why is this right so important? A related question- is it illegal to keep touching someone who told you to stop touching them? This probably varies by location, but I’m guessing in most places it is. Finally-- is vigilantism okay in cases where the traditional justice system doesn’t work? This is a big qustion, few good answers. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/48 "2015-05-23T01:09:43Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I will say that if the anonymous poster’s story is true (and it’s neatly unverifiable since campus records are protected by privacy regulations) it’s further evidence that schools should not adjudicate issues which are criminal acts, even as a matter of the disciplinary code. Education is too integral a part of society for them to be allowed to conduct kangaroo courts. For acts which are crimes their only role should be to forward the reports to police, and to have policies about how to punish students convicted of crimes. University “courts” are only appropriate for adjudicating issues of things like the academic honor code, dorm room behavior rules and etc, not matters that are crimes. +1 Actual courts have a hard enough time with this shit. Putting administrators in charge is just recipe for disaster. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/49 "2015-05-23T01:17:37Z")
**GreasyJack** , I asked this before, but I’ll ask it again, to see if you’ll answer it: Suppose the accuser is wrong, and the accused is innocent. In that case, isn’t the accuser the victimizer, and the accused the victim? If you err on the side of victims, whose side do you err on then? ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/50 "2015-05-23T01:26:28Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Cite? [https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/ExonerationsRaceByCrime.aspx](https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/ExonerationsRaceByCrime.aspx) The rape conviction rate is about 5-6 times higher than the murder conviction rate, but there have been far fewer exonerations. That’s because usually when there’s a dead body, there’s a lot of pressure to charge someone with a crime but there isn’t really a huge amount of pressure to prosecute rapes unless there’s a pretty rock-solid case. Usually a victim’s say-so and no other compelling evidence isn’t going to end up with a case going forward so situations in which a false accusation sticks to the point of winning a conviction are pretty rare. (Of course one of the issues there is that prosecuting African-Americans on iffy rape cases is a lot more common, hence the much larger number of AA exonerations for rape.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/51 "2015-05-23T01:27:27Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > So stealing a kiss is sexual assault these days. How does that even work for you guys? There is zero margin of error in reading other people’s body langage and non-verbal cues? Do you require written consent contracts written up and signed before each physical encounter? This wasn’t a situation with just the absence of consent. The woman in the OP says she told the man no and asked him to let her go, which he did not do. This was clear nonconsent. Holding a woman after she’s told you to let her go is not an error in reading body language and non-verbal cues. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/52 "2015-05-23T02:46:19Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Do you understand the difference between punching up and punching down? Differential power relationships? In America power is pretty much spread out amongst the upper class kids that get into Columbia University. We are talking about people, including myself, that live lives of incredible pleasure and freedom. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/53 "2015-05-23T03:22:36Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Other people said the same things in previous threads, and it’s dumb. You are effectively saying that the worst offenses should get the least attention. No, they should get the most attention. What’s dumb is thinking a Columbia kangaroo court counts as “most attention” for a criminal matter. Colleges should have a legal (and we can regulate this) requirement to pass on criminal issues to police, and remove pointless college courts from the process. In the case of a real rapist, a Columbia court cannot provide any punishment close to serious enough–because it cannot sentence a person to prison. In the case of an innocently accused person, it lacks key protections when the matter is one that the real court system (with far more resources) requires a lengthy and elaborate trial process to adjudicate and the punishment is far too harsh given how important college education is. Colleges should not be allowed to operate as and should not be seen as private clubs where their actions are no different from Jim Bob getting kicked outta the Moose Lodge. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/54 "2015-05-23T03:24:25Z")
> [@DinoR](#): > > Yes to it being sexual assault to the extent that the details are exactly as she remembered and conveyed them. > > That doesn’t even take an understanding of sexual assault like some college policies where every contact basically requires explicit and verbalized consent each and every time even in an existing relationship. There wasn’t a whole lot of reason to believe there was implied consent at the point of the first contact. We could create hypotheticals and go way down the rabbit hole about not having a clear answer before the first contact. We don’t need to. He didn’t stop after the initial contact. She clearly did not give consent and tried to end the contact. He didn’t let go at that point until she actively pushed away. **He got no for an answer and ignored it.** That’s sexual assault. No, it’s not sexual assault. By your definition a pick pocket is also committing sexual assault when he grabs a wallet out of your back pocket, or a pushy salesman who shakes you hand when you’d rather he didn’t. You do not know what sexual assault means, and the words you’re using to try and define it turn it into a term so stupid it lacks any reason for existing at all. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/55 "2015-05-23T03:34:46Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Stipulating that your interpretation of NY’s legal code is accurate, there’s a third way of looking at the phrase “sexual assault.” It can be looked at: > > 1. According to statutory definition, which I’ve stipulated you’re correct that it doesn’t meet. > 2. According to common definition, which I’ll now stipulate (emphasizing the provisional nature of stipulation) that it doesn’t meet. > 3. According to Columbia’s definition, which is, according to the OP, “Any intentional sexual touching, however slight, with any object without a person’s consent.” If this definition is the one Columbia’s code of conduct includes, it strikes me as the most relevant definition for the phrase, and a definition met by the behavior in this incident. I can’t even stipulate that under Columbia’s definition the alleged activity would be sexual assault, because I think it’d be difficult in any hearing body following normative judicial processes to demonstrate that **all** touching is sexual, which is roughly the bar required for the allegations to meet that definition. Criminal codes about unwanted sexual touching are general specific in text that it means genital or sexual areas of the body, and case law usually helps fill in any ambiguity such that largely most of us would “get” what is meant by these terms. The concept of a form of sexual assault which encompasses no unwanted touching of genital/intimate areas, let alone no penetration etc is hard to believe reasonable. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/56 "2015-05-23T05:24:04Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > Thanks to the proven, false claims of rape, many people will chose not to believe the alleged rape victim, or you. You’ve proven that you don’t care what the facts are. Anyone who is willing to lie about their being raped gets your support. You’ve proven that you don’t care about innocent people. Kind of a “fuck everybody” attitude. Isn’t that similar to what actual rapists are thinking? Hmmm. > > It’s best to contact the police, file a report, **and testify in court** , and do society a favor by getting actual rapists off the street. This certainly tells me exactly how much respect to have for the opinions of **MrDible**. Not that I had a lot before. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/57 "2015-05-23T06:01:53Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > This wasn’t a situation with just the absence of consent. The woman in the OP says she told the man no and asked him to let her go, which he did not do. This was clear nonconsent. > > Holding a woman after she’s told you to let her go is not an error in reading body language and non-verbal cues. You only have her take on it. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where they had been talking in the living room, touched a bit, exchanged some glances. He thought (obviously he was wrong) they had something going, so he comes to her room and kisses her. Perhaps she says no a little feebly which doesn’t really sound like no (“Hey, no, come on, let’s go back downstairs”). But when she did it a little more forcefully by pushing him away he got the message. The problem is that there are a very large group of girls who expect and want the man to take initiative, be pushy, forward, domineering. That does not include rape, but it may very well include following her into her room, closing the door, brushing off weak protests. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/58 "2015-05-23T07:21:28Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Did you miss the part where Banks spent five years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit? I see you _did_ miss the part where he didn’t get any of the money. I didn’t miss the first, and I did miss the second. One case isn’t going to change the general trend, though. Orders of magnitude more rapists get away with it than ever even get falsely accused, much less have their lives ruined by the accusation ( **which isn’t a forgone conclusion for every rape accusation by any means** ) > [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > In America power is pretty much spread out amongst the upper class kids that get into Columbia University. We are talking about people, including myself, that live lives of incredible pleasure and freedom. Did you really think _social class_ was the unequal power dynamic I was talking about? > [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > This certainly tells me exactly how much respect to have for the opinions of **MrDible**. Not that I had a lot before. :rolleyes: Coming from you, and who you listen to, I’ll take that as a compliment. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/59 "2015-05-23T12:55:06Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Perhaps she says no a little feebly which doesn’t really sound like no (“Hey, no, come on, let’s go back downstairs”). This is where you lose the argument. If someone says “no” or “stop”, however “feebly”, there is no reason- at all- not to stop and reassess. Why would you ever keep going when someone just said they don’t want you to touch them? The apologists claim to be frustrated by ambiguous signals. But what we are advocating for is making things LESS ambiguous. No means no. Stop means stop. It’s really straightforward. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576/60 "2015-05-23T13:03:14Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > This is where you lose the argument. If someone says “no” or “stop”, however “feebly”, there is no reason- at all- not to stop and reassess. Why would you ever keep going when someone just said they don’t want you to touch them? > > The apologists claim to be frustrated by ambiguous signals. But what we are advocating for is making things LESS ambiguous. No means no. Stop means stop. It’s really straightforward. I just don’t see it translating very well into the reality of human attraction and sexuality. And I think what drives this more than anything is female sexuality. What men want is secondary, when being ravished/domineered appears to be the number one female sexual desire. Men learn to brush off weak protests because women teach them through experience that that is what they want and desire. You can try to teach girls to be attracted to other things, but I don’t think you’ll have much success. It’s also tweaking with some fairly fundamental human instincts one should probably be more than a little vary messing around with. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-sexual-assault-columbia-mattress-girl-related/720576.md?page=4)