The Valley may be happy, but is it safe?

Last April, Samantha, a Penn State senior at the time, decided to walk home alone after a night spent out drinking. She had attended her sorority’s social and then traveled over to a friend’s house where she unfortunately got into an argument. Upset and intoxicated, Samantha, whose name has been changed for this story, headed down a local street where she was approached by a stranger on her right side.

“I was hit on the right side of my face and was then kicked in my right ankle,” Samantha said. “I remember losing my balance and falling to the ground where he proceeded to get on top of me and hold a knife to my neck.”

Samantha is not alone. Nationally, one out of four college women will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape. At universities like Penn State that statistic is no different.

State College, a place appropriately dubbed Happy Valley for its warm sense of community and seemingly stress free lifestyle, is a home shared by thousands of residents, or ‘townies,’ and, of course, students. Images of the valley involve a lively downtown area complete with a wide array of overly stuffed restaurants and bars, crowded fraternity houses, and streets packed with grinning students on the quest to make their time at Penn State count.

But what many images do not portray is a problem that has steadily increased over the years and one that is affecting more and more students every single day: sexual violence. Since 2010, the total number of reported sex crimes in State College has increased steadily from 32 to 56, with sexual assault being the most common and forcible rape as a close second.

The alarming numbers are nothing new and have been actively analyzed by school officials. Peggy Lorah, the director for Penn State’s Center for Women Students, reports that of the 25 percent of college females that will be the victims of an attempted or completed sexual crime, most perpetrators, are not strangers lurking in the shadows.

“When we talk about sexual assault,” Lorah said, “85 percent of the time the victim has some sort of connection to their assailant and in that same percentage of cases alcohol plays some sort of role.”

Alcohol is something that is not foreign to the Penn State Community. For years, the university has been placed on the Princeton Review’s list of “Party Schools,” and in 2009, Penn State was ranked as number 1.

Lorah, who has been the director since 1999, not only deals with victims of sexual abuse, but at times is the consequence that assailants must go to when they are put through the student conduct process. Through her experiences in this position, she has heard first-hand from those committing the crimes just how big of a role alcohol plays.

“Assailants will identify that they deliberately worked to make sure that a woman student that they eventually assaulted was somebody that they purposefully got drunk,” Lorah said.

Through this art of getting their victims drunk, perpetrators are intentionally causing those that they are attacking to become so impaired that they are not physically able to give consent. And, according to Lorah, any type of intercourse without consent is considered rape.

State College police officer, Kelly Aston, agrees with Lorah that alcohol is a large component of the sexual climate at Penn State. In fact, according to Aston, two-thirds of all crimes in the town are alcohol-related.

“Alcohol is definitely a factor,” Aston said, “however a factor does not necessarily mean a cause and it does not mean that it is a defense or should be an excuse, but in some ways it certainly plays into what’s going on.”

As a downtown police officer, Aston has experienced dealing with sexual assault cases, and has also seen how complicated they can be, especially due to a certain lack of evidence. Many times it is hard to collect forensic support, particularly if victims report the crime well after the incident. Also, in cases such as these, witnesses are usually not present and without forensic proof, it turns into a she-said, he-said type of argument. And, perhaps the biggest deterrent to evidentiary support is the role of alcohol.

Not only does alcohol play into the actual sex crime itself, but it also affects the aftermath and the justice system, many times being a reason why victims are hesitant to step forward.

“Victims do not want to become re-victimized through the process,” Aston said. “If alcohol is involved, there is a lack of memory and they may not be able to recollect what happened. The impact that that would have on the case often creates an overall inability to prosecute.”

In Samantha’s case, alcohol definitely was a large component. Not only was she admittedly drunk, but she was also one of the 15 percent of victims who are attacked by a stranger. She remembers being taken out of visible sight and dragged into a bushy area, where her assailant forcibly raped her. Because of her intoxication, Samantha said, fighting back was simply not a sensible option.

What came next for Samantha, is something that many victims of sexual crimes go through: confusion, denial, and a longing to forget the incident ever even occurred.

“I got in the shower and scrubbed off the smell of the man. The next day I sat in the corner of my room all day long,” Samantha said. “I spent long periods of time standing motionless in front of the mirror staring at the bruises and cuts.”

Samantha’s immediate reaction, according to Christy Beck, the sexual assault and relationship violence specialist at Penn State’s CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services), is extremely common among victims.

“Many deal with embarrassment, the fear of not being believed, and blaming oneself,” Beck said.

Other common problems that Beck discussed were the fear of telling one’s family about the incident and difficulty concentrating in class, both things that Samantha attested to. Days after her attack, a night spent out drinking brought back flashes of the incident, and Samantha’s friends guided her into finally reporting the crime.

She described the process as terrifying. She had to divulge the details of the occurrence to a detective and was also taken to the hospital where they asked a multitude of questions and took pictures of all of her bruises and of her genital area.

“After I left the hospital,” Samantha said, “I just wanted to put the entire situation behind me, which doesn’t happen when you have a detective trying to do his job and you want to help but at the same time are embarrassed about what happened. I was tempted to drop the entire thing so I could just forget it.”

Unfortunately, when it comes to sexual crimes, forgetting is just not a possibility. As a community, Penn State does a good job with treatment for victims and workshops about consent and sexual violence. According to Lorah, incoming freshmen are required to participate in a sex crime awareness module, “Penn State Aware,” prior to arriving on campus. She and her office are constantly doing programming events as well as going into classrooms and student organizations to discuss the issues of sexual violence.

“We have posters. We have our website. We do a lot of advertising in the Collegian. We do self-defense classes but we’re also aware students still don’t know about it,” Lorah said. “There is so much information out there and it’s really hard to figure out how to make it something that students get. The ‘it could happen to me piece’ is what is really hard to get out.”

This is a common detriment to the overall well-being of women on campus that specialists all agree on: the belief of invincibility. Far too many students are aware of sexual crimes, but are not forced to think about it until, unfortunately, they, or someone they know, becomes a victim, and then it is far too late.

For Samantha, a self-proclaimed former “invincibility believer,” life will never be the same, but every day she is learning how to accept what has happened and move forward.

“You have to be bigger than that person and let the only pain you had from them be that very moment during that very night,” Samantha said. “Because if you continue to let fear of what happened affect the rest of your life, then they did something more terrible than just rape you. They broke your mind and spirit as well.” 

For more information, you can watch a recently produced documentary by Penn State junior Stephanie Wain, that aims at bringing awareness to unreported sexual assault at Penn State University.