From bestselling author Jon Krakauer, a stark, powerful, meticulously reported narrative in regards to a series of sexual assaults at the University of Montana ­- stories that illuminate the human crisis behind the national plague of campus rape

Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, with a highly regarded state university, bucolic environment, a lively public scene, and an excellent football team – the Grizzlies – having a rabid group of fans.

The Department of Justice investigated 350 about Missoula: Rape as well as the Justice System in a University Town sexual assaults reported to the Missoula police between January 2008 and could 2012. Handful of these assaults were properly taken care of by either the university or college or local authorities. With this, Missoula can be typical.

A DOJ statement released in December of 2014 quotes 110,000 ladies between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are raped each year. Krakauer’s damaging narrative of what occurred in Missoula makes clear why rape is indeed common on American campuses, and just why rape victims are therefore reluctant to report assault.

Acquaintance rape is a crime like no various other. Unlike burglary or embezzlement or any additional felony, the victim frequently comes under more suspicion than the alleged perpetrator. This is especially true if the victim is sexually active; if she have been drinking prior to the assault – and if the man she accuses has on a favorite sports team. The vanishingly little but extremely publicized occurrences of false accusations are often used to dismiss her statements in the press. If the situation goes to trial, the woman’s entire personal life becomes fair game for defense attorneys.

This brutal reality goes quite a distance towards explaining why acquaintance rape may be the most underreported crime in the us. In addition to physical stress, its victims frequently suffer devastating emotional damage leading to emotions of shame, psychological paralysis and stigmatization. PTSD prices for rape victims are approximated to be 50%, greater than soldiers returning from war.

In Missoula, Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of many women in Missoula – the nights if they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the general public vilification and personal anguish; their bravery in pressing forward and what it cost them.

A few of them went to the police. Some declined to go to the police, or even to press charges, but sought redress in the university, which has its own, non-criminal judicial process when a student can be accused of rape. In two situations the police agreed to press charges as well as the region attorney decided to prosecute. One case led to a conviction; someone to an acquittal. Those ladies courageous enough to press charges or even to speak publicly about their experiences were attacked in the press, on Grizzly soccer fan sites, and/or with their faces. The university expelled three from the accused rapists, but one was reinstated by condition officials in a top secret proceeding. One district lawyer testified for an alleged rapist at his school hearing. She later still left the prosecutor’s workplace and successfully defended the Grizzlies’ superstar quarterback in his rape trial. The horror to be raped, in each woman’s case, was magnified by the mechanics from the justice program and the result of the community.

Krakauer’s dispassionate, carefully documented accounts of what these females endured cuts through the abstract ideological controversy about campus rape. College-age women aren’t raped because they’re promiscuous, or drunk, or send mixed signals, or feel guilty about informal sex, or seek attention. They are the victims of a terrible crime and worth compassion from culture and fairness from a justice system that is clearly broken.