A student at the University of California, Los Angeles filed a lawsuit in August against two fraternities, the school’s Interfraternity Council, and her assailant. The Daily Bruin reports that the filing is for “negligence, assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
The story here sounds very familiar to people informed about campus sexual assault. During a party in 2016, the assailant, Blake Lobato, pressured his victim to drink in spite of the fact that she was already visibly intoxicated. Once she was too incapacitated to make it back to her place alone, Lobato took her back to his place under the guise of giving her a safe place to sleep it off. He raped her instead.
The victim reported Lobato to his fraternity president, who did nothing. An attorney and board member for the group discouraged the woman from reporting. The victim later found out that Lobato had a history of sexual violence and had been found responsible for statutory rape the year before by the school.
Alcohol-facilitated rape is common on college campuses, and they are a favored method of serial rapists. Dr. David Lisak famously researched the “undetected rapist” to highlight the real characteristics of sexual assailants, and notes that they “use alcohol deliberately to render victims more vulnerable to attack, or completely unconscious.” He also found that 63 percent of assailants had multiple victims. Other research has found that men who join fraternities are three times more likely to rape.
What’s not so common is that UCLA did actually punish the students assailant (a bit late, though). She had later reported directly to the school, which resulted in the assailant being expelled from both his fraternity and then the school.
The student is represented by an attorney Keith Fink, who said they hope the lawsuit will help to change policies around alcohol at the school.
“In this toxic environment and proximity of young males, alcohol and young women coming to fraternities where they know there’s going to be drinking and underage drinking, there needs to be in place strict policies and strict mechanisms to prevent this sort of thing from happening,” Fink said.
While it is definitely admirable to want to address the abuse of alcohol by underage students in schools, I hope that the focus on alcohol doesn’t detract from the problem of systemic cover-up and abuse. Why was Lobato’s fraternity okay with keeping a serial rapist in its ranks? Why didn’t UCLA find statutory rape to be grounds for expulsion? While alcohol is often abused by assailants, it’s important to remember it’s a tool rather than a cause. Just ask the approximately 50 percent of rape victims who were sober during their attack.