All of us are rightly appalled by the rape of young athletes at Penn State and the failure of otherwise admirable people like Joe Paterno to do the right thing.
But we are blind to the epidemic of rape that takes place in America’s offices and factories. The EEOC receives 12,000 complaints of sexual harassment every year. The Commission is able to substantiate half of them. (Many legitimate complaints are not substantiated because the Commission doesn’t have the resources to investigate them.)
The majority of the 6,000 substantiated complaints involve “only” offensive comments.
An estimated 25%, however, came from women who were forced to have sex with their boss to keep their job. A woman who is struggling to support herself and her family has no more choice in such a situation than woman faced with a fist or a knife.
Rape is having sex with someone without their consent. Giving in to keep from getting fired is not consent, morally or legally. Yet prosecutors virtually never bring criminal charges in such cases, even when a judge and jury in a civil case have found that the complaint is true.
That equals 1,500 known rapes every year that are ignored by prosecutors. To put this number in perspective, it is seven times as large as the reported number of children abused by Catholic priests.
Our understanding of the true dimensions of rape has grown in recent years. We now understand that getting your date drunk and taking advantage of her impairment to have sex with her is rape.
We need to understand that forcing someone to have sex by threatening to take her job away is rape too.