Rape at U.S. colleges often fueled by alcohol.

Abstract: 

According to a 2003 US Department of Justice (DOJ) report, rape is the most common violent crime at US universities. The incidence of rape is estimated to be 35 per 1000 female college students per year in the United States, although less than 5% of these rapes are reported to police. Women may decline to report rape for a variety of reasons, including shame, fear of social isolation from the assailant’s friends, and self-reproach for drinking with the assailant before the rape. Ninety percent of college women who are raped know their assailants, according to the DOJ report. Most rapes occur in social situations, such as at a party or studying together in a dormitory room, and about half of perpetrators and rape survivors are drinking alcohol at the time of the assault, according to a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) review of recent studies of alcohol and sexual assault. The NIAAA report suggests different roles for alcohol in sexual assault. Some men who drink heavily may use alcohol intoxication as an excuse for socially unacceptable behavior, including sexual assault, and some men perceive women who drink alcohol to be more sexually available and therefore appropriate targets for sexual aggression. Regardless of the motives or perceptions of a man or a woman, nonconsensual sex is rape, and it is never justified by alcohol’s pharmacologic or expectant effects, researchers emphasize.