There is a question people continue to ask victims of sexual violence: Why didn’t you go to the police?I have worked hotlines. I have respon
There is a question people continue to ask victims of sexual violence: Why didn’t you go to the police?
I have worked hotlines. I have responded to women who were injured and assaulted. I have facilitated support groups and listened as Survivors tried to put words around experiences that were frightening, humiliating, confusing, painful, or difficult even for them to understand. After years of doing this work, I believe we need to turn that familiar question around.
Before asking why someone did not report, we should be asking what happens when they do.
The allegations involving a former Cornell University student give us reason to ask that question again. I do not know what happened inside that fraternity house in 2024. Prosecutors have reopened the investigation, and where the evidence ultimately leads remains to be seen.
But there is something about the institutional response that we can examine right now.
The young woman did go to Cornell University Police. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has since emphasized what she reportedly did not say during that initial account, including that she did not say she had been unknowingly drugged, forced, physically helpless, unconscious, or incapacitated. Her attorney disputes the DA’s characterization of that disclosure.
I keep coming back to a basic question: What did investigators ask?
Women fought for institutions to become better at hearing sexual-assault disclosures, not merely better at explaining afterward why a woman didn’t say the right thing the first time.
I learned something when I was robbed
I have told this story before. Years ago, I was robbed twice within the space of about a week or two. One of those robberies happened while I was at work.
That experience taught me something I have never forgotten about investigation.
When my property was stolen, nobody expected me to investigate the robbery myself. I was not expected to understand criminal statutes, identify every possible piece of evidence, know which questions needed to be answered, interview witnesses, establish a timeline, anticipate defenses, or explain precisely how every element of the crime could be proven.
I told them what happened.
They investigated.
Nobody asks, “Why didn’t you tell us about the security camera before we asked?”
Nobody assumes that because you forgot to mention something during your first telling, it must not have happened. They were glad that we called with additional details.
And that experience helped me see something painful about the way sexual violence can be treated. When what has allegedly been taken or violated is not property but something precious to a human being, bodily autonomy, sexual boundaries, safety, dignity, the right to decide who touches your body and how, the person reporting can suddenly be expected to do an extraordinary amount of investigative work herself.
She may be expected to know that a detail is legally significant before anybody explains why.
She may be expected to understand incapacitation.
She may be expected to distinguish, while distressed, between what she consented to and what happened after that consent ended.
She may be expected to remember which person did what and in what order.
She may be expected to recognize that a period she cannot remember is itself something investigators need to explore.
And years later, people may point backward at what she did not say during that first disclosure.
That is backwards.
Sexual-assault victims should not have to arrive knowing how to investigate sexual assault.
A person experiencing sexual violence does not necessarily understand sexual-assault law. She may not know the legal definition of incapacitation. She may not realize that investigators need to know about a missing stretch of memory. She may blame herself for drinking, taking drugs, kissing someone, going upstairs, or voluntarily engaging in sexual activity earlier in the evening.
She may simply begin telling you what happened. That should be the beginning of an investigation, not an examination she can fail.
A competent investigator knows how to follow information. What happened next? What do you remember? What don’t you remember? Did you agree to that particular act? Did you agree to sexual contact with that particular person? How impaired were you? Who else was present? Were messages exchanged? Who saw you before or afterward?
Those questions do not put words into a victim’s mouth. They help establish facts.
A person can voluntarily drink and later be assaulted. She can voluntarily use a drug and later be assaulted. She can consent to sexual activity with one person without consenting to another. She can consent to one sexual act and refuse another.
Consent is not a blanket authorization covering everything that happens afterward.
There is a difference between “we cannot prove it” and “she said it was consensual”
If a prosecutor reviews a case and says, “Based on the evidence available to us and the requirements of the law, I do not believe we have enough evidence to proceed,” I hear that. Anyone who has spent time around the criminal justice system understands it.
Sometimes there isn’t enough evidence.
Sometimes evidence is lost. Sometimes witnesses cannot be located. Sometimes forensic evidence does not exist. Sometimes prosecutors reasonably conclude that they cannot meet the burden required in a criminal courtroom.
We have entire cold-case units dedicated to returning to unsolved murders years or decades later. Their existence reflects something we already understand: the evidence available at one moment does not necessarily tell us everything that happened.
An unsolved murder does not mean nobody was murdered.
An unprosecutable sexual-assault case does not, by itself, tell us that nobody was assaulted.
That is why I hear something very different when an official moves from “we did not have enough evidence” to a characterization of what the woman herself consented to.
The first describes the limitations of the case.
The second describes the woman’s experience.
Those are not interchangeable statements.
“Why didn’t you report?” assumes reporting means being heard
This is why I have less patience these days with the accusatory question, “Why didn’t she go to the police?”
Sometimes she did.
Sometimes she told a teacher. Sometimes she told a parent. Sometimes she went to a hospital. Sometimes she called a hotline. Sometimes she told campus authorities. Sometimes she walked directly into a police department.
And sometimes what happened next taught her exactly why other victims hesitate.
Research has repeatedly found that sexual violence is substantially underreported and that victims describe barriers including shame, embarrassment, fear of not being believed, fear of blame, concerns about how authorities will respond, and distrust of the criminal justice system. The National Institute of Justice has documented these barriers as well as problems involving victim-blaming attitudes in the handling of sexual-assault cases. National Institute of Justice: Reporting Sexual Violence
We need to stop treating those concerns as character defects in victims.
Women, men, and children have valid reasons to wonder whether they will be heard.
Talking about sex is already intimate
There is something else that years of Survivor work taught me. Talking about sex can be embarrassing for people under completely consensual circumstances. No matter how comforting, reassuring, compassionate, or empathetic I try to be… I am a stranger.
Now imagine sitting across from a stranger and describing sexual activity when you are frightened, injured, ashamed, confused, intoxicated, trying to reconstruct a fragmented night, or uncertain whether what happened to you legally qualifies as a crime.
A disclosure like that is not a law-school examination.
A person may tell you what happened before she has language for what happened to her. She may describe something terrible while minimizing it. She may describe something consensual immediately before describing something that was not. She may blame herself for choices that do not establish consent to what happened afterward.
That is precisely why trained people are supposed to be listening.
Being heard is not the same as automatically being believed
None of this means police should assume every allegation is proven.
Listening is not conviction.
Taking a report seriously is not abandoning due process. Investigating thoroughly is not prejudging the accused. A prosecutor can investigate conscientiously and still conclude that the evidence does not support criminal charges.
That is how a functioning system should work.
What we should reject is the expectation that victims must somehow produce a prosecution-ready account before investigators will perform the investigation necessary to determine whether a crime occurred.
When I reported stolen property, nobody required me to solve the robbery before they would investigate the robbery.
Surely we can offer at least that level of seriousness when what a human being says was violated was her own body.
Maybe we have been asking the wrong people the wrong question
For generations, victims have heard:
Why didn’t you tell? Why didn’t you report? Why didn’t you go to the police?
We rarely put the same question to ourselves.
What happens when they do?
Are our institutions prepared to listen beyond the first imperfect telling? Are investigators trained to recognize what a frightened or embarrassed person may not know to volunteer? Do they ask the next question? Do they follow evidence that the victim herself may not even know exists?
And when prosecutors ultimately cannot prove a case, can we distinguish the limitations of the evidence from a declaration about the truth of a person’s experience?
The Cornell investigation may eventually give us more answers about what happened in that particular case. We should allow the evidence to do that work.
But we do not need to wait for its outcome to hear the larger warning.
When victims hesitate to report sexual violence, we should not immediately ask what is wrong with them.
We should be willing to ask what they have learned about us.
Because women, men, and children have been telling us for generations that they are afraid they will not be heard.
And sometimes, they have receipts.