TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains descriptions of sexual violence.
“Yeah, I can understand how you would feel like a piece of trash after that.”
Marie* remembers attending an apartment party one night in her first year at UCLA with a sorority sister, Alyssa,* and Alyssa’s male friend, Jeff,* a member of a UCLA fraternity.
Among the three of them, they finished a bottle of whiskey. At the party, Marie told Jeff that she did not trust fraternity boys. A fraternity boy had raped her that fall. It was the first time Marie had ever told someone about the rape. Jeff told her he was sorry, she said, and that she should know “not all fraternity boys were like that.”
Marie, Alyssa and Jeff all walked back to Alyssa’s apartment. Marie said she was drunk when she left the party.
Marie remembers collapsing into her sorority sister’s bed alone. She remembers waking up suddenly in the middle of the night, disoriented, to discover Jeff in bed with her.
She remembers Jeff explaining to her that they had already had sex earlier that night, an event she could not recall. Then, Jeff got on top of her and began having sex with her. When he finished, he asked her whether she was a virgin. She remembers managing a ‘no.’
She remembers lying there for a few more minutes, unable to move, but gradually drifting off to sleep again.
She does not just remember now – she knows. She knows that under no circumstances could she have given consent to sex while unconscious and incapacitated.
“It was like I was in a dream,” Marie said. “There was nothing I could say, no action I could take.”
If a person is incapacitated by alcohol, they are are not legally able to consent to sexual activity. A person who knowingly has sexual intercourse with a person who is incapacitated can be prosecuted for rape under the California Penal Code.
Marie was not only incapacitated but also unconscious the first time Jeff sexually assaulted her.
Causing a person to engage in a sexual act by taking advantage of another person’s incapacitation is also a violation of the UCLA Student Conduct Code. The University updated the code in October 2013, after suggestions from survivor advocacy groups such as 7000 in Solidarity, to include a more thorough definition of sexual consent. The definition now includes clauses stating consent cannot be obtained by force or while an individual is incapacitated or physically or mentally unable to make informed, rational decisions.
Many students do not read university policies and codes, however. Sometimes, the only training they receive about the roles of consent and alcohol in sex is during freshman or transfer orientation.
To fill in the gaps, the Campus Assault Resources and Education, or CARE, team on campus hosts educational trainings for on-campus groups such as the Greek community. CARE is part of Counseling and Psychological Services.
The emphasis of such programs, said CARE at CAPS Director Nicole Green, is not to stigmatize particular communities, but to offer prevention programs for student groups with statistically higher risks of binge drinking. In a college setting, alcohol is often a major factor in cases of sexual assault.
When students join a fraternity, they are required to attend a training with CARE. A male CARE manager/advocate trains a group of 50 to 60 fraternity members on issues related to binge drinking and bystander intervention.
“We tell them ignorance or alcohol is not a defense for what you do,” Green said. “If you’re speeding on the 405 and an officer stops you, you can’t say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry officer, I was drunk.’ There’s no other crime you commit where you can be excused for being drunk.”
The night of her first assault, Marie said there was another fraternity brother present in the room with her and her assailant. It was only after the fraternity brother left that the other man sexually assaulted her.
For many weeks and months after the second assault, Marie did not speak to anyone about what happened that night. She told her sorority sisters that she had sex with Jeff, but she did not call it sexual assault. She said she was still grappling with self-blame and doubt, and said if she were to call it sexual assault, she felt like no one would believe her.
“I felt like the reaction would be ‘Are you sure you don’t just want to call it rape because you weren’t happy with what happened?’” Marie said. “The way I handled it was to completely suppress the memories and pretend that I had wanted it.”
But she said she has had consensual sex with someone outside of a relationship and knew this experience was not consensual.
About a month later, Marie was sitting with a few sorority sisters when she said they began “slut shaming” another sorority sister for sleeping with multiple men. Weeks later, she said she heard another sister in her sorority was raped at a fraternity party.
“There’s still this pervading idea of shit happens, but you’re still a slut. … What happens is just what happened, you shouldn’t talk about it because ultimately an issue like sexual assault could ruin relationships between the frats and sororities,” Marie said.
She called UCLA CAPS a few months after the second sexual assault, not explicitly to talk about the assault, but to discuss how she was feeling homesick. During a screening call for her appointment, she described what was going on in her mind at the time.
Although she never specifically mentioned details of those two nights, the employee who took her call asked her if she had been sexually assaulted. She said yes.
Marie met with a counselor and told her the whole story of the second assault, and how horrible she felt afterward. It was the first time she had ever shared all the details of that night with someone.
When she finished telling the story, she said her CAPS counselor told her: “Yeah, I can understand how you would feel like a piece of trash after that.”
After she heard that comment, Marie said she “shut down.” She quickly changed the topic of conversation. But she never forgot what the counselor said.
“Those exact words are still burned into my mind,” she said.
Director of UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services Elizabeth Gong-Guy said she considers such an incident an unfortunate “anomaly.”
“That is something that should never happen. These are licensed providers who have ongoing, continuing education on topics of sensitivity and how to honor individual experience, particularly in understanding how delicate these kinds of conversations can be with survivors,” Gong-Guy said.
Gong-Guy said she encourages students who experience mistreatment to file complaints, even anonymously, with CAPS. It is important that the student name the counselor, so the center can intervene directly, she added.
Marie continued attending counseling appointments at CAPS, but she requested a change in counselor and never mentioned the assault to her new counselor.
She spent the rest of her quarter depressed. She would go out and drink to forget the painful memories. When things got particularly bad, she would turn off the lights in her bedroom, draw the curtains and lie down in her bed.
She left her sorority after a year of membership. She said the pervasive slut-shaming mentality was the primary reason she left the sorority.
Marie said she still has no plans to report either assault to the university or law enforcement any time soon. She is still coping with the guilt and self-blame she experiences on a daily basis.
“I’ve read a lot of crime novels, and when people were sexually assaulted, and were reluctant, I was always like ‘Why isn’t she reporting it? She obviously should … send that guy to jail,’” Marie said. “I didn’t understand the whole guilt-shame thing. I didn’t understand that at all.”
*A pseudonym was used in order to protect the identity of the survivor. It is the Daily Bruin’s policy not to publish the names of the survivors of rape or sexual assault unless specifically instructed otherwise by the survivor.