The "Unnoticed" Vanderbilt Rape Case - And Response

  • Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Reading about the rape case in the CTFP written by Sheila Burke I happened to notice one item.

" ...the assault might have gone unnoticed had the university not stumbled onto the closed-circuit TV images several days later in an unrelated attempt to learn who damaged a dormitory door." 

Had they not "stumbled" on this the rape case it probably would have gone the way most rape charges, under the rug. Campus police and administrators' first thought is how to take care of it with the least bad publicity for the university. Most police officers will tell you that campus police and administrators are not equipped to investigate crimes such as this. 

It seems the university did a better job investigating a broken door than they did a rape of a student. 

N. D. Kennedy Sr.
Ooltewah

* * *

I'm not a Vandy fan but I didn't pick up the notion that the campus police tried to spin this to the schools' advantage. I will say that the article I read was online and national and not from the CTFP. It had the same quote, though, and it seemed to me that as soon as the rape was discovered, the players were axed and arrested, very much unlike what happened down in Tallahassee.  

I do have some sick feelings, though. 
The first was that three days went by before the case was accidentally discovered. The tapes reportedly show the guy taking pictures and evidence shows he texted them to his friends as the rape was occurring. None of the friends did anything about it for three whole days and clearly would not have said or done anything, ever, had they not been discovered. What slime! That is awful!
The other thing is the victims. Obviously the the rape victim, a neuroscience major at Vanderbilt for crying out loud, has to pick up and go forward. I don't know how. And then there is the daddy in the back of the courtroom crying his eyes out as his son, also a former Vandy student with a very bright future, is cuffed and led away to do "decades" of hard time.  
Sooo tragic, unnecessary and depressing.   
Savage Glascock     


 

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