The Case of Beckett Brennan: Another Case of Sexual Assault in Sports

I found an article describing a 60 Minutes feature of Brennan's case of rape by three men from her school's basketball team in May 2011. It went unreported at first, like 95% of sexual assault cases on college campuses, the article reports. This article is headlined as "Brennan's case", but its byline focuses on the Obama administration's attention to dealing with sexual assault on college campuses, and stepping up about doing something about it. The article says "guidelines to help colleges deal with it" are being implemented, "But it won't be easy. Adjudicating a case of sexual assault on a college campus can be difficult for both the victim and the school, which we found out in the case of Beckett Brennan, who was a student at the University of the Pacific when she reported that she had been raped." The article reports on Brennan's case in detail and depicts her testimony in court against the three basketball players. She describes the trial as problematic because of its focus on "tons of questions about how much I was drinking, a focus on flirting" which detracted from the assailants and put blame on the victim. I found parts of the article problematic, such as the use of "alleged" to describe the assault, and  quotes from the victim talking about how she "kind of" felt like a part of something with the basketball team where she actually got to play her first year and "kind of made a difference, you know." These quotes paint her as ditsy and not confident because of the excessive use of the phrase "kind of" and saying things like "you know", which shape opinion about the victim. Fortunately, no phrases or keywords are used to describe the victim's attractiveness and how that could have played into the assault. The article does not mention any specifics of Obama's legislation regarding college sexual assault, but is reported on here.