Tempest in a Teapot?

Mormon writer and editor Kristine Haglund recently argued in a blog post that BYU should offer Honor Code amnesty in reporting sexual assault — a move sought in a petition signed by tens of thousands of individuals.

“After all, if a male student got shot at Starbucks,” she writes, “nobody would check to see if the cup he was drinking from at the time contained coffee [prohibited by the Honor Code] or hot cocoa.”

This seems reasonable enough, yet an over-riding principle of Western law is that another person’s crimes do not excuse yours. If you were in a car crash caused by another motorist, and you were subsequently discovered to have been driving while impaired, you would still be liable for the DUI, even though you were the victim of the accident.

What no one is saying is that the victim in this rape case has not been charged with any Honor Code violations, but is simply being looked into. Such an investigation should take into account that the accusation was made by a friend of the rapist, and only after the rape was reported. While Honor Code investigations are serious, they are not to be equated with rape. Calling this a “rape culture at BYU” suggests that rape is common or condoned there, neither of which is true.

In the practice of criminal law, minor infractions are often overlooked in the interest of solving a greater crime. The difference between the horrific felony of forcible rape and even a major Honor Code infraction is great enough that extending Honor Code amnesty to anyone reporting a sexual assault should certainly be appropriate, and would do much to dispel the myth of “rape culture”.