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In order to understand how collegiate athletics fits within the wider problem of sexual violence on college campuses, the purpose of this paper is to start with an examination of the overall scope of the issue of sexual violence in the USA and the larger culture that produces it. Next, the relevant laws and adjudication of sexual violence operant in American colleges are outlined. Finally, college athletics is placed into this bigger context by highlighting a number of particular cases to illustrate a broader understanding of collegiate athletes involved in sexual violence.

The author examines the history of rape laws and adjudication and the federal laws relevant to institutions of higher education. The author investigates the debate over adjudication of sexual violence within the criminal justice system or through campus systems. The author read previous literature to determine links between sexual violence and collegiate athletes and highlights particular cases that have gotten significant media attention for clues to the rape prone culture that can be fostered within collegiate athletics.

This analysis highlights how collegiate athletics can be a context that creates a rape prone culture and that universities and the criminal justice system need further reform to overcome long-standing beliefs in rape myths which perpetuate sexual violence, discourage reporting by victims of sexual violence, deter bystander intervention and underplay the impact of sexual violence on victims. Thus, structural changes are needed within collegiate athletic cultures as well as on college campuses to address sexual violence.

College campuses and athletic departments must address climates that create rape prone cultures. There remains a need for systematic data collection of perpetrators of sexual violence, along side data collection of experiences of sexual violence. College campuses and athletic departments must have in place procedures and policy that adhere to federal law, whereby athletes are not treated differently from non-athletes and victims are offered appropriate services that recognize the trauma of sexual violence. Further progress toward a standard of affirmative consent is needed to move toward greater sexual autonomy for everyone.

There is evidence that collegiate athletes are disproportionately represented among the population of sexual violence perpetrators on college campuses. Thus, it is vital to understand this population and that connection. The value of this work is to explicate the complicated adjudication process between university disciplinary processes and the criminal justice system.

Campus sexual assault has received a great deal of media attention in recent years, with much focus being placed on the factors unique to universities that enable these crimes to occur. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the circumstances under which these crimes take place and examine the policies of institutions across the USA and Canada to determine whether legislation from various governmental levels impacts the prevalence and incidence rates of sexual assault.

A review of the literature on sexual assault is conducted to gain an understanding of the contributory factors in campus sexual assault, and fields outside of psychology are included in the search to capture phenomena outside the perpetrator-victim dyad.

The findings suggest that unique variables exist in campus culture including prevention and intervention strategies put in place by governments and individual universities. Some of these policies are aimed at providing victim services, while others engage faculty, staff, and students in taking action from a bystander standpoint.

This paper also investigates the impacts that mandatory policies would have across North America, and suggests future policy initiatives to reduce the deleterious effects of sexual assault for students and universities alike.

This chapter explores the challenges associated with proving an absence of consent in rape cases involving non-violent sexual coercion. It is argued that the continuing influence of the ‘real rape’ stereotype perpetuates an expectation in jurors’ minds that a ‘real rape’ will be attended by significant levels of physical violence and/or serious injury. The chapter considers rape law in Ireland and England and Wales to examine how existing law might be reformed to improve the potential of appropriately punishing experiences of non-consensual sexual intercourse which might be categorized as sexual coercion.

The need to revisit the current law in this area is particularly pronounced now that domestic abuse law has been reformed to recognize coercive control. This leads to the incongruous situation where coercive and controlling behaviour is recognized in the context of domestic abuse but it remains very difficult to successfully prosecute offences involving sexual coercion. The chapter discusses a number of reforms which would improve the prevailing law in this area and better align the approach to coercion in domestic abuse and sexual abuse contexts. Reforms proposed include: further developing legislative and non-legislative guidance on consent, introducing a specific offence of sexual coercion, and exploring the potential of prosecuting sexual coercion within intimate partner relationships as domestic abuse, rather than as a sexual offence.