VANDERbilt rape trial Verdicts signaling support for victims

Associated Press

NASHVILLE, TENN.

The gang-rape conviction of two former Vanderbilt University football players sends signals out in every direction.

To the two young men, Tuesday’s verdicts show that being drunk out of your mind doesn’t excuse criminal behavior.

Once doted on as potential Southeastern Conference football stars, Cory Batey and Brandon Vandenburg could be sentenced to decades behind bars. Even as first-time offenders, they could spend the prime of their athletic lives in a Tennessee prison.

The two remaining defendants purported to have joined Batey and Vandenburg in the dorm room attack, former players Jaborian McKenzie and Brandon Banks, probably helped themselves by cooperating with authorities, but their consequences loom much larger now that their former teammates have been found guilty.

University officials, experts on sex crimes and survivors of sexual assault at Vanderbilt and all over the country hope the verdict’s loudest signal goes out to women suffering in silence — telling them that justice is possible without destroying their own lives in the process.

Most college sex assaults don’t turn out this way. A recent Justice Department study found that 80 percent of campus rapes went unreported between 1995 and 2013, compared with 67 percent in the general population.

The victim said she hopes her experience will encourage others to discuss how to end campus rapes.

In this case, the evidence was overwhelming. Jurors saw university surveillance video and the players’ own graphic cellphone images that put them at the scene of the June 23, 2013, attack. Vandenburg could be heard laughing and encouraging the attack on video he shared while it was happening.