It wasn’t only the length of the sentence that disturbed Carine Mardorossian when a judge in June handed a former Stanford University swimmer a modest, six-month jail term for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. It was also people’s surprise at the decision. Here was one of too many cases where Mardorossian says “rape is not taken seriously.”

An English professor at the University of Buffalo, she maintains “it’s time for us to wake up and think about how we're raising our kids and what messages come across to what would otherwise appear as normal, successful boys." She addresses the issue in a discussion of her book Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered.

Co-presented by the UMKC Women’s and Gender Studies program. Referenced Content: Framing the Rape Victim: Gender and Agency Reconsidered