Steubenville's troubling question: Is rape just a part of 'hook-up culture'?

[Editor's note: The original version of this story misspelled Ms. Rosenstein's name.]

That conversation often starts with learning to not blame the victim. That played out in Steubenville, where people started disparaging the victim on social media – something that prosecutors say is still going on today.

“In cases where the victim knows her assailant and engages in any behavior that those in power deem as ‘provoking the assault,’ such as dressing or acting provocatively or drinking excessively, the case is less likely to be taken seriously and, if prosecuted, is less likely to result in a conviction,” says Kathleen Bogle, a sociologist at La Salle University in Philadelphia and author of “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus.”

According to the Ohio Domestic Violence Network, 90 percent of acquaintance rapes involve alcohol. Drinking while driving became stigmatized through public education efforts sustained over a long period of time. Ms. Bogle says that the same effort needs to be directed at the link between alcohol and sexual violence, because many young people are prone to believe that consent is assumed and that the victim invited the assault because she was drinking.

“The hook-up culture is linked to drinking and it’s a really awkward thing to teach about, especially on college campuses and high schools where kids are not supposed to be drinking at all. The finer points of how to drink and have sex responsibly is not exactly a topic that educators are willing to take on,” she says.

A deeper issue, however, could be shifting attitudes toward sex. For many youths, sex no longer carries the expectation of dating or a deeper relationship, as it did decades ago. Hypersexualized videos, films, and television shows portray sex as “anonymous, impersonal, and undertaken without commitment,” says Charles Camosy, assistant professor of Christian Ethics at Fordham University in New York City.

[Editor's note: The original version of this story misspelled Mr. Camosy's name.]

“The kind of sexual encounter presumed by our hook-up culture is virtually indistinguishable from a scene in a porn movie” and “its default expectation is that both people will mutually use each other’s bodies for pleasure” no matter the consequences, he adds.

Without some forum for discussing these societal images and counteracting their influence, teens’ sense of right and wrong can be obscured.

“Students should have the opportunity to have conversations about media literacy and the understanding that what we see in the media is not always a great reflection of consent,” says Ms. Rosenstein of Advocates for Youth.

Katie Hanna, executive director of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, was present in the courtroom, says that the failure of bystanders to know what the right response was – and how to act – defined the Steubenville tragedy. “It was pretty clear people who saw what happened knew something was wrong but didn’t do anything.” 

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