What Happens When A Rape Goes Unreported Summary

In “What Happens When a Rape Goes Unreported”, Lynn K. Hall talks about the consequences and damages that occur when a victim of rape or sexual assault goes without reporting the situation to the authorities, in this case, the military. Hall gives us a very personal example of her experience being raped in the military and what it was like for her to go through such a traumatic event that led up to cutting her career short of becoming an Air Force pilot. Her experience and similar situations like hers prove that sexual assault, when left unreported, not only causes damage to the victim, but also their future and other potential victims.

Hall emphasizes the need to report sexual assaults by providing the series of events that took place by her not doing so. How by not reporting her case, the sexually transmitted disease that she contracted, which then caused meningitis, was left untreated. And by leaving her illness untreated, caused her to have a peripheral nerve stimulator implanted near her

brain, which led to her discharge of the Air Force (Hall). Of course, this may not be the same case as many other victims of rape, but it does underline the problems that rape victims could end up dealing with afterwards. For example, losing your career, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, medical illnesses, and so on.
Another point to bring to light is the normalization of rape not only in the civilian sector, but in the military sector as well.

Most rape victims that don’t report their incident is usually in fear of losing their career, just like in Halls case. Some feel that by reporting their rape, they may cause conflict within the unit and eventually end up losing their position in the military due to the sexual assault. It also doesn’t help when some of the military’s commanders tolerate sexual harassment in which case “the likelihood of sexual assault triples or quadruples (Hall).” This is a big concern especially if less than a third of rapes and sexual assaults are even being reported in the military. And this article is a prime example of what happens to the victims of rape and sexual assault. It’s a prime example of a victim that dealt with the normalization of rape and brings awareness to that normalization within the military and express to those who do not report it to do

so.
Halls article, "What Happens When a Rape Goes Unreported" relates to the topic in our class of rape culture. One such article it relates to is Mary Williams’ “Rape culture punishes boys too”. Mostly because it emphasizes on the normalization of rape culture and the effects that that normalization has on the victims of rape and the people around them.