It is particularly prevalent on college campuses, and frequently involves consumption of alcohol or other date rape drugs.
[8] "Cultural and legal definitions of rape are always shaped by the relationships and status of those involved, a premise that holds both historically and cross-culturally.
The prominent feminist American-British lawyer Ann Olivarius helped popularize "date rape" in a series of public lectures at Yale University[21] when she was an undergraduate to describe the strangulation and rape of a woman by a now-prominent gerontologist in California, Dr. Calvin Hirsch, to Yale's police department.
[17] In a 1993 paper German sociologist and criminologist Joachim Kersten suggested date rape may be less prevalent in Japan compared with the United States because Japanese culture puts a lesser emphasis on romantic love and dating, and because young Japanese people have less physical privacy than their American counterparts,[28][29] and in her 2007 book Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation, American feminist Veronica Chambers questions whether date rape is under-reported in Japan because it is not yet understood there to be rape.
[34] Researcher Mary Koss says the peak age for women being date raped is from their late teens to early twenties.
[8] Even though date rape is considered a hurtful, destructive and life-changing experience, research done by Mufson and Kranz[35] showed that lack of support is a factor that determines the fragmented recovery of victims.
They refused to disclose any information about the sexual assault to others, especially if they have experienced date or acquaintance rape due to self-humiliation and self-blame feelings.
However, the scale of date and acquaintance rape among the Black and Hispanic youth population is higher,[39][40] and has its particular risk factors.
[41][42] A study conducted in 2013 indicated that sexual assault situations were greater among Hispanic (12.2%) and Black (11.5%) female high-school students than whites (9.1%).
[45][46][47] One of the main problems of date rape attributions is the type of relationship that the victim and the offender shared.
The more intimate the relationship between both partners, the more probable that witnesses will consider the sexual assault as consensual rather than a serious incident.
[49] Date rapists target vulnerable victims, such as female freshmen who have less experience with drinking and are more likely to take risks, or people who are already intoxicated; they use alcohol as a weapon,[49][50] as it makes the victim more vulnerable and impairs their credibility with the justice system should they choose to report the rape.
[52] Therefore, date rapes trials are considered inconclusive by nature and are charged with social concerns (e.g. gender roles, sexuality, body-shape).
[53][54] Jurors’ personal beliefs and rape myth acceptance can be influential in their decision when it comes to evaluating the scenery, evidence, and making a sentence.
Often, even in cases in which sufficient physical evidence is present to support conviction, juries have reported being influenced by irrelevant factors related to the female victim such as whether she used birth control, engaged in non-marital sex, was perceived by jurors as sexually dressed, or had engaged in alcohol or other drug use.
[55] David Lisak argues that prevention efforts aimed at persuading men not to rape are unlikely to work, and universities should instead focus on helping non-rapists to identify rapists and intervene in high-risk situations to stop them.
[58] The combination of sexual harassment prevention tips, survival information and the psychosocial data gathered from women's assessment of date risks, make these programs focus on broad topics and do not emphasize specific and particular areas of date rape prevention.
[69] In her 1994 book The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism, American author Katie Roiphe wrote about attending Harvard and Princeton in the late 1980s and early 1990s, amid what she described as a "culture captivated by victimization", and argued "If a woman's 'judgment is impaired' and she has sex, it isn't always the man's fault; it isn't necessarily always rape.