Dear Future President:

There are numerous problems pressing everyone in the US at this time and one of the most far reaching and common problems is rape. Rape itself is a horrible affair but with all of the sexism and politics added into the situation the crime is turned into something different. In many cases victims are scared to tell people and report what has been done to them because most of the time it ends up being seen as their fault or nothing will happen to the prosecuted. Most accusations are not taken seriously and there ends up being little to no punishment to the rapists. Rape needs to be taken more seriously as a crime.

When someone is raped the first questions asked include what were you wearing, did you lead them on, and were you drunk? Why would that even matter? If someone is raped they were taken advantage of and it was unwanted, so if it was unwanted and the victim said anything other then yes why would anything else matter about how it happened. Only 3% of rapist are arrested while the other 97% get little to no punishment for their actions. When in court, if the crime was even reported, the defendant and their team all occasionally try to turn what happened onto the victim. That it is even questioned what the victim was wearing shows how the nation sexualizes women bodies to the point that people are saying what we decided to put on our bodies as who we are. If I decided to wear a crop top and a skirt I shouldn't be punished for “asking for it” or “showing too much skin”. If that's is what I want to wear it is perfectly fine because it means I am comfortable with my body and instead of being shamed for that I should be praised for being confident. If what the victim's decision to wear something that day determines if the rapist is convicted or not is preposterous. This just adds and adds to the controversy going on across the united states about rape. Rape is unwanted and it is never the victim's fault.

The emotional toll rape takes on the victims scars them for the rest of their lives. During the Stanford Rape trial, the victim read a letter to her rapist saying how she felt about what happened to her and how what he did impacted her. In this letter she read that when she was recovering at the hospital she felt like she wanted to take off her body and leave it in the hospital. Walking around and living your everyday life knowing for her that someone had taken advantage of the state she was in and penetrated it for their own enjoyment made that woman more uncomfortable than she had ever been before. Though the letter she read didn't change the testimony for her case it let her rapist know what head happened in her point of view and how bad he should feel about what he did to an unconscious stranger (her). This case was a very extreme level and Brock Turner (the rapist) only had been sentenced 6 months in prison but then was later let out after 3 moths for good behavior. This is only one example but if any person is made to feel this way then that should be enough for people to stop raping others altogether. I am aware that this problem (rape) is not going to be ended all together but there should be a law appointed that if you rape someone there is a are serious punishment then what is in place now. Rape is the most unreported crime but also one of the most frequent occurring crime with a highest estimate of 1.3 million people getting raped a year in the United States. When putting more serious punishments in place people would learn how serious rape is and that they shouldn't do it and when it happen it should be reported immediately.

 In conclusion, Mr/Mrs. President, this epidemic that the country is facing needs to be addressed before the situation gets even more out of hand than it already has.