Digital Extras

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 5, 2004

By KATE BRAMSON
Journal Staff Writer

BURRILLVILLE -- A teenage boy and girl got together at his house to study after school. Rob's parents were not home, and he kissed Stacey after the two had studied for a while. Stacey seemed to like it.

The teens are fictitious characters who generated considerable debate recently in Burrillville High School freshmen classes. An educator from the Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center read a scenario about Rob and Stacey and then asked the Burrillville teens to pass judgment.

When a girl says no and struggles against a boy's sexual overtures, but the boy continues to kiss her and then has sex with her, is it rape?

That's what Sandra Malone, coordinator of prevention education for the Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center, asked Burrillville teens last week.

Yes, it is rape, said four boys in one class who walked to the back of the room to align themselves next to a sign that said "Agree." They agreed with the statement, "What happened was a rape."

"Once the girl said she didn't want to make out, the boy should have known right away that she didn't want to have sex," said Michael Spardello, one of those four boys.

In that class, 12 students decided the situation was not a rape and four couldn't make up their minds.

No, it wasn't rape, said a girl in another class. Why not?

"Because I thought the girl contributed a lot to it," said Amanda Wallace.

That's not to say the boy's actions were correct, Wallace said. But she didn't think the girl stood up for herself.

"The line was blurry," she said.

In that class, Wallace and Jessica Desautels were among about six students who thought the scenario did not describe a rape, Desautels said. About 12 students thought it was a rape. About four students were undecided.

Although Desautels took the stance in class that it was not a rape, she changed her mind after the discussions that followed, she said. Even that day, when she stood on the disagree side, Desautels said she knew Rob should have stopped after Stacey said no.

She learned a lot in class that day, she said.

"I learned that even though the girl in the story, even though she said no, and the guy kept going, he should have stopped," Desautels said. "But I thought that she should have spoken more loudly and said, 'I'm not ready for this. I don't want to do this,' so he'd understand."

Malone then addressed the varying degrees of sexual assault with the students.

In Rhode Island, first-degree sexual assault is any kind of forced penetration, and it's known as rape, she said. A conviction carries a prison sentence of 10 years to life. Second-degree sexual assault is unwanted sexual touching, and it carries a prison sentence of 3 to 15 years.

Third-degree sexual assault is statutory rape -- when someone over 18 has sex with someone who is 14 or 15 and who said yes to the encounter. The age of consent in Rhode Island is 16, so anyone younger than that is not legally able to give consent to sex, Malone told students. Statutory rape carries a prison sentence of zero to five years.

Then, Malone weighed in on the Rob and Stacey scenario.

"Because Stacey said no, because she was struggling, that would be a rape," Malone said. "She did say no, even from his point of view. She said no. She was struggling."

While the Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center often teaches in Burrillville schools at different grade levels, Malone was in the ninth grade this year because of the teen rape case that divided the school community last year and the year before. In that case, Harrisville resident Nicholas C. Plante was convicted in October 2002 of raping a classmate when he was 17 and she was 15.

Now 19, Plante is serving four years at the Adult Correctional Institutions. Many in the Burrillville school community harassed the girl he raped.

Last June, when members of the Berean Baptist Church learned of the harassment that the victim endured, they were outraged and challenged other Burrillville churches to address the issue of sexual assault. The Baptist church donated $500 for Malone to teach in the schools this year, and three other church and community organizations also donated money, totaling $1,300.

Malone and Heather McAfoose, the resource center's prevention educator, led the Burrillville classes, which several others from the center attended.

Malone and McAfoose said about two-thirds of the Burrillville freshmen thought Rob did not rape Stacey. Such responses are pretty typical when she teaches teenagers, Malone said.

"I think they focus on: they were friends, they liked each other, he said he wouldn't do anything she didn't want to do," Malone said. "They focus on the positive -- or not the negative -- in denial that someone they know could do something."

But so often, a victim of sexual assault knows the person who has assaulted him or her, Malone said. That's why she chose a scenario about two friends.

According to 2000 statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, 93 percent of juvenile sexual assault victims knew their attacker -- 34.2 percent were family members and 58.7 percent were acquaintances.

"This is even Rob's point of view that she was saying no and struggling," Malone told one class. " ... We tend to think about what Stacey's responsible for. What about what Rob's responsible for?"

Spardello, one of those four boys in one class who thought it was a rape, said he believed most of his peers changed their minds after the discussions.

"If she asked again, I think most of the class would end up with the 'Agree' side," Spardello said.

When Malone asked the students who was at fault, Desautels thought both Rob and Stacey were at fault. But she changed that opinion after the class discussion.

"I think that it was the guy's fault mostly," Desautels said yesterday.

Desautels, Wallace and Spardello each said that the schools should teach them about sexual assault. Wallace said it was good to know that someone "was out there caring for our needs and they were aware of what we needed." However, she said the classes were taught from a very liberal point of view.

"You notice there were no guys teaching that class," she said. "There were three women ... They were leaning more toward the fact that the guy was guilty. She said without a doubt that he was guilty."

Malone said she hopes to be able to go back to the school and meet with a small group of students to talk more about what they learned last week.

Reporter Kate Bramson can be reached at 277-7470 or by e-mail at kbramsonXXXprojo.com