Why are a few men committing 90% of sexual assaults?

About 90% of sexual assaults are committed by people who have done it more than once. This information can be processed in a few ways. An optimist might think that this is a good thing, because most men are good, and they are not the type of people who would be predators, because the vast majority of sexual assaults are by the same people. The other way to view this is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world in which we live, where the same men are able to continue to be committing these horrible acts, and not getting punished for them. Considering the fact that most women, especially on college campuses, know their assaulter, the reason isn’t that these men are not able to be identified so they continue to roam looking for another victim. No, women know who their assaulters are most of the time, but often they are afraid to seek support and guidance, because they feel like they will not be believed, or worse, because they fear they will be ridiculed. Often, the blame is turned right back over to them, like it is their fault they got raped somehow. Even when women report sexual assaults to the appropriate people on college campuses, these men often go unpunished and are usually allowed to continue attending the school. I recently watched the documentary called “The Hunting Ground,” which details this struggle that women face, and it explains further why such a small percentage of men are committing such a high percentage of sexual assaults and getting away with it.

I think that often times men do not take the appropriate steps to act when they are a bystander and they see something that may be or may lead to sexual assault happening, because they too are afraid of facing ridicule. Men are stereotypically supposed to sleep around with many women because that makes them “cool,” but this only adds to the 10% of men who do not commit the sexual assaults not stepping in when a situation looks to be out of the ordinary.