What's the worst crime you can commit? Murder? Embezzlement? Burglary? These are all felonies and carry high jail times, but I think the worst crime where there is an actually victim is rape. No other crimes put nearly as much of an emotional or physical strain on the victims. Shouldn't we show a little more Respect for Rape Victims?

Sexual assault is a very heinous crime. Rape kits are easy to acquire from the victim--though it is an extremely intrusive process--and even easy to test. You acquire the sample and you test the DNA. Simple as that. Right? Not according to "the long arm of the law." In 18 percent of the nations open, unsolved cases, no forensics evidence has even been submitted to a crime lab. Now that is pretty outrageous.

A little bit about sexual assault cases:

One out of every six women will be sexual assaulted in their lifetime with college age women being four times more likely to be victimized. Just think: A vast majority of the people in this world know someone that has been a victim of sexual assault. You may ask around the people you know and figure out that not a person knows an rape victims, but that doesn't mean that they don't know any victims. The more likely answer is that the victim just hasn't told anyone. 60 percent of the cases aren't even submitted by the victims themselves. Stunning isn't it?

Yes rape is an outrageous crime but what makes it worse is that 73 percent of victims know their assailants. Almost three out of four victims know who attacked them. Despite all of signs leading to sure fire conviction only 6 percent of the assailants ever do any jail time.

Shouldn't law enforcement at least show the respect for those victims who don't know their assailants and are actually courageous enough to come forward after such an event? Maybe we need to raise the numbers for the number of attackers who spend time in jail. We have the ability to protect the victims. Why don't we?

Semester Book Review

This semester I’ve been reading some realistic fiction novels. These are my favorite types of books, especially the ones by such authors as Dan Brown, John Grisham, and Tom Clancy. my parents have always read and their books of choice have been thrust upon me from a young age. Every time my dad goes to Little Rock he always buys a brand new paperback from Barnes and Noble so I have always had a plethora of books at my disposal.

• The Broker by John Grisham—2 books

This is a great novel. The plot is very windy and shadowed and I really didn’t ever know what was going to happen. It is action packed and takes place in the ancient streets of the Italian city Barcelona. I also really liked how all the streets, cafés, and plazas were all accurate and real. A recently pardoned prisoner tried to broker a deal to give the world’s most powerful satellite surveillance system to the highest bidder. CIA—not knowing who built of owned this amazing system—sent the prisoner to Italy and slowly leaked the news of his whereabouts to the other leading countries in the world to try to find out who is trying to keep this satellite secret. Along the way the prisoner makes a few friends and makes contact with his son that he rarely communicated with when he wasn’t in jail. In my opinion this is one of Grisham’s best works and this is a novel that everyone should read.

• Angels and Demons by Dan Brown—3 books

This is the prequel to the very popular yet very controversial The Da Vinci Code. The main character Robert Langdon, a Harvard University symbologist, is faced with the quest of uncovering the mysteries of a secret society called the Illuminati, and unraveling the plot of this brotherhood to annihilate Vatican City. The main theme is the conflict between science and religion which is extremely divisive. This is an action-packed novel which I really like. Again in this novel all the churches, villas, plazas, and art pieces are real and accurate. Though Dan Brown has only written five novels with two of them being completely unrelated to all the others, he is a great author and I think everyone should read all his books.