Memphis Police charged a University of Memphis student with aggravated rape Saturday.
The suspect, James McBride, 19, was arrested at his two-bedroom, one-bathroom home — located less than a half mile from the U of M main campus.
The victim had been playing drinking games and “taking shots of an unknown intoxicant” at the suspect’s home when she became sleepy, the police affidavit reported.
She woke up on the couch while the assailant was forcing himself on her, police said. She repeatedly asked her attacker to stop, but was too weak to fight back “due to intoxicants she consumed,” police said.
McBride was formally charged with aggravated rape Saturday. He was later released on a $50,000 bond.
The Daily Helmsman discovered the suspect is a student at the U of M when his name and birthdate from the Shelby County Court records and police affidavit matched University records.
However, it is unknown if the victim is a student, and since the crime did not occur on campus, it is not in the U of M incident log.
The details of this incident are all too familiar on universities across the country. Nearly 85 percent of sex crimes against college women happen during “voluntary incapacitation” usually due to alcohol consumption, according to the Journal of American College Health.
“Alcohol is the number one date-rape drug,” Ann Whalley, the administrator of Shelby County’s Crime Victim Services, said. “Many times women may get drunk around people they don’t know very well and shouldn’t trust.”
One in five women will be sexually assaulted during their college years and most will suffer in silence. Nearly 90 percent of college women never report their attack to police, a national survey by the Journal of American College Health reported.
Alcohol-related sexual assault, the most common form of sexual assault, is also the least likely to be reported — less than 3 percent reported to police mention alcohol or drug use.
Although the U of M has seen an overall drop in campus crime rates over the past five years, during that timeframe four rapes as well as three other sexual assaults were reported. This year, there have been two forcible sex offenses reported on campus.
