SENATOR GILLIBRAND DROPS DISPUTED SEX ASSAULT STATISTIC FROM WEBSITE

It appears that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is finally throwing in the towel and retreating from peddling the blatantly false "1 in 5" college rape statistic used to support her campaign to drive men off college campuses. Perhaps the recently released report from the Department of Justice that indicates that rape on college campuses has been on a steady decline (see graph above) may have contributed to the decision to pull the misleading sexual assault statistic from her website. Instead of a whopping 20 percent of female college freshmen and sophomores, the new, more expansive stats put that number at just 0.61 percent – or 6.1 per 1,000 students. As reported by POLITICO: MORNING EDITION:

GILLIBRAND DROPS DISPUTED SEX ASSAULT STATISTIC: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has dropped an increasingly disputed sexual assault statistic from her website. ChangeDetection.com shows how Gillibrand’s sexual assault resources web page [http://1.usa.gov/1m2xWoB] no longer includes [http://bit.ly/1C3Fi6M] a sentence citing the National Institute of Health Campus Sexual Assault Study, which concluded that one in five college women will be subject to rape or attempted rape. Gillibrand and others all the way up to President Barack Obama have cited that statistic in their push for colleges to better prevent sexual violence. But critics and media outlets [http://wapo.st/1AvC1JA] have noted the study’s flaws: It included only two large four-year universities and had a low rate of response, with more nuanced findings than lawmakers suggest.