Out and Back

Dear Mandy (Ginsburg, Match.com President),

I’m a former Match.com subscriber (and, I might add, a satisfied customer — I met my current boyfriend through your service.) I also work part-time as a victim advocate for a rape crisis organization that serves three counties in my area. Simply put, I am “on call” several days each month, and during those periods I am available to answer calls to our 24-hour crisis hotline as well as to travel to a nearby medical center to meet with victims who are undergoing post-assault forensic examinations, popularly known as rape kit exams. In both scenarios, I provide information about the services provided by our organization, answer questions, and offer support and understanding. I will be the first to admit that this kind of work can, at times, be extremely difficult, but it is also tremendously rewarding and I truly can’t imagine not doing it. My work puts me in touch with people from all walks of life — from the victims/survivors themselves to law enforcement personnel to medical and mental health professionals.

As you may or may not know, April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month, so the recent announcement of Match.com’s plans to begin screening its members against a national sex offender registry comes at a highly appropriate time. However, while I applaud your company for taking this step,  there are some vitally important facts that your subscribers must take into consideration, and in the true spirit of “awareness” that pervades this month, I hope Match.com will work to educate its members about what sex offender registry screening can and — more importantly — cannot do.

An oft-cited FBI statistic estimates that only about 20% of sexual assaults are ever reported to law enforcement.  That’s 1 in 5. To humanize that a little, for every victim I meet at the hospital who has filed a police report, that means that there are probably four more people out there who were assaulted but who chose not to report it to the police.  For every 20 victims I meet, there are (theoretically) 80 more that the police don’t know about.

So right out of the gate, we know that sexual assault is one of the most — if not the most — under-reported violent crimes. It’s also one of the most commonly perpetrated, and on top of that, sexual offenders tend to have extremely high rates of recidivism.

According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), if a rape is reported, there is only slightly better than a 50% chance of an arrest. If an arrest is made, the chance of prosecution is 80%, but the chance of conviction sits at only 58%. There are a lot of reasons for this, to wit: a victim may decide to drop the charges because he or she doesn’t want to go through the trauma of a trial, the forensic examination may turn up insufficient physical evidence, or a plea agreement may be struck which allows the accused to plead to a lesser, non-sexual offense (simple assault, for instance.) There are other possibilities, too. However, if there is a felony conviction, the chance that the offender will spend time in jail is only 69%. And these statistics are for reported sexual assaults.

According to RAINN, when unreported sexual assaults are factored in to the equation, 15 out of every 16 sexual offenders walk free. 94%.

And you can bet that if they’ve gotten away with it once, they’re going to do it again.

Obviously, screening out sex offenders on Match.com is a smart move and a step in the right direction, but it is important for your members to understand the statistics I’ve cited above. The bottom line: just because a member’s prospective date didn’t show up in a search of a national sex offender registry IN NO WAY means that that person has not sexually assaulted someone in the past. All it means is that that particular person has not been convicted of a sexual offense.

94% of sexual offenders never do any time.

Match.com already does a fine job of educating its members about the importance of personal safety when dating online — both in terms of one’s physical well-being as well as in terms of avoiding scams and fraud. I encourage Match.com to make this information even more prominent on its website, as well as provide additional education regarding the new policy of screening potential members against a nationwide sex offender registry. Specifically, Match.com can and must reinforce the message that its members should continue to ALWAYS take responsibility for their own personal safety in spite of this new policy.

Sadly, we live in an imperfect world, a world in which people are often not who they say they are. Online dating is a wonderful way to find interesting people whom you might not otherwise have an opportunity to meet — I’m proof of that. I have a wonderful boyfriend and I have Match.com to thank for “introducing” us. But it’s also too easy to be lulled into a false sense of security.

Just as Match.com members — or members of any dating site — must play an active role in ensuring their personal safety, Match.com and other dating sites must make a concerted, proactive effort to educate their members about these issues. Until the many barriers that discourage victims from reporting sexual assaults are removed and until we start seeing higher conviction rates for sexual assault and longer minimum sentences, we all must take steps to protect ourselves. No sex offender database can do that for us.