Start By Believing (SBB) is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this month. Unfortunately, we don't understand exactly why they are celebrating.

For example, check out a slide used during its training classes -- see graphic, above. The slide states, "Of 100 rapes committed....an estimated 5-20 are reported to police." (We'll ignore the misspelling of the word, "committed.")

Now look at the most recent Department of Justice report, Criminal Victimization, 2019: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf Go to Table 6, "Percent and rate of victimizations reported to police, by type of crime." You'll see that the DOJ reports the percentage of rapes/sexual assaults reported to the police is 33.9%.

Somehow, I tend to believe the DOJ more than SBB, especially since SBB does not provide a citation for its estimate.

Sincerely,

Edward Bartlett