Woke woman who wants to abolish prisons says she didn’t report her rapist to police because it would make her feel ‘silly and strange’

A Columbia PhD candidate sparked widespread backlash after revealing she chose not to report her rape because of her stark prison abolitionist views.

Anna Krauthamer published an essay titled ‘Why I Didn’t Report My Rape,’ explaining why she did not alert authorities to her 2021 sexual assault after she was gang raped in Las Vegas.

Krauthamer, a self-proclaimed ‘staunch prison abolition activist’, said she did not report the assault because she wished it had never happened and believed imprisoning the abusers would do nothing for her.

‘The prospect of being a participant in other peoples’ incarceration is as alien to me as anything could be,’ she wrote. 

‘How silly and strange it would be to have a group of people incarcerated at my expense when doing so would do nothing to fix the damage they have already so thoroughly done.’

She added that her ‘intellectual and political belief in abolitionism prevails’ over prosecuting her perpetrators.

Krauthamer also touched upon friends that urged her to report the assault, arguing that legal action against the men who hurt her could protect other women.

She pushed back by describing ‘carceral logic,’ the idea that prison is treated as the automatic response to harm, and worried the advice was shaped by that ‘logic’. 

The author also claimed not all victims see incarceration as justice, even though society teaches people to believe it is.

‘I don’t want to ruin the lives of my rapists and I don’t know if they have children. The only thing I want is for them to never have done what they did to me—and nothing, including sending them to prison, will ever change that reality.’

This excerpt sparked controversy, with many arguing that just because she doesn’t want to be personally involved in incarcerating others, she shouldn’t deny others the choice to pursue it. 

‘The fact that this woman doesn’t even consider the possibility that putting her rapists in prison will prevent them from raping other women is pretty wild,’ one X user wrote. 

Elon Musk even weighed in on the discourse, writing: ‘We must have empathy for future victims.’

Musk further said that Krauthamer is ‘enabling the harm of others’ by not wanting to report the assaulters. 

‘We need to punish the criminals instead of showing empathy to them,’ another user fired back.

‘She frames the entire thing only in personal terms, turning the discussion about the abolition of all prisons into a discussion all about her personal choices,’ a Reddit user noted.

‘Never once does she grapple with the reality of what her ideology would mean for everybody else.’

The Daily Mail reached out to Krauthamer for comment.