Mary P. Koss
| Mary Koss | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Mary Lyndon Pease Louisville, Kentucky |
| Alma mater | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities |
| Spouse(s) | Paul G. Koss |
| Awards | 2010 Visionary Award from End Violence Against Women International |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Gender-based violence and restorative justice |
| Institutions | University of Arizona |
Mary P. Koss (born Mary Lyndon Pease) is an American Regents' Professor at the University of Arizona, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health in Tucson, Arizona. Her best known works have been in the areas of gender-based violence and restorative justice.
In 1987, Koss, along with her colleagues, Christine Gidycz and Nadine Wisniewski, published the first national study on rape. The study included the first presentation of the "one in four" statistic that created awareness of the extent of rape among college students, the development of a method for measuring rape, and coining terms such as "date rape" and "acquaintance rape".
Koss was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Koss's maternal grandparents (William and Marian Lyndon Bade) raised her and her four siblings for a period of time, while their mother rehabilitated from polio. Upon graduating high school at age 17, Koss attended the University of Michigan, where she met her husband, Paul G. Koss. After receiving her A.B. in Psychology with high distinction, she continued her education at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities along with her husband. While he completed his medical degree, she pursued a PhD in Clinical Psychology. After receiving her doctorate, she completed her clinical psychology residency at the Minneapolis Veterans Administration Medical Center, where she worked with Vietnam War veterans in the area of rehabilitation psychology.
Koss joined the faculty of St. Olaf College as an assistant professor in August 1973. She then transferred to a research university, Kent State in 1976. During her time there, Mary Harvey, of Victims of Violence Center and National Institute of Mental Health, recruited her to lead a study on rape prevalence in collaboration with the Ms. Foundation for Research and Education. The project was federally funded through a competitive grants award process. Koss' work resulted in the 1987 publication, "The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Higher Education Students." This was the first national, large-scale survey on rape of its kind. As a result of this and other works, Koss has been credited with coining the terms "date rape", "hidden rape", "unacknowledged rape", "acquaintance rape", and "campus rape". She also published "The Hidden Rape Victim: Personality, Attitudinal and Situational Characteristics." In that paper, she defined the hidden rape victim as, "one who has never reported her experience to a rape crisis center or to police." Koss defined the unacknowledged rape victims as women who have experienced the behaviors that define rape (oral, anal, or vaginal penetration against consent through force, bodily harm, or when incapacitated and unable to consent) but do not realize that their experience constitutes rape or chose not to view it that way. This is now a well-accepted finding reaffirmed by other investigators in national surveys repeated in the early 2000s and most recently reported in 2012. Koss has served as an invited speaker and guest lecturer around the world. In 1991, she testified as an expert witness at the U.S. Senate hearings that led to the first passage of Violence Against Women Act.
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