 "Photo: Preston Drake-Hillyard")
“Messages from society tell us that it’s the woman’s fault,” said HSU Professor and Women Studies Program Leader Kim Berry. “Women have survived the most brutal forms of rape and still get blamed.”
Ninety five percent of students who are sexually assaulted remain silent. According to a study on the sexual victimization of college women by the U.S. Department of Justice about one in five women attending college will become a victim of rape or attempted rape by graduation.
The report, which was released in 2000, said that college students report sexual assault even less than the general public does.
Not only are sexual assaults underreported from students, but also from campus faculty according to a nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.
A loophole in the federal campus crime reporting law, the Clery Act, is the cause of systematic problems in documenting the number of campus-related sexual assaults according to the Center for Public Integrity.
The Clery Act requires colleges that participate in federal financial aid programs to collect, retain and disclose information about crime on or near their campuses. In 1992 the act was amended to include certain basic rights to survivors of sexual assaults on campuses, especially from student-on-student assaults.
The “most troubling” of the loopholes in the Clery Act are broadly applied reporting exemptions for counselors who may be covered by confidentiality protections, writes the Center for Public Integrity.
Confusion about the definitions of sexual offenses and when the law requires them to report them has created additional problems.
“They don’t think they have to contact the police,” said Center for Public Integrity’s Kristen Lombardi, one of the co-writers of the investigation. She discovered that not all campus staff contact campus police about sexual assaults when they should.
“Schools should be collecting these numbers from health centers. Some do. Some do not,” she said.
“There are designated Clery reporters on campus, who are usually the police. They are supposed to be collecting statistics from other areas of campus,” said Lombardi. “What we found was really troubling.”
Many times a host of barriers leaves students silenced so they don’t report sexualized violence or they don’t identify what happened to them as being sexual assault, she said.
Many students stay silent because they don’t think people will believe them. With sexual assault there is often an acquaintance involved and sometimes drugs or alcohol said Lombardi.
“There is no physical evidence, no eyewitnesses, and no testimony. Usually the assaulter turned out to be someone they know; someone they trusted,” said Lombardi. “We spoke to a lot of students that said ‘Why bother?’”
Berry said many students blame themselves especially if drugs or alcohol are involved. “The penalty for getting drunk should be a hangover; Not getting raped,” said Berry.
Often district attorneys don’t take these cases said Lombardi. Usually it’s because of the lack of evidence and witnesses.
If students don’t come forward within 72 hours of being raped, it’s too late for rape-kits. That means in many cases students have no physical evidence of being raped.
Aside from these personal barriers, Lombardi also found that students were discouraged from going through with prosecution by the administration because of the difficult process.
Students who come forward have to also go through the process of talking about their assault before a board.
Some students were asked to settle for off-the-record negotiations or meditations where the attacker is not punished.
UPD Lt. Lynne Soderberg said, “It is common in general for sexual assault to be underreported.”
“When the police department takes a report, the student can choose to stay anonymous or ask for prosecution. If students report to particular people then those people are required to report that there was a sexual assault,” said Soderberg.
However, Clery reporting is just to gather statistics and not for the police. The student does not have to give details.
“It is reliving the drama again. It’s hard. Deciding they want to report is a huge step,” said Soderberg.
Berry said it is common on university campuses to wear a double hat of concern for the safety and health of student survivors and concern for the reputation of the university.
“As of yet, we have not had training for the faculty or a majority of the staff on how to support students when they talk about being sexually assaulted,” said Berry. She added that the campus is in the process of crafting a strategic plan to prevent and respond to sexualized violence.
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