Universities' handling of sexual violence denounced

A U.S. Senate subcommittee report released Wednesday blasts colleges and universities across the country for what U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., calls a "disturbing" failure to follow sound practices in their handling of sexual violence on campus.

The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight's report -- based on a survey of 440 public and private institutions nationwide -- suggests the schools themselves may be partly to blame for victims' reluctance to report sexual violence.

"Unfortunately, the disturbing bottom line of this unprecedented, nationwide survey is that many institutions continually violate the law and fail to follow best practices in how they handle sexual violence," McCaskill said in a news release Wednesday. "These failures affect nearly every stage of institutions' response to such crimes, and these results should serve as a call to action to our colleges and universities to tackle this terrible crime."

Among the concerns raised in the report:

* Fewer than 5 percent of rape victims in college report their assaults to law enforcement, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics.

* Institutions fail to implement procedures designed to increase reporting of sexual violence, such as providing hotlines for rape survivors, offering online reporting or allowing confidential reporting.

* Schools fail to train faculty, staff and students on the issue of sexual assault and how to respond to it.

* Institutions fail to investigate reports of sexual violence.

* Schools allow students to help adjudicate sexual assault claims, raising questions about victims' confidentiality and potential conflicts of interest.

Local statistics

The report cites a figure from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating one in five female undergraduates has been a victim of attempted or completed sexual violence at some point during college.

Southeast Missouri State University had 10,755 undergraduates enrolled last fall, and 58 percent of its students were female, according to the university's website, semo.edu.

If local women's experiences match national data, that means about 1,247 undergraduates will experience attempted or completed sexual violence by the time they graduate -- just shy of 312 per year.

For the three-year period from 2010 through 2012, however, the university reported only nine sex offenses to the federal Office of Postsecondary Education, with all occurring in on-campus student housing. During the same period, SEMO's Department of Public Safety reported only two such offenses to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which keeps crime data for law enforcement agencies statewide.

The reason for the discrepancy between the two reports was not immediately clear.

A Southeast Missouri State University spokeswoman said no one from the university was available for comment Wednesday.

If the OPE number reflects the actual number of assaults involving SEMO students, then Southeast's campus is about 100 times safer than the national average.

Conversely, if assaults at SEMO match the national average, then sexual violence on campus is being underreported by a factor of 100 or more.

Barriers to reporting

Molly Woeltje, education and outreach coordinator for Cape Girardeau's Safe House for Women, said sex crimes go unreported for a variety of reasons.

Woeltje said while working with some SEMO students during Sexual Assault Awareness Month activities in April, she found many did not understand what sexual assault is.

"We hear [sexual assault], and we think rape, we think sexual molestation, but one of the guys I talked to ... said a lot of guys he knows don't understand that when a girl is intoxicated, she's drunk, she's not of sound mind to give 100 percent consent, that could be considered a sexual assault," she said.

Conversely, young women who are assaulted while intoxicated may be afraid no one will believe them if they report the crime, and those who are underage may be afraid of getting in trouble for drinking, Woeltje said.

She praised the "Good Samaritan" clause in SEMO's code of student conduct, which exempts sexual assault victims from university penalties for underage drinking if they report an assault that occurred while they were intoxicated.

"That will be overlooked in order to deal with the sexual assault. For me, that's a step in the right direction by the university," she said.

In cases of acquaintance rape, concern for the perpetrator might keep some victims from reporting an assault, Woeltje said.

"They don't want to damage the other person's reputation or get them in trouble, and they'll blow it off," she said.

Victims may be afraid of damaging their own reputations as well, Woeltje said.

"Victim-blaming, sometimes it's called 'slut-shaming' ... it's where instead of blaming the perpetrator, we look at it and say, 'Well, you shouldn't have gone out. ... You shouldn't have been drinking. You shouldn't have worn that particular outfit,'" she said.

Those who do report sexual assaults may end up having to relive the trauma of the event several times as evidence is collected and they are asked to retell their stories to police officers, lawyers and others, Woeltje said.

'Rug-sweeping'

The report McCaskill released Wednesday suggests SEMO's process for adjudicating sexual assault cases also may discourage some victims from coming forward.

The report cites student adjudication panels as a barrier to reporting sexual assault, as they can violate victims' privacy or create conflicts of interest.

While panels such as SEMO's All University Judicial Board -- which hears student discipline cases -- can empower students to help each other, they can be problematic, especially in situations involving student athletes or other popular campus leaders, Woeltje said.

"Right there, the victim's already got a little bit of a stacked deck against them with the impartiality," she said.

That problem could be avoided if universities took sexual assault claims straight to law enforcement instead of trying to handle them internally, Woeltje said.

"It's rug-sweeping, I feel like," she said. "I feel like colleges as a whole don't want anything negative ... next to their name, so if they can keep it on campus and ... maybe discourage somebody from reporting, then they're going to do that. And I'm not trying to say that's what SEMO's doing, but I feel like that's probably a general attitude of a lot of universities, to do that."

epriddy@semissourian.com

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