HONOLULU (U-WIRE) — In college, parties are prevalent, alcohol flows freely, and sexual assaults are becoming commonplace. A study published this year with support from the U.S. Department of Justice brings to light a new epidemic: the underreporting of sexual assaults.
In September of this year, there was a party on the University of Hawaii’s campus held annually by law school students. Early that morning, the Honolulu Police Department and Campus Security responded to a call about an apparent sexual assault. Several male students reported seeing another male assaulting a female.
When HPD and Campus Security arrived, the girl had left. The witnesses recounted what they had seen, but because the girl was gone, no formal report was made. University of Hawaii Campus Security captain Donald Dawson stated, “There was no crime because there was no victim.”
If the University of Hawaii had policies allowing third-party reporting, this incident would have been made public to all students and faculty while keeping the victim’s identification confidential. Reporting sexual assaults is helpful in preventing similar crimes from occurring and in protecting the personal safety of students and employees.
Congress passed the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act in 1990 to require all Title IV-eligible schools to publicly disclose crime statistics and security policies and procedures on campus. Fewer than 40 percent of colleges and universities are in full compliance with the law that requires crime statistics on rapes and sexual assaults.
In 2001, there were 249,000 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. These are only the reported incidents. College campuses have become an area of increased sexual assaults. Based on a survey of 2,438 institutions, failure to report all required data was common, as were problems related to investigating sexual-assault cases.
All Title IV-eligible schools are required to provide annual security reports detailing the amounts of on-campus crimes, including forced and non-forced sexual assaults, burglary, theft and vandalism.
There are several problems that have arisen when reporting sexual crimes. As a result of highly publicized campus sexual-assault trials, there have been numerous allegations of reports being mishandled by school officials. Only 37.6 percent of all schools require sexual-assault training for campus security officers.
While sexual-assault training for campus security is fairly common at four-year public institutions, at many other schools, training is not provided to the people to whom formal complaints are likely to be submitted. On the whole, few campuses provide sexual-assault response or sensitivity training to those most likely to first hear of sexual assaults on their campus: friends and fellow students.
Very few female victims of rape (3.2 percent) or attempted rape (2.3 percent) report their victimization to the police or to campus security. However, two-thirds of rape victims disclosed their experience to a friend. A substantial majority of these victims do not define their experiences using legal terms. That is, even though the incident is legally a criminal offense, they do not call their victimization a “rape.”
Active support from friends is the primary factor that distinguishes victims who report the crime to campus or local authorities from those who remain silent.
The most commonly mentioned policies and practices thought to facilitate reporting of sexual assaults include provisions for confidential, anonymous and third-party reporting options.
University of Hawaii’s annual security reports are only up to date through 2000, with a reported five forcible sexual assaults that year. In February 2001, there were reports of attempted sexual assaults in the university’s residence halls, but 2000’s statistics are the most up-to-date.
