A young woman has just come forward with another accusation of rape by a player on the University of Colorado football team.

Katie Hnida, formerly a place kicker on Colorado’s football team and currently a student at the University of New Mexico, disclosed that a fellow team member assaulted her five years ago.

This accusation comes as the CU-Boulder begins investigating claims that sex parties have been used to recruit football players to the campus. With a number of other rape charges against the football team in the last several years, this new instance raises many questions about the reporting of sexual assault on campuses nationwide.

Because victims of forcible sexual assault often have ambivalent feelings about what has happened to them, many do not report assaults. Hnida, for instance, has said in interviews that she was frightened by the player who assaulted her, frightened by her coach and fearful of negative publicity.

The CU-Boulder football coach, Gary Barnett, has been suspended for making disparaging remarks about Hnida.

Debbie Kuykendall of the University of Wisconsin Rape Crisis Center said victims may feel they will be investigated rather than the assault itself.

“There is the fear of being judged, of not being believed, and also of not being able to pursue the case in court ? often there are no witnesses to assault and so there is not much evidence to present,” Kuykendall said. “Knowing that it’s going to be difficult can be a real deterrent.”

Lieutenant McGraw of the University of Colorado Police Department said forcible sexual assault on college campuses is likely to be underreported.

“In talking with counselors, we’ve been able to hear of instances that have not been reported. In order to help outreach programs we try to allow for a lot of victim sensitivity,” McGraw said.

“From what I understand, a number of years ago it was determined that about one in ten forcible sexual assaults was reported to the police. Our presumption is that this statistic applies to Colorado,” McGraw said.

McGraw also said university health clinics do not always report instances of rape to the police unless authorized to do so by the victim in order to avoid violating patient-doctor confidentiality. Kuykendall agreed.

“When you’re talking about adults, there is absolutely no mandated report. If the victim is under 18 and it was non-consensual, then we are required to make a report,” she said.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the University of Wisconsin had twice the number of rape instances that CU-Boulder had in 2002, though UW is only 30 percent larger than CU-Boulder. Statistics such as these can be difficult to interpret, however, because of differences in the reporting of assaults and because of differences in the compilation of statistics.

“Sometimes there are unclear differences in statistical analysis. Some statistics equate rape with forcible sexual touching, which can lead to an apples-and-oranges kind of comparison between universities,” McGraw said. He said in 2002, CU-Boulder had three instances of reported rape and four instances of assault.

By comparison, UW reported a total of 14 cases of forcible sexual assault in 2002. Kuykendall attributes this to Wisconsin communities that are supportive enough of their victims that they are not afraid to make a report.

“There has been a lot of work done in Wisconsin in the last 30 years ? the last 10 especially ? and so I think that victims know they’re going to get support and are less afraid to report. They know the crime will be investigated in a responsible, professional manner,” Kuykendall said.

Since 1990, all universities in the U.S. have been required to publish an annual crime report under the Jeanne Clery act, named for a college student who was raped and murdered in her dorm room at Lehigh University in 1986. Schools that fail to accurately report campus crime face fines and risk losing their federal funding.

But many universities, fearing poor public relations, feel pressured to underreport crime on their campuses. The University of West Virginia is currently facing charges of improperly classifying certain crime reports and omitting them from annual statistics. In the last three years, reported university crime has inexplicably plummeted, according to the Department of Education.

Still, universities around the country are working hard to support victims of forcible sexual assault.

“The good news is that because of statewide work to provide services, particularly in Dane County, we do have a lot of people to support the victims of forcible sexual assault,” Kuykendall said. “As a community, we talk about responding to and investigating assault. The police, medical personnel and community here have made a huge effort.”

According to ESPN.com, police are investigating the sixth rape allegation against CU-Boulder’s football team while Gary Barnett has been head coach. The accuser claims she was sodomized by a Colorado football player in 2002, and filed charges on Feb. 19.

On Feb. 20, the university appointed assistant coach Brian Cabral as interim head coach.