No More Hiding of Sex Assults

Officials at at least one college see a rise in reports of attacks on campus as a good thing - a signthat efforts to raise awareness are effective.

By Patrick Kerkstra, Inquirer Staff Writer

Published on March 28, 2005, Page B01, Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)

Colleges and universities have long been loath to acknowledge sexual assaults on campus for obvious reasons: Rape and a rosy reputation don't go together.

But at the College of New Jersey - where reported sexual assaults quadrupled from two in 2002 to eight the next year, the most recent reporting period - campus officials are touting the higher number as though it were a good thing.

The reason? It could well be due to an intensive three-year-old campaign that urges sexual-assault victims to come forward and seek help - and not to a spike in actual attacks.

"I believe that's true," said Catherine C. Bath, executive director of the King of Prussia-based Security on Campus, a school watchdog group. "All schools' sexual-assault numbers would quadruple if they started reporting more honestly."

Although there is some debate over the extent of sexual crimes on campuses, few dispute that there are many more college rapes than are regularly reported by schools.

One 2000 survey by the U.S. Department of Justice found that, over the course of a five-year college career, between one-fifth and one-fourth of women may experience rape or attempted rape. The same survey found that less than 5 percent of victims reported the crime to the police.

The vast majority of campus sexual assaults are instances of "date rape" or "acquaintance rape," where the victim knows her attacker. Often, alcohol or drugs are involved.

"I'd love this to be a campus where none of this happens, but we know that is not the reality," said R. Barbara Gitenstein, president of the College of New Jersey, who said she had to convince some on the college board that candor was the best approach.

Gitenstein said last week she believed leaders at many schools were "afraid of the bad PR" that comes from honestly reporting sexual-assault totals.

But it is not unusual for some schools to file crime reports that - to say the least - defy the odds. Consider the University of Georgia (with 34,000 students) or the University of Nebraska (23,000 students), each of which has reported zero campus sexual assaults in several recent years.

As recently as 1997, the College of New Jersey, now with 6,900 students, was also reporting zero assaults to the U.S. Department of Education. Then the federal government was alerted by professor Howard Robboy to several assaults on campus that year, spurring an investigation in 2000.

The college argued that the omissions were unintentional and corrected its figures. But, more important, in the years since then, it has launched a host of programs to prevent sexual assaults, to provide care for victims, and to encourage an honest accounting of the crimes.

"This place has really turned around," said Robboy, who studies campus crime figures at schools around the country. "It has done something that other colleges should emulate. So many are more interested in their image than in the safety of their students or a sense of justice. They have changed the atmosphere on this campus."

Presentations on sexual assault are made at freshman orientation and to Greek organizations and other student groups. There are rallies, a sexual-assault awareness week, widely available information kits for victims, training for residence-hall workers, an antiviolence office funded by a Department of Justice grant, and a nascent network of volunteers trained to aid victims.

"We really want to give victims a choice. In that posttraumatic state, they might not know who to turn to, or what the hotline number is," said junior James Lopez, one of many students helping to coordinate the programs.

In many respects, the effort under way at the college, in Ewing, Mercer County, differs from programs elsewhere only in intensity. The University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and other area schools sponsor many similar events.

At La Salle University, where rape allegations against three former basketball players were reported last year, sexual-assault education has been beefed up, university spokesman Jon Caroulis said in an e-mail. La Salle also hired an independent campus security consultant to review practices and policies, Caroulis said.

A 1992 law requires all schools that receive federal financial aid to report campus crime. The law, the Clery Act, is named after Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery, who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986.

The big question for schools is: Will parents and would-be students applaud schools that follow the law faithfully? Or will they enroll instead at schools with lower statistics?

"It's very difficult to make a strong public statement about the reality of sexual assault while being sensitive to fears," said Beth Paul, a College of New Jersey professor of psychology and an expert in youth sexuality. "You're dealing with parents who are sending their babies to you."

But even when the campus climate encourages victims to seek help and report the crime, many are deeply reluctant to tell either the police or school authorities what has happened.

Experts cite a host of reasons for that, such as shame, or a sense among many victims that they somehow "asked for it." Then there is the difficulty of accusing a friend - nine out of 10 college sexual-assault victims know their assailants.

There is also a good degree of uncertainty among many victims as to what exactly constitutes rape.

"Even if a woman says no, a lot of them wouldn't characterize what happened to them as sexual assault," said College of New Jersey sophomore Blakeley Decktor, who works with sexual-assault victims on and off campus.

Decktor and dozens of others at the College of New Jersey are working on the problems associated with sexual assault.

"It sounds strange, but if we're successful, our numbers will continue to go up," Gitenstein said.

Contact staff writer Patrick Kerkstra at 610-313-8111 or pkerkstra@phillynews.com. Federal law requires postsecondary schools to report campus crimes, including sexual assaults. The federal Department of Education offers this information at the Web site http://ope.ed.gov/security. Here is a sampling of area schools, with 2003 figures (2004 figures available in October).

SOURCE: Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education