December 7th 2009

Sexual Assault on Campus: Can There Be Justice Without Transparency?

Of all the college women I’ve interviewed who said they’ve been sexually assaulted on campus – and there have been a good number of them – not one ever reported the attack to campus authorities.

Their reasons have varied. Maybe they kinda' knew the guy and didn’t want to make him or his friends mad. Or they were drunk and couldn’t remember enough details to prosecute. Or they thought they should’ve known better than to put themselves in a potentially dangerous situation.

Or, and this was their biggest concern, they feared that if they did talk, nothing of substance would be done.

That last reason is well supported in a three-part investigative series released late last week by the Center for Public Integrity, an organization that supports investigative journalism on significant public issues.

Reporters Kristen Lombardi, Kristen Jones and others spent nine months looking at the reaction of four-year colleges and universities to reports of sexual assault on campus. The CPI team surveyed more than 100 schools, pored over case files and interviewed assault victims, administrators, judicial hearing officers, and lawyers.

Their main finding confirmed what many have suspected: In allegations of sexual assault, collegiate institutions invoke confidentiality policies and gag orders that largely protect the institutions, at the victims’ expense.

In many of the cases the team analyzed, the local district attorneys had declined to prosecute, turning over that responsibility to the college. Once college proceedings got underway, only people directly involved in the case were allowed to be present, and they were ordered not to speak to anyone on the outside from the time the charge was filed to resolution.

In other words, none of the participants were held to the kind of public accountability that is essential to a fair trial and is a cornerstone of the U.S. justice system. Even when the accused were found responsible for wrongdoing, they often received either no punishment or academic sanctions only. Assault victims frequently ended up feeling betrayed by their school and shunned by other students.

National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” broadcast a 30-minute segment on the series last Friday and received several calls from former rape victims who said the Center’s report described their situations precisely.

One caller said she was sexually assaulted at a college party by four football players. “I actually went to the football coach and told him what happened,” she said, “naively thinking that he would, you know, take care of it. And he looked me in the face and said 'you need to be careful where you go and who you hang out with,' when it was actually a college-sponsored party and his football players that he brought to that university.”

The local district attorney wouldn’t prosecute, she said, so she turned to her school, which ended up punishing only two of the four jocks. Their punishment? Probation, which they were allowed to serve during the summer when they wouldn’t have been in school anyway.

The victim told NPR, “I had to drop out of school because I was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and...was waking up with nightmares, and you know, it definitely took a very strong toll that obviously is still with me today.”

In my book Unhooked, two of the nine women I profiled had been sexually assaulted before I met them, yet had not reported the incidents. As close as we became over the year I worked with them, neither told me about the assaults until more than halfway through. The soft, hesitant quality of their voices as they described their experiences was all I needed to hear to know they were still suffering.

One, an outspoken feminist, said prior to her assault, she had always thought of herself as a conqueror, not a victim. Afterwards, “if I denied what happened, I wasn’t one of those other, weaker girls.”

The other victim said she left the dorm where her assault took place, “having this dirty feeling of not knowing what to do or who to tell or whether it was really my fault.”

Months later over coffee, I asked this second woman again about the incident. Why had she not reported it to campus authorities?

“There’s not much to say,” she said in a voice so low I had to lean over the table to hear. “It happens to everyone, I guess.”

No, it doesn’t. But those who are assaulted deserve to know that they will be as fairly treated under the law in school as out of school. That means opening the proceedings to all. It won’t guarantee a just verdict every time, but it certainly raises the odds.

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Editor's Note: Want to make your campus safer? Check out Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER) to find out how you can get involved!