Sexual assault on campuses: trends and prevention.

Abstract

This paper describes a study in which campus victim advocates addressed trends in sexual assault on campus and strategies to prevent sexual violence on campus. Results suggest that technological and structural changes have influenced the kinds of violence occurring on college campuses. Prevention strategies include building awareness about sexual violence.

Introduction

Early estimates on sexual assault against college students suggested that one in four women on college campuses are victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault (Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski, 1987). Perpetrators tended to be known acquaintances, with one in twelve males in the same study admitting to engaging in behaviors that constituted sexual assault. The federal response has entailed requirements that colleges develop various programs to educate about campus violence and maintain data about the extent of violence occurring on college campuses (Lee et al., 2003).

Despite these guidelines, research suggests that only about one third of college campuses comply with the reporting guidelines (Karjane, Fisher, and Cullen, 2005). What this suggests is that college are using disparate strategies to prevent and report crime data to federal authorities. Confusion exists on such basic issues such as who should collect the crime data--the university or the police (Aguzzi, 2003). This is troublesome because actions of the college and university can serve to protect students (Lyman, 2003).

Many educators may forget that violence is a real issue in students' lives. (Payne and Fogerty, 2006). It is imperative that those working with college students recognize this fact. If one-fourth of students have been victims of sexual abuse alone, and even more will have been victims of other forms of violence, then it is difficult to imagine any college course in which at least some of the students have been victims of violent offenses. Consequently, it is important to note that everyone, including college professors, is involved in the response to violence. This is not just an issue that effects victims; rather, it is an issue that inevitably effects everyone.

Methods

To gain insight into the trends in sexual assault cases occurring on college campuses, seventeen campus victim advocates participated in a focus group interview in August of 2004. Participants were specifically asked about the kinds of sexual violence cases they encountered as well as the appropriate strategies to prevent sexual violence. The seventeen representatives consisted of a police officer, a sergeant in the Department of Safety, a director of judicial affairs, an intern, and thirteen sexual assault advocates prevention specialists and coordinators. To ensure the confidentiality of the respondents, we will refer to them as victim advocates or representatives. Their responses were content analyzed using standard rules of manifest and latent content analysis. This entailed counting words, themes, and phrases and searching for patterns that were consistently suggested by the workers. The first author coded the responses and a member of the Virginia Department of Health and a representative from the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center reviewed the analysis and findings to assess whether the patterns uncovered by the coder were in line with the underlying themes identified.

Results

According to the campus representatives, recent technological, social, and cultural changes, however, have influenced the nature of sexual assault on campuses throughout Virginia. Specific trends arising out of these changes include the following:

* Increased use of club drugs

* Internet crimes

* Harassment and stalking through technology

* Multiple victims

* "Identity Theft"

With regard to increases in the use of club drugs, campus representatives reported that drug use was common in sexual assault cases. Some of these instances include situations where male college students "drug" a female college student, while others seemed to involve recreational use by both parties. Here's how three of the participants (two advocates and one cop) described the role of drugs in sexual assault cases on campuses at the August 2004 focus group:

* [] 'Drugs but I see a lot of cases where 1 suspect someone was drugged, but usually too much time has elapsed to get testing done. SO it's more understanding what these drugs do and thinking this is what's happened, but we don't have evidence of it. I've seen more this year; I've seen several even recently.

* [] Last year there was an increase, GHB, rohypnol, and ecstasy...Then don't realize what's going on, but as far as date rape drugs and those types, for some reason, amongst my population, which is predominantly black, they are catching up to the use of rohypnol and other drugs. I'm bracing my people on campus to look for these things...We've got folks who are selling it for the specific reason to get next to a young lady; whether it's date rape, whether it's we're going to have a house party and invite these freshman girls.

* [] I was thinking too that we certainly have a lot of students who are sexually assaulted in their first year at the university, and even if they don't come forward until their 2nd, 3rd, 4th of 5th year, that's when most of the sexual assaults occur, in their first year. We see a lot of parties targeted to first year students as well.

In terms of Internet crimes and technological stalking or harassment, one of the police officers and four of the advocates cited different ways that college students could fall prey to what can be termed "Internet victimization." For example, some students have had their sexual liasons taped and placed on websites for public review. Very often, these cases are so difficult to adjudicate that nothing can be done to remove the videos from online. Or, offenders may simply threaten to post pictures or videos. Here's how one campus advocate described this new phenomenon:

   The Internet stuff is a definite trend because I certainly have seen
   cases where they may have had consensual sex, and then she doesn't
   want to have anything more to do with him, then he tells her he has
   it on tape and tells her he'll show her parents, or put it on the
   internet ... Also, the chat rooms are amazing, these poor young
   freshman women end up having their whole life before them on the
   chat room because of one of their new "friends" who happens to be a
   male freshman knows a little bit about their sexual history and it
   putting it all on the internet.

Another trend that many of the representatives agreed was becoming more common was instances in which multiple victims of one offender were coming forward to the police. The campus representatives explained that with cultural awareness promoting the reporting of sexual assault, more and more cases of "serial rapists" are coming to the attention of campuses. The following two comments by two different officials (one a police officer and one a crisis center director) reflect this trend:

* One of the things I noticed this past year [August 2003-August 2004], was that I was having several cases with multiple victims. There were multiple victims of the same perpetrator coming forward at different times. I think the other thing that continues to amaze me is the number of dating violence cases that are coming forward, and there can be sexual assault in those, or other forms of dating violence.

* I've got a young man who's already been convicted on one felony count and he's getting ready to go away for a long time. He's operated in the area and targeted female freshmen. Basically tried to dupe them into believing that he had video of them doing lewd acts and threatening to put it on the Internet. He blackmailed, convinced these young ladies over the telephone to meet this person at a particular place off campus... I've got 18 cases in the last 2 years by the same perpetrator. I finally got him locked up this summer.

Another trend that the representatives described was increases in occurrences of what can be coined "sexual identity theft." There are two variations of "sexual identity theft." In the first variation, a type of Internet crime, perpetrators take on the identity of an unsuspecting college student, usually a female, and send e-mails or place announcements on Websites asking for sex. Said one campus representative: "Well I've also had people steal other people's identity, and then pretend to be them and email people and tell them to come over and have sex; the women then has people showing up at her house. As well as cyber stalking stuff too."

A second variation of "sexual identity theft" occurs when perpetrators mask their identity as if to make the victim, again usually a woman, think she is having sex with one person, probably her boyfriend, when in fact, she is having sex with one of his friends. More often than not, these situations appear to involve drug or alcohol use by both the perpetrators and the victims. One campus police officer described the following scenario: "You'll have a young woman in the room, she'll be having sex with one young man, he will get up, and another young man will come in. She's so intoxicated, and the atmosphere was so dark, she didn't know that by the time she finished she'd truly had sex with seven different men." To be sure, this an example rape, but perpetrators are believed to see their actions as freshmen or sophomoric pranks.

Prevention Challenges

Campus representatives cited two strategies to prevent sexual assault on campuses-education and law enforcement. In terms of education, representatives reported targeting certain groups such as freshmen, Greeks, and athletes. Sometimes, these educational efforts relied on the voices of upperclassmen who could give advice to their fellow students. Here's two such examples provided by the victim advocates:

* We're focusing on men and women, we focus on our Greek community because our Greek community is sometimes approaching 50%, and a lot of our incidents of sexual assault are people who are coming from, or at, their parties that took place in some of our fraternity houses. So we've taken steps to educate our Greek community, to place someone who is trained with SA prevention information in every fraternity and sorority house on campus. The focus we're trying to take now is more peer to peer educators as opposed to having myself or some other adult talking to students.

* We've had a peer support program going since 1997 which has 3 levels: peer education, which is information giving; peer companions who are one on one with a client; peer advocate who take the pager that I wear and act as first responders. In addition we have another group that has gained momentum over the last year because of VDH funding which is called Men's Allys group--male students that were hand picked by the athletic dept, Greek life advisor, some general guys, also male staff and faculty members we've added to the group and call them male mentors. They've been training over the last year about the effects of sexual violence on women and their goal is to help men.

The idea is that students will listen more to fellow students as opposed to adults with whom they cannot relate. In considering the prevention of sexual assault on college campuses, campus representatives cited the following barriers:

* Institutional barriers

* Evaluation concerns

* Fear of "official" statistics

Each of these barriers is addressed below. With regard to institutional barriers, the advocates almost unanimously agreed that college and university administrators do not place a great deal of emphasis on actively using educational strategies to prevent sexual assault. Five advocates implied, with no disagreement from the other members of the focus group, that the lack of institutional support has made the job of sexual assault advocates more difficult. Said one representative:

   We're really good with reactive measures but not preventative
   measure and that's one of the most frustrating things as a campus
   provider to deal with because the administration is all about if
   something happens get on it, take care of it, but trying to take
   the steps to stop some of the activities, or decrease the risk,
   they aren't supportive.

There was general agreement among the group that one of the consistent themes was that it was difficult to do prevention programs on campus for a large number of students. With the exception of one representative, who incidentally came from a private college, all of the representatives agreed that they were not able to do "mandatory" sexual assault education programs. The one official who described "mandatory" education cited a rather detailed prevention program that all students would participate in when they began their studies at this particular university:

   One of the things that we do is, I do all 27 dormitories, I speak to
   all incoming freshmen within the first 2 months of them being on
   campus, specifically talking to women separate from men...So many
   times they just think it's a rite of passage to be a college
   student, so I'm constantly telling them they have a right to say no.
   The other thing I do with the men is to tell them to be a man. I'm
   constantly telling them to ask, say something, if she says no,
   accept it. There's 10 women to every man on this campus, if one says
   no, move on. 1 will use anything that I can so that when a young
   lady says no they understand it's not a slap in their lace, they're
   going to be told no more than once in their lifetime. They need to
   get used to it, it doesn't mean they are a bad person, they just
   need to move on, don't take it personally ... Does the university
   want me out there like that, hey I got 16 victims in my office, what
   do you want to do?

A related concern lies at the heart of the reality of "official" statistics. If more sexual assault cases are reported on campus because of the public awareness campaigns, then it will appear that the campus is unsafe. In fact, fewer reports aren't necessarily a sign of prevention, but a sign that college students aren't reporting their victimization. In effect, there is conflict between the goals of the sexual assault center and the goals of the college or university. In the words of one campus representative, "The thing about that is that it is just the opposite of what some people in the ivory towers want. We want more and more reports, and other people think that means there's more of a problem, but that's not the case." Said another representative, "The administration will typically be more supportive when it's a stranger SA. They'll do all the measures that do absolutely nothing to make it have the appearance to the community that we are a safe place to be."

Concluding Remarks

This research shows that the advocates and police officers working on college campuses encounter several different forms of sexual assault, and these variations are influenced by broader technological and structural changes. Club drugs were created as a result of technological advances, and this presented new challenges for campus safety. Internet crimes as well offenses involving harassment and staking through technology evolved with technological advances. It is important to recognize these evolving offense types because they are likely different from those that college professors and educators encountered when they were college students. Indeed, educators in many colleges and universities likely lack awareness about sexual violence trends.

In terms of prevention, it is imperative that college professors become a part of the prevention network. Just as crime prevention in a community requires all community members to be involved in a partnership focusing on similar goals, crime prevention on college campuses requires all college and university employees to be committed to the ideal of violence prevention. In doing so, educators must take the initiative to learn more about the kinds of violence that students encounter, how to identify the signs of violence, and the services that are available to help these students. Involving educators in the response to sexual violence offers a layer of protection and insulation that can ultimately only help provide a safer collegiate experience.

References

Aguzzi, Adam. (2003). "Sex Offenders on Campus." Campus Safety Journal, 11, 14-16.

Karjane, Heather, Bonnie Fisher, Francis T. Cullen. (2005). Sexual Assault on Campus. National Institute of Justice: USGPO.

Koss, M.P., C.A. Gidycz, and N. Wisniewski. (1987). "The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample af Higher Education Students." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55, 162-70.

Lee, Robin, Michele Caruso, Shelley Goins, and Jennifer Southerland. (2003). "Addressing Sexual Assault on College Campuses." Journal of College Counseling, 6, 14-25.

Lyman, V. (2003). "Combating Identity Theft on Campus." Campus Safety Journal, 11, 28-29.

Payne, Brian K. and Rebecca Fogerty. (2006). "The Clothesline Project and Violence on Campus." Social Science Journal, in press.

Brian K. Payne, Old Dominion University, VA

Gina Respass, Old Dominion University, VA

Payne, Ph.D., is professor of Criminal Justice and chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice department at Old Dominion University (ODU). Respass, M.A., is an adjunct instructor in the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at ODU and a research assistant in the ODU Social Science Research Center.