Victims more willing to report sexual assaults

Campus victims of sexual assaults have been increasingly likely to report the crimes this year, health officials said.

Though there is no documented increase in the number of sexual assaults and rapes reported, Victim Advocate Cortney Fisher said her office has treated twice the number of women this semester than in the same period last year.

Fisher partly attributes the rise to an increased effort by the University Health Center to alert resident assistants and students about her role in counseling students.

According to several experts, many women never seek treatment and never report crimes after being sexually assaulted. Because police cannot collect accurate statistics on sex crimes, the problem often lurks below the surface, threatening to cause long-lasting social difficulties for thousands of women, said S. Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus, an organization that promotes safety at colleges and universities.

"It's a very pervasive problem," Carter said. "It's significantly underreported, which means it keeps going on without addressing the problem."

Carter said though rates of sexual assault on most campuses stay relatively the same, awareness of the problem often comes after incidents begin getting reported, as in the recent dorm rapes in Centreville Hall and University Courtyard. Those on-campus rapes are the first to be reported to police this year, according to police statistics.

Fisher said while the number of women seeking counseling has dramatically increased recently, they are likely a small percentage of the total women being affected.

According to a Department of Justice study published in 2000, 35.3 of every 1,000 college women are raped.

This university counts 12,480 female undergraduates enrolled this year, meaning as many as 440 female students are potentially victimized each year.

Fisher said the numbers cited in the study are likely accurate, noting she estimates that one in 10 victims of sexual assault actually reports it.

Because the majority of the victims Fisher counsels know their attacker - which is true of most college campus sexual assaults - criminology and criminal justice professor Laura Dugan said many female college students are more vulnerable.

"There are a lot of suitable targets" on campuses, Dugan said. "Anytime you mix alcohol into the situation, communication just goes out the back door. Resistance is seen as a game and not taken as seriously."

Though Fisher said miscommunication and alcohol abuse exacerbate the potential of a woman being raped by someone they know, the recent off-campus sexual assaults by strangers present new sets of problems.

"I totally think that's something people should be concerned about," Fisher said. "Preventing stranger attacks are completely different than preventing acquaintance attacks."

Two women reported sexual assaults this month, both on Rhode Island Avenue: one Oct. 3 and one Oct. 15. Neither woman was physically harmed, police said.

Carter said campuses have struggled to deal effectively with sexual assaults.

"There's a tremendous cost to society because [victims] spend time away from work and school and lose productivity based on psychological after-effects," Carter said "It's harder for them to concentrate in class and work, a lot of times for the rest of their lives."

Carter said offices like Fisher's have proven particularly helpful.

"An institution that establishes an office to empathetically and systematically address the problem can change the dynamic significantly," Carter said.

Contact reporter Kevin Litten at littendbk@gmail.com.