COLLEGE SEXUAL ASSAULTS-1 in

5 college women say they were violated

Story by Nick Anderson, Scott Clement-Photos by Evelyn Hockstein-June 12,

2015

Twenty percent of young women who attended college during the past four years say
they were sexually assaulted, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family
Foundation poll. But the circle of victims on the nations campuses is probably even
larger.
Many others endured attempted attacks, the poll found, or suspect that someone
violated them while they were unable to consent. Some say they were coerced into sex
through verbal threats or promises.
In all, the poll found, 25 percent of young women and 7 percent of young men say they
suffered unwanted sexual incidents in college.
The Post-Kaiser poll, one of the most comprehensive to date on an issue roiling the
nations colleges, provides evidence that sexual assault is often connected to factors
woven deeply into campus culture. Most notably, two-thirds of victims say they had
been drinking alcohol just before the incidents.

Other potential risk factors, the poll found, are casual romantic encounters known as
hookups and the presence on campus of fraternities and sororities.
The findings illuminate the difficulty colleges face in preventing violence that is
widespread but rarely reported to authorities. Cases that do land on the deans desk or
in the criminal justice system raise what often proves a vexing question: Did both
people involved agree to have sex?
The poll yields insights from current and recent students on that issue and others:
They are torn over sexual consent. Forty-six percent said its unclear whether sexual
activity when both people have not given clear agreement is sexual assault. Fortyseven percent called that scenario sexual assault.
They do not put sexual assault atop a list of possible concerns about their school.
Thirty-seven percent described it as a problem on campus. By contrast, 56 percent
viewed alcohol and drug use as a problem.
They express confidence in how colleges deal with sexual-assault reports. More
than two-thirds gave their schools an A or a B for their handling of complaints. Just
8 percent gave their schools a D or an F.
The Post generally does not identify victims of alleged sexual crimes, but numerous
poll participants who were interviewed chose to be named.
Conducted by telephone from January through March, the poll surveyed a random
national sample of 1,053 women and men ages 17 to 26 who were undergraduates at a
four-year college living on campus or nearby or had been at some point since
2011. They attended more than 500 colleges and universities, public and private, large
and small, elite and obscure, located in every state and the District of Columbia.
Post reporters also conducted dozens of follow-up interviews with men and women
who say they experienced completed, attempted or suspected assaults. Their accounts
reveal anguish, fury and confusion about incidents, on and off campus, that haunt a
time of discovery and growth. In their first years away from home, while exploring the
freedom and opportunity of college life, these students learned the pain of sexual
violence.
A 21-year-old at a public university in the Southeast who participated in the poll said
she was raped by a male student who escorted her out of a nightclub after she suddenly
became woozy and separated from a group of friends. Someone, she suspects, had

slipped a drug into her rum drink.

In the morning, I woke up and my lip was so swollen, the woman said. I just
remember sobbing and sobbing and sobbing the next day. You learn a lot of lessons.
Like most who said they had been assaulted, the woman did not report the incident to
university officials or police. She said she worried about whether she would ruin the
mans future and wondered what to make of what had happened: Had there been a
misunderstanding? Should she have been more vehement in saying no? She
remembers clearly crying during the attack. She knew it was rape. But how would
others see it?
Something very wrong happened, she said. I would never wish what happened to
me to happen to anyone.
The poll defined sexual assault to include five types of unwanted contact: forced
touching of a sexual nature, oral sex, vaginal sexual intercourse, anal sex and sexual
penetration with a finger or object.
After they were read this definition, 5 percent of men and 20 percent of women said
they had been sexually assaulted in college. Their assailants used force or threats of
force, or they attacked while their victims were incapacitated.
The effect on campuses is even broader. Three in 10 said friends or acquaintances had
confided to them in college that they were victims of sexual assault.
Katie MacPherson, 20, a student at Kent State University in Ohio, said she was
heading to a concert one evening when a drunk friend attacked her inside a car.
She was in the front passenger seat. Suddenly he lunged forward, MacPherson
recalled, grabbed her head and hair violently and tried to kiss her. Get your hands off
me! she yelled.
The struggle continued until MacPherson managed to open the door and flee.
Immediately I knew, she said. That was sexual assault.
She didnt report the attack to authorities. But through an intermediary, she told the
mans fraternity. I wanted him to get a wake-up call, she said. I never expected that
from my friend.
A legacy of sexual assault passed from mother to daughter
A mother and daughter share their experiences of being sexually assaulted
at the same college, decades apart.

Object 1

How big is the problem?

College sexual assault, a long-hidden problem, emerged as an issue in the 1980s along
with the term date rape, describing a certain kind of sexual crime involving friends or
acquaintances. The date rapist someone who ignored a no or never sought a yes
contrasted with the stereotype of the rapist as a predator lurking in the dark.
The issue has gained new urgency in recent years as the number of reports of forcible
sex offenses on campus has surged. The Obama administration has opened civil rights
investigations of more than 110 colleges and universities for their handling of sexualviolence complaints.
Survivors are pressing colleges for some measure of justice, such as expulsion, even
when offenses are not reported to police. Accused students, bewildered by the scrutiny
of sexual encounters they thought were consensual, complain that internal inquiries
are stacked against them.
Overhanging the debate are questions about the extent of the problem. President
Obama, relying in large part on a 2007 federally funded study of students at two
unidentified public universities, said last year that an estimated one in five women
has been sexually assaulted during her college years.
Skeptics call that statistic misleading, citing a 2014 study from the federal Bureau of
Justice Statistics that found college women were victims of rape or sexual assault at an
annual rate of 6.1 per 1,000. Non-students, the BJS said, were raped or sexually
assaulted more often than students. The 2007 and 2014 studies differed significantly
in methodology. The earlier survey, by RTI International, asked about specific
scenarios of unwanted sexual contact. The BJS study, more focused on crime, asked
directly about rape, attempted rape and other sexual attacks. Last year, a blue-ribbon
panel said it was highly likely the BJS method underestimates victimization.

The Post-Kaiser poll used questions and definitions similar to those in the 2007 study.
The polls margin of sampling error overall was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
For answers from women or men only, it was five points.
More than two dozen major universities, from Harvard to the University of Southern
California, are surveying their own students this year to learn how often sexual assault
occurs and what they can do to prevent it. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
last fall said 17 percent of female undergraduates who replied to a survey experienced
unwanted sexual behavior at MIT, from touching or kissing to incidents that fit the
definition of sexual assault and rape. Researchers reported in May that 19 percent of
female freshmen at an upstate New York university said they were raped or victims of
attempted rape within a year of starting at school.
The Post-Kaiser poll found that 58 percent of men believe the share of women sexually
assaulted at their school is less than 1 in 5. An identical majority of women believe the
share assaulted is 1 in 5 or greater.
Students seem less worried about sexual assault than the general public. The poll
found 12 percent view it as a big problem at their school. But a separate Kaiser survey
in March found 57 percent of the public at large saw college sexual assault as a big
problem.
Many students point to another problem: alcohol.
Booze, from cheap beer to odd concoctions of liquor and juice, creates major risks.
Analysis of the poll found that women who say they sometimes or often drink more
than they should are twice as likely to be victims of completed, attempted or suspected
sexual assault compared with those who rarely or never do.
A 25-year-old woman recalled a date in her freshman year with a classmate at the
University of Pittsburgh. They went to a friends house. He handed her a drink. It
might have been a juiced vodka. A very strong one.
I woke up the next morning without any pants on, the woman said, and without any
recollection. A few weeks later, she said, the man made a comment about wanting to
see me again and do what he did before. It led me to believe we had some sort of sexual
contact.
If so, the woman said, it was without her consent; she was incapacitated.
I was in no state of mind to say yes to sex, she said. The memory is so, so foggy.

Twenty percent of women and 5 percent of men

reported being sexually assaulted either by
physical force or while incapacitated.

A question of consent
Another risk factor: hookups. Sixteen percent of women described their dating status
during most of college as hooking up from time to time. They were more likely to
report being sexually assaulted or experiencing an attempted or suspected assault than
those who were mostly in relationships or those who were not in relationships and not
hooking up with anyone.
The poll results suggested that women at colleges with fraternities and sororities were
more likely to be assaulted. But statistical analysis found that several other campus
characteristics were non-factors. It apparently made little difference whether the
school was large or small, public or private, religiously affiliated or described by
students as a party school. Nothing about the race, ethnicity, social class, study
habits or religious practices of students predicted whether they would be victims.
Three-fourths of all victims said they told someone about the incident but only
11 percent told police or college authorities. This finding echoes what experts have long
said: Sexual assault is a vastly underreported crime.
Even though 73 percent of those polled said sexual-assault claims are rarely or almost
never fabricated, many victims are reluctant to step forward because they fear
repercussions. More than 4 in 10 women said it is very or somewhat likely that a
woman will be criticized by other students if she reports an assault.
A 19-year-old at the University of Michigan who suspects she was sexually assaulted
after she got blackout drunk at a fraternity party explained why she didnt report it to
authorities: I didnt want to start an entire thing. I didnt want that whole frat to have
a backlash against me.
She did, however, tell a male friend. His response ended their friendship. He said her
suspicion about what happened was wrong: Theres a difference between having
drunk, regrettable sex, and being raped, she recalls him saying.
The students experience underscored one of the most divisive aspects of college sexual
assault: The facts of any given incident, especially those left uninvestigated, are often
in dispute. That gives rise to speculation about what happened and who was to blame.
The poll found evidence that myths about sexual assault persist among students

despite efforts in recent years to dispel them. Six in 10 women said it was a common
attitude on their campuses that if a woman is sexually assaulted while drunk she is at
least somewhat responsible. Nearly 6 in 10 women also said it was commonly believed
that when women go to parties wearing revealing clothes, they are asking for trouble.
Slight majorities of men said those attitudes were not common on their campuses.
When posed a hypothetical situation in which they hear that a man is accused of
sexually assaulting a woman on campus, about two-thirds of those polled said they
generally believe the man is more to blame. About 3 in 10 said both people share
blame. Almost none said the woman is more to blame.
A 24-year-old woman who recently graduated from a private university in the
Northeast said there were times as a student when she was so drunk that she was
unable to consent to sex. She would wake up in bed with someone the next day and say
to herself: What? This is not okay. I didnt agree to this.
But she said the men involved might also have been too drunk. Whether the other
person had the capacity to consent either is something to take into account, she said.
So its like were both raping each other.
In the past two years, colleges have begun urgent campaigns to prevent sexual assault.
The poll found deep skepticism about some proposals. Seventy-three percent of those
at schools with Greek-letter organizations said eliminating fraternities or sororities
would have little to no effect. About half of all respondents voiced doubts about the
effectiveness of a crackdown on alcohol.
Instead, 9 in 10 said training students to disrupt potentially harmful situations would
be effective a technique known as bystander intervention. Nearly as many
85 percent favored harsher punishments for those found guilty of sexual assault.
Colleges have come under fire for leniency toward students they find responsible for
sexual assault in disciplinary probes. Federal data show that colleges often reprimand
or suspend students in such cases, or order them to undergo counseling, rather than
expel them.
Debate has emerged in recent years over whether colleges should be involved in
sexual-assault probes at all. Nearly half endorsed the view that as a serious crime,
sexual assault should be investigated only by the police. But 83 percent said that if a
victim chooses not to go to police but still wants an incident investigated, schools
should be required to do so.
There was a gender split on another key question: whether it is more unfair for an
innocent person to get kicked out of college after a sexual-assault accusation, or for a
person who commits a sexual assault to get away with it.
Men were divided, with 49 percent seeing expulsion of the innocent as the greater

injustice and 42 percent taking the other side. But by a decisive 20-point margin,
women viewed it as more unfair for an assailant to go unpunished.

It
took a long time for Erickson, seen in Phoenix, to realize that she had been
raped in a dorm at Beloit College. We were kind of wrestling around, she
said. Things turned more sexual. I told him to stop. He thought I was
joking. I froze. Afterward, she brushed it off. But years later, a flashback
crystallized what had gone wrong, and she broke down sobbing.
Kristina Erickson, 23, said she pursued punishment after her second sexual assault at
Beloit College in Wisconsin. The first time, she said, she was kind of wrestling
around in a dorm with a man she knew when things turned sexual. I told him to
stop, she said. He thought I was joking. I froze.
Erickson never reported that incident even though she later concluded it was rape. The
second time, she said, a drunk man stuck his hand up her skirt in January 2013 as she
walked past him in the crowded basement of a fraternity house. She shoved his hand
away and yelled at him. Soon after, she filed a complaint with the college. A sanctions
letter shows the alleged assailant received a suspension.
Shortly before she graduated, Erickson decided enough was enough. She wanted to
push the issue into the open. She wrote an essay for the student newspaper about her
experience with sexual assault. It revealed that her mother also had been raped while
she was a student at Beloit in the 1980s. I got a lot of texts, a lot of e-mails, Erickson
said. People contacting me, saying, Hey, it happened to me, too.

Anderson reported from Kent, Ohio; Los Angeles; and Washington. Emma Brown,
Peyton M. Craighill, Steve Hendrix and Susan Svrluga in Washington contributed to
this report.