Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 7, 1994 TAG: 9404070142
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Like many other college women, on a Friday night she returned to the room of a guy she had dated. The room was dark. They were making out. Then his roommate emerged from his corner of the darkness and attacked her, and her so-called friend did nothing to stop him.
But in a movement gaining momentum at campuses across the state, universities are learning how to give these young victims the help they need, which includes hearing cases against their attackers.
Statewide efforts to stop the tide of campus sexual assaults, usually by a friend or acquaintance after one or both parties had been drinking, were increased in 1991 after the General Assembly asked the State Council of Higher Education to study the problem in Virginia.
The study produced statistics, such as the fact that one in 10 college women has been pressured into unwanted sex or assaulted, 83 percent of those by an acquaintance.
But now the effort, reviewed at an annual conference this week, is starting to make slow headway toward stemming the tide of assaults by teaching lessons to both victim and assailant.
Victims, say experts, should report the assault. At the direction of the state, campuses have hired sexual-assault specialists such as Betty Jones at Radford University and Susanna Short at Virginia Tech. Their job, initially, is simply to sit down and talk to a woman who's been assaulted and needs to tell somebody.
Both Jones and Short say they have talked to about 15 such women this school year.
If the woman wants to press charges, she can file civil or criminal cases in court.
Or, she can do something else that probably will bring swifter consequences and help her on the road to recovery. She can file a disciplinary case with her campus judicial board.
While not a legal body, these boards can expel or suspend students. Campus advocates say it's an alternative to criminal proceedings.
"I'm not seeing people being prosecuted, even when they go to court," said Judy Casteele, a counselor with the Women's Resource Center in Radford.
Victims are slow to send cases through the hearing system because they're afraid they'll be ostracized on campus and forced to transfer, said Anne Schroer-Lamont, associate dean of students at Washington and Lee University.
Or, said Short, they're just uncomfortable.
"It's shame," she said. "It's `I don't want publicity.' It's, `He's a friend of mine and I don't want to ruin his life.' "
On two-thirds of the state's campuses, the judicial board is hearing sexual assault cases. Some campuses, said Schroer-Lamont, have inexplicably seen a recent drop in those hearings.
Jones has seen three cases filed at Radford this year; Short has seen about five at Tech. Five years ago, such cases were unheard of at Tech, said Steve Janosik, deputy to the state's secretary of education and Tech's former director of disciplinary programs.
Teaching judicial boards to prosecute is important because the faculty, staff and students on them bring individual perceptions to the table.
"My experience on campus has been, [victim and assailant] are telling two stories," said Jones.
One panel that met this week agreed that the education and concerns of the accused need to be refined as part of the effort to increase on-campus judicial proceedings. Because the accused and the victim tell different stories, gray areas crop up in the proceedings: Both parties had been drinking, or the woman went willingly to a man's room, said Vicki Mistr, a sexual assault prevention specialist for the state council.
To help boards pick through the gray areas, the council has launched a series of judicial board training sessions for members, one of which comes to Radford on April 20.
"The big bottom line is: Courts can't deal with this," said Mistr.
Still, judicial boards "are grossly uninformed and believe they'll be ruining people's lives if they're kicked out of school."
Just as each campus runs its independent judicial board, so the release of case results is individual. Some are strictly confidential, which has led Schroer-Lamont to do some digging about what happens to attackers found guilty by their school's boards. The "vast majority" transfer without incident or go on to graduate studies such as medical or law school, she said.
"We think it's important for hearing boards to know that," she said. "Hopefully, it will help them not be so afraid to vote on behalf of the accuser who is bringing the charge."
At Tech, dismissal for disciplinary reasons is noted on a student's transcript, said Janosik.
And at Radford, records are more explicit.
"My understanding is, `violation of a sexual nature,' - it stays on the student's record if dismissed," said Jones.
The young Radford graduate whose videotaped story was aired at the annual Campus Sexual Assault Conference took her case through the campus judicial system. After two hearings, she saw her attacker dismissed from school. His roommate was ultimately suspended for a year.
That aided the victim's emotional recovery, said Jones.
"The benefit of the judicial board is it almost immediately impacts their lives," said Casteele, who works with students at both Tech and Radford.
But is a judicial board proceeding too soft on the perpetrator of a serious crime? Maybe, say counselors.
But judicial boards can act more quickly than criminal courts, the hearings themselves are confidential and the burden of proof is lower than that of a criminal court.
"We need more cases to go through so we can be providing consequences to these young men," said Short.
"Not that consequences are necessarily going to make this stop. But someone is saying, `Look, what you did was wrong. It's a big deal. Let's think about your life,' " she said.
And, said Casteele, "Getting kicked out of school is a big deal. Especially six weeks before graduation."
State university administrators are betting that as reports rise, judicial proceedings will come down on perpetrators, and over time they may slow the tide of sexual assaults on their campuses.
"I think it's certainly too early to tell," said Janosik. "Like most things, change comes gradually."
by CNB