Reiterating his stance against college sexual assault, President Barack Obama commissioned a White House task force Wednesday to study ways to protect students from the crime.
“When a young girl or a young boy starts to question their self-worth after being assaulted and maybe starts withdrawing, we’re all deprived of their full potential,” Obama said. “When a young woman drops out of school after being attacked, that’s not just a loss for her, it’s a loss for the entire country.”
One in five women are victims of attempted or completed sexual assault, studies show. The crime is also dramatically underreported making it difficult to prosecute.
“It is the most underreported crime in the country,” said Dr. Gregory Thatcher, a Fresno State psychology professor.
In 2009, Thatcher conducted a study of 1,100 students to see how deeply sexual assault affected Fresno State. His research found that 19 percent of the females surveyed were sexually assaulted at some point in their lives.
The Fresno State Police Department only reported five cases of sexual assault in 2012, the most recent year the statistic is available.
Thatcher said that one of the main reasons the crime is so underreported is the stigma and embarrassment for a victim that students may associate with the crime.
“Lawyers today have made it a point to get rapists off by bringing up the sexual history of the victim. And by doing so, they basically make it so that nobody will want to bring forward a case, because they don’t want to have their entire sex lives brought up in public,” Thatcher said.
Fresno State has information about response methods and campus support systems for sexual assault victims on its website. The Fresno State Police Department also has forms to file grievances that could result in expulsion and referral to the district attorney for students found guilty of the crime.
However, Thatcher said there is a lot more the university can do.
“A lot of students don’t even realize they have been sexually assaulted,” Thatcher said. “So for me, if there was a biggest thing on campus, it’s that we would start doing programming for all incoming freshmen to at least introduce the topic of sexual assault so students can better protect themselves.”
The White House’s Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault is charged with developing a coordinated federal response to the crime. The committee has three months to submit a proposal to Obama.