At least eight reports of sexual assault involving University of Idaho students are currently being investigated at UI according to Women’s Center Director Lysa Salsbury, one of three UI staff members certified as Title IX investigators.
But an increase in reports doesn’t necessarily point to an increase in sexual assaults among the student body, said UI Associate Dean of Students Craig Chatriand.
“One of the challenges with this work is a lot of people look at the reports of sexual assaults or rapes on campus and they’ll see the number potentially going up, and think, well, none of this stuff is working,” he said. “That’s usually the opposite, the more reports we get is more of an indication that people feel comfortable coming to us and know where to go with that report.”
While the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report publishes reports of sexual assault that occur on campus, Chatriand and Moscow police officer Lt. David Lehmitz both said the statistics reported by the Clery Act are not necessarily representative of all the sexual assaults that occur in a year. Chatriand said with his experience, it’s a pretty even split between sexual assaults happening on and off campus.
“The Clery Report is one tool, it does not give an accurate representation of our student’s experience because it is only for things that happen on campus,” Chatriand said. “Camping, back home, off-campus houses, these type of situations don’t make it into the security report … that’s still impacting our students experience so we’re going to try and provide resources to those students and try to investigate those types of things.”
Chatriand said students are becoming more inclined to report incidents of sexual assault because of a change in how sexual assault education is taught at UI. He said a larger focus on bystander intervention, versus methods of the past that perpetuated victim blaming or telling all men to quit assaulting women, is key to the change he’s seeing.
Despite the change, rape still remains underreported, Salsbury said. The nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization Rape, Assault, and Incest National Network (RAINN) reports sexual assault is the most underreported crime in the U.S. and 60 percent of assaults are not reported to the police.
Salsbury said one of the main deterrents for students not to report an assault is the existence of a victim blaming culture. This culture deems victims responsible for an assault by blaming factors like things they did, said, wore or where they were at any given time.
Salsbury also said the trauma that can develop from retelling the events leading up to an assault and recounting the assault can deter a student from reporting. She said UI investigators strive to have all investigators in the same room at once so a victim only has to tell their story once.
“It can be particularly traumatizing if, as in (most) cases, the survivor knows their assailant and fears that person having negative repercussions that could affect their life and their college career, ranging from academic sanctions to being kicked out of college to being arrested,” she said.
Associate Director of University Housing Corey Ray and Associate Director of Human Rights Access and Inclusion Erin Agidius are the other two UI employees certified to investigate sexual assault cases at UI.
The number of certified investigators has declined since last year, as two have left UI. Chatriand is available only to serve as a conduct officer to deliver cases to the Student Disciplinary Review Board.
Salsbury said five UI staff members are on standby to take courses to certify them as Title IX investigators, and Chatriand said the Dean of Students Office is currently searching for another student conduct officer.
“We have a number of people in the pipeline to be trained right now,” Chatriand said.
The loss of investigation personnel comes at a tough time for UI, as the university is still under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights for Title IX violations, along with 75 other universities across the nation. The violation under investigation is related to not investigating a report of sexual assault within the given time frame, according to reports from last spring.
“We’re doing our best, but time has definitely been an issue,” Salsbury said.
She said the federal department suggests sexual assault investigations should be finalized within a 60-day time frame, though investigations often go on for longer. This is frequently the case when investigations involve a police report because it takes additional time for police to conduct an investigation. The Moscow Police Department and the Dean of Students Office frequently work together, Lehmitz said.
“Obviously, they can’t interfere with a police investigation, but what we have found is that it saves a lot of time, and it saves a lot of repetition for the victim if we can work in conjunction with the university,” Lehmitz said.
Juggling Title IX investigator responsibilities with the responsibilities of their full-time positions at UI can be challenging, and a large chunk of time is often needed to interview every person affiliated with a report of sexual assault, Chatriand said.
“We try to corroborate the stories if possible, it’s like a really big jigsaw puzzle we’re trying to put together in a way that makes a reasonably cohesive story,” he said. “Sometimes the stories are pretty close, and it’s pretty easy. Other times, they’re like night and day difference … we’re trying to do the best we can.”
George Wood Jr. can be reached at [email protected]