Molly didn’t feel comfortable reporting to the University of Maryland Police after she was sexually assaulted. Telling someone else a narrative of her assault seemed daunting, and even after reliving the details, she didn’t think the police would believe her.
“I didn’t think anything good would come from it,” the University of Maryland alumna said. “I didn’t think anything would happen to my perpetrator. I don’t have faith in the justice system when it comes to sexual assault, anyways.”
Sexual violence is rarely reported, and just one out of the xx survivors interviewed for this series said she reported to the police. Survivors interviewed cited concerns of reliving trauma, enduring victim-blaming and having their stories met with skepticism as reasons they didn’t report.
Statistics show one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college, yet the number of rapes reported across Big Ten schools rarely reached one per 1,000 students, according to 2015 Clery Act reports collected by the U.S. Education Department.
Even fewer lead to criminal prosecutions. Out of every 1,000 instances of rape, 13 are referred to a prosecutor, and seven cases will lead to a felony conviction, according to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network.
To ensure a fair and equitable process in rape investigations, officers must use trauma-informed investigation techniques, such as asking non-leading, open-ended questions or understanding trauma’s effects on the brain, according to Jim Hopper, a clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma and regularly trains police officers around the country.
Detectives from the University of Maryland Police Criminal Investigations Unit receive regular training that includes topics such as homicide, fraud and sexual assault investigations, but the patrol officer who first responds to a sexual assault victim’s call and collects initial information doesn’t necessarily have access to that regular training, and may not have received the 2015 trauma-informed investigations training from this university’s Title IX office. All officers are required to go through state-mandated training, so the Title IX office provided University Police staff with an “added tool,” according to police chief of staff David Lloyd.
“You’re putting people in the mindset that, ‘I can trust the person that I’m telling this secret, this incident about,’” Lloyd said. “Whatever you want done, you’re in control. I’m not in control, I’m handling the investigation.”
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Interviewing victims of a sex offense is more like interviewing a police officer involved in a shooting than interviewing victims of less traumatic crimes, Hopper said, because extreme stress and trauma can create fragmented memories and victims may not remember events chronologically. In addition, victims may be emotionally numb, or have unexpected responses to their trauma, such as nervous laughter, he added.
Fear of not being believed by law enforcement is one of the biggest barriers to reporting to police, said Christia Currie, a training specialist for the You Have Options reporting program, which focuses on increasing the number of survivors who report to law enforcement. The fear of losing control after an already-traumatic event also plays a significant role, she added.
“The criminal justice system will sweep it up, and they won’t have as much control over what happened to them,” Currie said.
Yet 61 percent of about 4,000 students at this university who responded to a spring 2016 climate survey indicated that if they were sexually assaulted and chose to report, they would go to University Police. More than 40 percent of the respondents said they believe University Police respond effectively to sexual assault.
University Police spokeswoman Sgt. Rosanne Hoaas said it’s important for police to pay attention to the survivor’s needs during the process.
“We are here for the survivor, and it’s totally up to the survivor whatever they choose to do,” Hoaas said. “They can choose to come to us and say, ‘Yes, I want to move forward criminally,’ and [if] at any point during that process, even before it gets to the state’s attorney’s office, they decide, ‘You know what, I don’t want to,’ that’s totally fine too. We’re going to support the survivor, no matter what.”
University Police Lt. Raphael Moss, a detective in the criminal investigations unit, said the additional training from the university’s Title IX office in fall 2015 helped the unit understand best interview techniques when speaking with a victim of a sex crime.
The training focused on asking open-ended questions and understanding the best way to interview individuals who have experienced trauma, Moss said. But the training was not mandated, and staff turnover since then means some patrol officers may not have received it.
“It lets us know that we need to be a little bit more patient with these people,” Moss said, “and try and help them work their way through the whole process to get us the full story so we can get all the evidence and so we can help them.”
Title IX Officer Catherine Carroll said the office models training off a forensic experiential trauma interviewing technique that focuses on the brain’s reaction to trauma.
“It’s about allowing a narrative to unfold in an interview so you’re not really doing an interrogation and you’re not necessarily doing confrontation questioning,” Carroll said. “You’re allowing a narrative to unfold and you’re also prompting memory recall by focusing on sensory responses.”
University Police also participate in annual in-service training, but the sexual assault portion of the training occurs every three years, as required by state law. During this module, officers will go through procedures regarding the victims of crimes and criminal laws concerning sex offenses, according to university communications.
Hopper said general trauma training can take days, and involves role-playing practice to ensure officers ask open-ended questions in ways that don’t make victims feel judged.
Lloyd said investigations, regardless of what police are investigating, remain largely the same, but with added nuance specific to certain crimes.
“Baseline police investigations, whether I’m investigating a theft or a break-in or sexual assault, there are many things that you approach in the same way,” he said. “With a sexual assault, the more intimate the crime, you know, you just go at a different pace. It’s not accusatory, it’s more conversation, building a rapport.”
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The Title IX Office handles a significantly larger caseload of sexual assault cases than the University Police.
This university’s Title IX Office had 41 total complaints of Sexual Assault I, or non-consensual penetration, reported from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2016, while University Police’s uniform crime reports from 2014 through 2016 show nine total reports of rape.
Uniform crime reports are the monthly statistics University Police must report to the FBI, and consist of reports filed specifically to the department. University Police are required to report sexual assaults to the Title IX office, but the reverse is not mandated.
When the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct finishes investigating a report of sexual violence, the recommendation is based on whether it is “more likely than not” a policy violation occurred. While the office conducts administrative investigations, University Police conduct criminal investigations in which prosecution depends on “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Lloyd said reported cases of sexual violence are often “he said, she said” situations that are difficult to prosecute because of insufficient evidence.
“[That] doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, but if the evidence isn’t there, the last thing that you want to do is put a charge on someone that you can’t make in court,” Lloyd said, “because realistically these things follow people forever.”
Alanna DeLeon, a senior community health major at this university and the president of campus advocacy group Preventing Sexual Assault, didn’t report her sexual assault to the police.
She thought the police wouldn’t take her seriously, and knew that even if she did go forward, the chances of prosecution were slim.
“I would not win. I would never win my case,” DeLeon said. “And I would be crushed.”