Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said the ultimate goal is to have 100 percent of victims of campus sexual assault report the incidents to police.
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Tuesday focused on the role of law enforcement in campus sexual assault cases.
“I am concerned that law enforcement is being marginalized when it comes to the crime of campus sexual assault,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the subcommittee chairman. “I’m concerned that the specter of flawed law enforcement overshadows the harm of marginalized law enforcement.”
The hearing comes in the wake of a Rolling Stone article describing a gang rape alleged to have occurred in a fraternity house at the University of Virginia. The magazine later acknowledged mistakes in its reporting.
Some sexual assault victims have said they prefer to work within their university system to seek disciplinary action against the perpetrator, such as expulsion, without the stress of pressing criminal charges. But there have been complaints that universities have encouraged victims to not seek criminal action because they want to protect the university’s reputation or that schools aren’t prepared to adequately adjudicate such cases.
Whitehouse said victims are victimized again if they are steered away from law enforcement based on uninformed choices. Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney and attorney general in his home state, said evidence shows that most men who commit these crimes are serial offenders — and a threat to public safety. He said students have a right to know that delays in opening an investigation and collecting evidence could make the case difficult to prove later.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., that would force colleges to have a memorandum of understanding with their local law enforcement over handling such cases. She said the ultimate goal is that 100 percent of victims report to police. “But, time and again, I have heard from far too many survivors of campus sexual assault that they have felt re-victimized by the process of trying to seek justice for the crime committed against them,” Gillibrand said.
