After she was abruptly pulled into a van off Zimple Street a year ago, raped and left at a park, psychology sophomore Allegra Hartman said she was too distraught to know what to do for days. But it became clear to her soon after the assault that she had a responsibility to report it to the university.
After reading a BOLO about a Tulane student who had been a victim of a similar assault the day before, Hartman realized she could use the same medium to warn other potential victims.
“I thought it was really important that there be a BOLO sent out just because it’s been like a chain, and it needs to be taken seriously,” she had said a few weeks after she was assaulted.
Sending out a BOLO is the beginning of a number of options Loyola students have when reporting a sexual assault, whether off-campus or not.
According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network’s official website, one in six women and one in 33 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, with college women being four times more at risk. The RAINN Web site also estimates that approximately 73 percent of rape victims know their assailants and that over 60 percent of rapes are not reported to the police.
“Nobody knows for certain how much it happens because (sexual assault) is the most underreported thing,” said Ilyse Goldberg, assistant director of University Counseling Center.
“Our biggest push is to educate students on all their resources available,” she said.
Hartman’s friend came to find her after she was left in the park, and she said it was obvious to both of them that she needed to immediately go to a hospital. Hartman wanted to tell her story to the counselor she had been seeing, but was told that she was unavailable at the time.
The University Counseling Center is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday with a team of four counselors and a consulting psychiatrist. A counselor on call is also available 24/7 by calling the Loyola University Police Department.
After Hartman could not get in touch with her counselor, she and her friend decided to go to the nearest hospital. They didn’t know that only one hospital in New Orleans had rape kits — Louisiana State University Interim Public Hospital on Perdido Street.
University Hospital has a SANE nurse, or Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, to assist victims within 30 minutes of their call. The kits are free and the SANE nurses are trained to use them. They include Plan-B and STD pills along with other items.
Goldberg said she wants students to remember that victims aren’t required to file official reports with the New Orleans Police Department or the LUPD in order to get a rape kit with a SANE nurse.
According to Second Lieutenant Joseph Lorenzo of NOPD, it’s better to report the case within 72 hours because it’s easier to obtain forensics. But both the SANE nurses and the police department get the victim’s history of the event and the rape kits are held by NOPD for up to 30 days in case the victim decides to press charges.
“We try to put her back in control of the situation,” Lorenzo said. “We don’t want to force anything on them. We just want them to get examined, so we can make sure they’re OK health wise.”
If the victim decides not to press charges, the district attorney’s services are discarded along with the rape kit. However, if the victim decides to press charges, the D.A.’s office has 60 days to determine whether or not it has a case. And if at any time the victim wants the police to stop their investigation, they will.
Lorenzo says that campus police are usually the first to deal with the rape and they contact NOPD for forensics. And if the victim chooses to report, NOPD investigates the crime scene to ensure it meets the criteria for rape.
“If it’s not on campus, we don’t consider it a campus case,” he said.
University Police does not consider off-campus rape a campus case, either. Because of the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, LUPD is required to report on all crime on-campus and in the immediate area off-campus. According to the Annual Crime Statistics report, there were zero forcible sex offenses in 2009.
According to Capt. Roger Pinac of LUPD, the department can only report numbers to the Clery Statistics based solely on reports from victims and cases that happen within their jurisdiction, which may be why the numbers are so low.
“What’s reported to LUPD is what she (the victim) reports,” said Robert Reed, assistant vice president for Student Affairs. “That, to me, that’s the weakness of the Clery Act in general. The whole purpose of that number doesn’t mean anything if it’s not reported.”
Capt. Pinac said he encounters women who want to report, but don’t want an investigation because, “going through the criminal justice system or the student judicial system can be pretty rough and vigorous.”
IN THE DARK
A former Loyola student, whose named has been changed to Marie due to the sensitive nature of the issue, came to LUPD with a very different grievance the next semester. She told them she had been first engaging in consensual sex before telling him to stop, which Reed said still falls under the definition of rape (“No means no,” Reed said).
Her assailant, also a Loyola student, had recently contacted her through Facebook to tell her he had heard she was spreading rumors about him, and he wouldn’t tolerate it, Marie said.
The student she accused of assaulting her, who is not being identified because she did not file a report or press charges, said the two of them never had any physical contact. Marie only sent him a few texts while they knew each other, he said.
Reed sent each of them a letter, ordering him to stop contacting her in any way. Marie said she was in the dark, however, about how Loyola would go about contacting him as well as the stages of the process. Her Residential Life area director set up a meeting with her the day after she filed the report, but Marie said the area director wasn’t able to explain to her where they were in the process.
“I started getting really nervous about just walking around campus, just walking to class,” she said.
A staff member Marie worked with through her work-study program pulled her aside one day and asked if anything was going on.
“She was like, ‘So what do you know?'” Marie said. “And I was like, ‘I don’t know. University Police hasn’t told me anything. I don’t know if they’ve tried to contact him yet. I don’t know.'”
The staff member set up a meeting with Reed and the two of them. When Marie sat down with him, he explained that the other student would be contacted through e-mail and then by mail, and he would have to come in to see Reed so he could speak with him.
In the case of sexual assault involving two Loyola students, he or she can file a student judiciary review against the assailant if they choose to do so. Members of the Board of Review, a group of faculty and staff members, hold a trial to determine the truth of the allegations and the punishment of the offender, Reed said. However, there is no set punishment for sexual assault.
“He told me he had dealt with a lot of judiciary review, and had dealt with sexual assault issues, and knew of times where even though all fingers were pointing to one direction, (the review) was still found in the suspect’s favor,” Marie said.
Marie decided to avoid this process.
Marie said the lack of communication about the process sent her into a nervous fit while she became too fearful to go to class or even the C-Store very often. The lack of communication was the biggest flaw in the process, she said.
“It was me having to go talk to Robert Reed, it was me having to go talk to (th
e area director),” Marie said. “Once I went to them, yes, they informed me, but it wasn’t them coming to me saying, ‘OK, this is what’s happening.'”
The accused student said he went to see Reed and spoke about his relationship with the female student. But he never heard anything about accusations of rape until The Maroon approached him, he said.
Reed was unable to comment on the matter.
Both Marie and Hartman said the most supportive department within Loyola was the counseling department. To Hartman, it was a haven from which she could receive the therapy she knew she needed, she said. To Marie, it was the people who encouraged her to report the threat and rape in the first place, and explained her options to her very clearly, she said.
“That’s been totally supportive,” Hartman said. “And their therapists at the counseling center, they are good therapists. … But, I guess to help with the feelings, at least for sexual assault victims, of feeling so alone or feeling that no one understands, there’s got to be more involvement within the student population, not just individuals.”
Marie echoed this, and said she wished Take Back the Night, an annual march for Tulane and Loyola condemning sexual assault, would somehow be mandatory for all Loyola students. She and Hartman said they were glad there were support networks available after they were assaulted, but wished they had known what to do after it happened.
“There are ways of making your own way almost of finding that support and those structures that can help you process things. I wish it was more accessible, ‘cause it’s such a time you shouldn’t have to be seeking out people, they should be coming to you,” Hartman said.
Goldberg said Loyola is working on starting a program, the Sexual Assault Report Team, that would provide another option besides counseling for students, and which would include faculty and staff members responding to sexual assault incidents on a rotating basis.
Karen Reichard, director of the Women’s Resource Center, said many things can be done to help improve sexual assault awareness on campus, such as the SART program and further sensitivity training on the issue campus-wide.
“Sexual assault doesn’t happen in a vacuum … sexual assault happens in a context of women being devalued,” Reichard said, who saw four students this semester alone dealing with sexual assault. “We can’t tackle the problem unless we really name it for what it is — a crime.”
Briana Prevost can be reached at [email protected]
Katie Urbaszewski can be reached at [email protected]
The information in this story was compiled by mass communication instructor Liz Scott-Monaghan’s advanced reporting class. This includes Mary Catherine Cassidy, Erica Colbenson, Eduardo Gonzalez, Christie Hill, Masako Hirsch, Jaune’ Jackson, Chris Jennings, Morgan Miller, Jamie Moore, Pearla Mutombo-Watumba, Amanda Reeves and Julia Russler.
