Originally published in the January 24, 2008 edition of The Lantern. It is posted here unedited.
This is the first story of a two day series on rape and the rising rate of its reportage.
The number of reported rapes on the Ohio State campus is on the rise, according to University Police records, but not everyone is quick to label that a bad sign.
Some say the numbers reflect a positive change on campus, where survivors of sexual assault have more resources and outreach opportunities. Others say rape statistics are too difficult to accurately record, and they should not be used to gauge the amount of actual assaults taking place.
But national statistics reflect a starker image of the growing problem of sexual assault on the largest college campuses, and OSU tops that list.
The Numbers
From 2007 to 2008, there were 14 reported rapes on campus, according to police records. That number is up from five rapes in 2004 and three in 2001.
“Some people look at the numbers and say ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on?’” said Nancy Radcliffe, coordinator of the Campus Advocacy Program at OSU, which trains student counselors to deal with victims of sexual assault. “But, I look at them and I see more people getting help.”
Radcliffe and her student advocates deal with the reality of sexual assault daily, and any insight into the nebulous of crime statistics is helpful, she said.
In a 1999 study conducted by the National Institute of Justice, the federal agency responsible for recording U.S. crime statistics and often considered the industry standard of crime analysis, 15 percent of the 5,000 college women surveyed reported being sexually victimized while attending a four-year university. Close to 2 percent experienced a completed rape, while 1 percent reported an attempted rape.
The numbers are credible, but when they are extrapolated, they paint a bleaker hypothetical of rape rates on campus, Radcliffe said.
For instance, the victimization rate of those surveyed was 27.7 rapes per 1,000 students. 22.8 percent of them were raped more than once, for a total incident rate of 35.3 per 1,000 students. As noted in the study, a college campus with 10,000 female students could see an annual count of more than 350 rapes. Apply that to OSU, with an approximate female enrollment of 25,435, and the number balloons to 890.2 rapes per year.
When it comes to crime statistics, however, experts agree that rape is one of the most elusive and often times most misleading of those reported.
Varying definitions of the term itself, a constant flux in the campus population and the stigmatization of sexual assault all contribute to a larger problem of shaky and uncertain data.
From 2001 to 2005, for instance, University Police reported 29 rapes on campus, according to records. But of those 29, only 19 were reported in the FBI Uniform Crime Report for the same time span.
The finding begs the question: Why the disparity?
“It just depends, really,” Radcliffe said. “Different organizations have different criteria for what constitutes rape.”
Other academics on campus have noted different factors that inhibit accurate data collection.
“We don’t have a consistent frame of reference,” said Richard Lundman, professor emeritus of sociology at OSU and an expert on crime statistics analysis. “We have 50,000 students, 30,000 faculty and staff, but not everyone is here all the time. We really don’t have an appropriate denominator.”
As far as percentages of reported rapes go, Radcliffe said she has seen numbers run the gamut between 2 percent to 30 percent of all rapes.
“It really just depends on which research you consult,” she said.
Whichever research that might be, both Lundman and Radcliffe say the number should be and needs to be higher.
The Reasons
Ask both Lundman and Radcliffe why rape survivors are reluctant to report rape to the police, and their answers will ring familiar: There is no clear-cut reason.
“Every circumstance is unique,” Radcliffe said. “Some students have told their parents, some students have not told their parents and some never want their parents to know. And the parents are just one aspect of a complex issue.”
However, both point to the justice system and its notoriously cold procedures for collecting evidence, accusatory interrogations by police and the often difficult reality for the survivor of revisiting the trauma of the experience. But those reasons just scratch the surface, they say.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, roughly 70 percent of rape survivors know their rapist. A 1997 study conducted by the Canadian Medical Association concluded that when the victim and rapist are acquaintances, there is a far greater chance that the rape will go unreported.
“When the majority of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim, it’s no wonder why survivors don’t want to report it more often,” said Dan Hawkins, Franklin County prosecutor and director of the office’s Abuse Unit. “They’re afraid. They think ‘Oh, but it was Chad. I’ve known Chad since high school. I can’t turn him in.’”
Further compounding these statistics, Hawkins said, is the fact that any legal investigation into rapes often hinges on proof of consent, rather than the identification of the rapist, as the mainstream media predominantly portray.
