Oxy Admits Underreporting Sexual Assaults

By City News

Amid federal investigations of their handling of campus sexual assaults, USC and Occidental College have disclosed that they underreported the number of cases in recent years, a potential violation of federal law, it was reported Tuesday.

At USC, officials indicated they had not reported 13 accounts of sexual assaults to federal officials for 2010 and 2011, bringing the total for those years to 39, the Los Angeles Times reported. Occidental acknowledged that it had failed to include 24 reports during that period, bringing the total to 36, according to the newspaper.

The disclosures could lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties for each school under the federal Clery Act, the 1990 law that requires schools to report campus crime statistics to the Department of Education, The Times reported.

The law, which stemmed from a 1986 rape and killing on a Pennsylvania campus, is intended to give the public an accurate view of campus safety. The law covers criminal allegations, regardless of whether they are reported to police or adjudicated in court.

Over the last two years, women at USC, Occidental and college campuses across the country have organized—mostly through social media—to file complaints with the Department of Education alleging that administrators discouraged them from reporting sexual assaults or downplayed the severity of the attacks, according to The Times.

Occidental is under investigation for violations of the Clery Act. Students at USC have filed a complaint alleging Clery violations that federal investigators have yet to act on. Both schools are also under investigation for possible violations of Title IX, a federal antidiscrimination law that requires colleges to impartially investigate sexual assaults, The Times reported.

Occidental recently reached a monetary settlement of an undisclosed amount with at least 10 current and former students who were part of a federal complaint against the school for alleged mishandling of sexual assault allegations. 

The Times story included this passage:

Campus administrators said they didn't disclose those numbers in an effort to protect the students' confidentiality. They were concerned, they said, that reporting those statistics to the Department of Education could trigger investigations by the Los Angeles Police Department, which might pressure counselors to identify the anonymous victims.

"The intent was to give … safe haven to the students," said Laura LaCorte, a university compliance officer. "That's the reason they weren't included."

LAPD Deputy Chief Bob Green said those concerns were misplaced.

"I can tell you flat out no, we're not going to do that," Green said. "We're never going to try to compel anybody to make that [crime] report."

Check out these previous stories about sexual assault scandal at Oxy:  

• Oxy Settles Sexual Assault Case with Students
• Q&A With Oxy Professor on the College’s Sexual Assaults…
• Oxy Sexual Assault Coaltion to Protest College's Alert…
• 9 Fast Facts: Sexual Assault and Title IX
• Oxy Parents, Alumni Distressed About Sexual Assaults
• Oxy Rape Victim Says She ‘Encountered Lots of Barriers’…
• Oxy Takes New Steps to Address Sexual Assaults on Campus