2 Utah schools under federal investigation for sexual assault

2 Utah schools under federal investigation for sexual assault

(Dsesert News, File Photos)


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SALT LAKE CITY — Two schools in Utah — the University of Utah and Westminster College — are under investigation by the federal government for their handling of sexual assault cases.

The two schools are among more than 200 colleges and universities under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. The office is tasked with investigating whether schools have promptly and fairly investigated reports of sexual assault, a requirement under Title IX.

Westminster College has been under investigation since last January.

The feds opened their investigation into the University of Utah just last month. Federal officials will visit the school in the fall, University of Utah spokeswoman Maria O'Mara said Wednesday.

In a statement, O'Mara said the university "will cooperate fully with this investigation,” which she said would focus on how quickly the university responds to reports of sexual assault.

"We know sexual assault is underreported, on our campus and around the country, so we are heartsick to learn that any student felt the process was difficult," O'Mara said. "We will continue to review and evaluate our procedures to make them more efficient and effective."

As of Wednesday, 260 sexual violence cases are under investigation at 202 postsecondary institutions by the Office for Civil Rights.

It's a “massive increase” from 2009, when the office had 20 open investigations, according to Sejal Singh, policy coordinator at the sexual violence advocacy group Know Your IX.

On the one hand, the increase in complaints — and the rapid clip at which the office has been opening investigations — is a sign that the federal government and student activists have been successful at shedding light on campus sexual assault, Singh said.

But the situation has created a "massive backlog" for investigators, according to Singh. According to a report from The Yale Law Journal, the average federal investigation last year took 1,032 days to complete.

Singh called the delays "particularly appalling" given that many students asking for a Title IX investigation “are experiencing a very serious civil rights violation on their campus at that exact moment."

Federal officials opened the investigation into Westminster College last year after a student reported that the school mishandled her 2013 sexual assault.

Investigators visited the school in November 2015, according to Westminster College Title IX coordinator Jason Schwartz-Johnson. He said the school is still awaiting a decision from the office and has no indication when it might come.

Since then, the college has been making several updates to its sexual violence policies and programs, he said, including hiring Schwartz-Johnson himself last August. The school will also be starting bystander intervention training for all new students in the fall, he said.

"It's a small school, and with schools of this size, you don't see that being common across the country — at least not up until recently," Schwartz-Johnson said of the school's decision to bring him on as a full-time Title IX coordinator. "I think it shows the commitment of the college to the matter."

If federal investigators find systemic problems with a school's handling of sexual misconduct, it will usually enter into a "resolution agreement" with the school requiring that they make specific policy changes.

The office will often require the school to make some sort of restitution for individual survivors as well, such as refunding tuition.

In the office's most recent resolution earlier this month with Minot State University in North Dakota, the office found the school had failed to properly investigate a student's complaint that she had been sexually assaulted by one of her professors. The office ordered Minot State to pay for the student's counseling and ordered the university to revise its sexual misconduct policies and better train its students and staff.

Unfortunately, these resolutions tend to be so delayed that they don't effectively provide justice for victims, Singh said.

In the Minot State University case, the alleged instances of sexual harassment and sexual assault had begun in 2010 and stretched on for more than two years.

These survivors "suffered a terrible form of violence and were denied justice by their school and now face a systemic barrier to getting justice from federal oversight," Singh said.

Although other Utah schools have come under scrutiny for their handling of sexual assault cases, none are currently under federal investigation.

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