A female student reported to the Department of Public Safety and Security Services on March 7 that she had been the victim of forcible rape near Fusz Hall on Feb. 26. The student chose not to pursue the incident further with law enforcement, according to Roland Corvington, director of DPSSS.

The student reported that she was the victim of forcible rape approximately nine days after the incident allegedly occurred.
Corvington said that because the incident was delayed when reported to DPSSS and there was no immediate threat to the safety of the student population, the department decided not to send a Campus Emergency Alert email.

“Crime is reported, and we try to get information out that is important to the University community,” Corvington said. “It doesn’t always necessarily mean that the crime that was reported ends up being pursued toward investigative activity. It depends on the circumstance.”

Corvington said that forcible rape falls under the umbrella of sexual assault, which also includes statutory rape and sodomy.
According regulations in the Clery Act, “sexual assaults are considered on a case by case basis, depending on the facts of the case, when and where the incident occurred, when it was reported and the amount of information known by DPSSS” before a Campus Emergency Alert may be distributed.

DPSSS publishes all reports to a crime log that can be found on the University website at http://www.slu.edu/x22927.xml. DPSSS also has a Twitter account @SLUSafety that is updated regularly.

Corvington said he encourages that all crimes be reported to DPSSS immediately.

“One, help could be provided sooner,” Corvington said. “Two, evidence, if there is any, could be collected immediately. And three, if there is really, really good, descriptive information provided that [a subject] is a stranger versus a known individual, we can get that out and seek the individual quickly.”

According to DPSSS, the student that reported the forcible rape is now seeking counseling services at the University.

DPSSS has issued additional programs and resources to address the concerns of sexual assault on campus. They plan to dedicate April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

“I prompted it because I felt there was a need to gather these resources together to educate the students,” Corvington said. “We have been teaching our officers and providing them with the same information, generally, to make them more sensitive to the victims in these cases.”

DPSSS is currently offering female students an opportunity to participate in Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) Training. The training program meets once a week for four weeks and focuses on self-defense and protection. The first session of RAD Training was held March 22, but Corvington said participants can still sign up.

“No one wants to become a victim of that kind of assault,” Officer Pasquale Signorino said. “Unfortunately, it does happen. [RAD] has been developed to defend yourself aggressively.”

DPSSS is also holding a panel to discuss sexual assault at 6 p.m. on April 18 in Tegeler Hall. Panelists include Detective Rick Noble of the Metropolitan Sex Crimes Unit, Claudia Charles, a licensed counselor in Student Health and Counseling Services at the University, and Kathleen Hanrahan, the Director of YWCA Regional Sexual Assault Center, with opening remarks from DPSSS Officer Ken Hornak.

At the panel, Corvington said students can expect to learn surprising statistic about sexual assault.

“I think that some individuals may find it very surprising that they would be victimized by someone they know,” Corvington said. “The victim could come to trust the individual for a period of time, and then all of the sudden, things change.”

Signorino also said students will learn statistics that show the most dangerous time in a woman’s life is the first six weeks of her freshman year away at a campus or university.

This is the second time that DPSSS has held the panel discussion.

“The last panel went extremely well,” Corvington said. “We only had a handful of students there, but the information was really helpful to the few students that were there.”

Corvington said he attributes the low student interest toward these programs to a factor of doubt, and said that many people do not think sexual assault could actually happen to them. However, Corvington said that even if a student is not a victim, he or she can learn a lot from the programs.

“You may be the one hearing something from your friend who was sexually assaulted who may come to you and ask you what to do,” Corvington said.