Sexual assaults on Nevada’s two largest campuses rose sharply from 2017 to 2018.
Reports of rape on the UNR campus increased from two to 14; At the same time, reports of rape increased from two to eight at UNLV.
Domestic violence reports at UNR went from three to 12; at UNLV, it more than tripled from two to seven.
Stalking reports at UNR went from zero to 14; at UNLV, it went from three to eight.
But campus police say that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Not only are students more willing to report alleged sexual assaults, universities are more open--and required by law--to report them.
Adam Garcia is the director of Southern Command at Nevada's System of Higher Education.
He said nationwide there has been an increase for several different reasons, including the new requirement that an organization or person who works for an institution must report crimes to campus law enforcement unless the group has specifically designated as confidential.
Another change was an effort under the Obama administration to explain the requirements of Title IX offices. The administration sent out sexual assault toolkits to campus law enforcement to help them better understand and address the problem.
Garcia credits those efforts and efforts by the universities themselves for the increase in reporting.
“I think it’s the push. I think that over the last four to five years we’ve seen an increased awareness not only publicly but on the campuses and we’re now seeing the fruition of the work that we’ve done over the last few years,” he said.
At the University of Nevada, Reno, campus police chief Todd Renwick credits the jump in reports to a new position in the department.
“For us in the north, what really changed… when we pursued a grant to hire our own in-house advocate,” he said.
The campus now has a victim services coordinator. The coordinator works closely with faculty, staff and students to educate them on sexual violence and what to do about it.
He said as odd has it sounds the increased reports is the goal of the whole program.
“I think what it means is we’re being successful in our efforts in coordinating our services as a campus for all of our campuses and we’re coordinating a better approach to assist and make students comfortable to report,” Renwick said.
Renwick said the goal of his office is to make sure victims understand they can come to law enforcement without fear that their case will be pushed through the legal system. He said his office is there to listen and document.
It may seem strange that a victim would choose not to push for justice, but Ashley Yuill with UNLV's Jean Nidetch Women's Center says a vast majority of students who report to her center choose not to have their incident reported to the police.
The Women's Center is a confidential place, which means it doesn't report a crime unless a victim asks them to. Yuill said the center gets between five and seven reports of sexual assault a month.
She said there are several reasons why people don't want to report their assault. One is the way victims are portrayed nationally.
“Nationally, the conversation is not very forgiving unless it was “the perfect assault.” Unless we have the ‘perfect evidence,’ the ‘perfect victim,’ the ‘perfect perpetrator,’” she said.
Yuill also noted that many victims have not had positive interactions with the legal system. They may not see it as a place where they can find justice.
Yuill credits the rise in reports to efforts by the university to help faculty and staff know what to do when someone reports being assaulted. She said many times students will talk to a trusted faculty member before they go anywhere else.
“I think that the university has also done a great job of educating the rest of the community on how to respond to a student who discloses sexual assault or dating violence or domestic violence,” she said.
She also credits the efforts and attention of the Me Too Movement. The movement started years ago but gained steam in the wake of several high-profile assault cases.
“The Me Too Movement has done a lot to bring this conversation and education for experts like me… to actually get to talk about what this means and how we as a community have a responsibility to respond,” Yuill said.
Laura Palumbo is the communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. She said there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the rise of assault and rape reports in Nevada and around the country.
She said schools are raising awareness about sexual assault, talking to students about reporting options, being pro-active about consent education and showing students they take the issue seriously.
She said students are "feeling more trust that their university is going to take their case seriously and respond to them effectively.”
Palumbo said the shift started several years ago. A report on the issue showed that several universities hadn't investigated a single sexual assault in years.
“For a very long time, the status quo at campuses and universities was that, ‘if we’re not reporting a sexual assault case in our safety report, then this isn’t happening here,'” she said.
Palumbo said about one in four college women experiences some kind of sexual assault and no college is immune to the problem.
She credits the Me Too Movement as well, along with strong activism by college students and news coverage of the issue for the increased reporting now.
“All of that activity we saw a few years ago has really been coming to fruition in terms of what we’re seeing,” she said.
While the number of reports has increased, the number of convictions for rape and sexual assault has not.
Garcia said he took two cases to the Clark County District Attorney's office but the office declined to prosecute.
“When we’re talking about folks who know each other, I think that there’s a social stigma when it comes to convicting somebody or even prosecuting somebody when a date went wrong, when things occurred that one party is reporting… it’s a he-said-she-said type of a situation,” he said.
The same thing happened at UNR. Cases Renwick and his team brought to the DA were not prosecuted.
"This is an area where we have not seen a lot of positive change," Palumbo said.
She believes a lack of convictions could discourage victims from coming forward. They see it as a lot of effort, taking time from school and work and exposing extremely personal information, with very little reward, she said.
Todd Renwick, police chief, University of Nevada Reno; Laura Palumbo, Communications Director, National Sexual Violence Resource Center; Ashley Yuill, assistant director, UNLV's Jean Nidetch Women's Center; Adam Garcia, director, Southern Command of the Nevada System of Higher Education
