1 in 10 WSU women report rape attempts

Nearly 10 percent of the female students surveyed at Washington State University reported they had been victims of attempted rape, and 8.5 percent said they had been raped while enrolled at the Pullman school, a new study found.

Those statistics are in line with similar studies at other schools, with the number of incidents at WSU slightly lower than average, a team of WSU researchers concluded.

Most of the victims were younger students, knew the perpetrator, and liquor was often involved.

The rapes were rarely reported to law enforcement officers, in part because the victims did not understand that what had happened was a serious crime, the study found.

In the study, only 24.7 percent of the females and 12.5 percent of the males who experienced forced sex labeled it as rape, said the report authored by Thomas Brigham, Gretal Liebniz and Samantha Swindell of WSU.

The most common label used was “unwanted experience,” the report said.

While the number of rapes of college students nationwide is not definitively known, a study called “The Sexual Victimization of College Women,” sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2000, estimated that one in four women experienced rape or attempted rape during their college years.

The American College Health Association recently released a study showing that 15 percent to 20 percent of college women were raped, while 5 percent to 15 percent of college men were, which are higher than the percentage at WSU, Brigham said.

Brigham said the WSU study of campus rape may be the largest-ever on a single campus, and is easily the largest survey of male students.

Researchers had been preparing their findings for publication, but the report summary has been circulated among campus groups and leaked to the news media, Brigham said.

The findings indicate that WSU is not doing a good job of educating new students about sexual assault, Brigham said.

The report was requested by school President Lane Rawlins, and looked at how often students were victims of aggression, including sexual assaults.

It examined a group of 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students, out of a student body of more than 18,000 enrolled on the Pullman campus.

The students were initially contacted last spring by letter and asked to complete an online survey using a personalized access code. A total of 2,551 students completed the entire survey.

Of those, more than 57 percent were male, nearly 42 percent were female and seven individuals were transgender. Ninety-six percent said they were heterosexual, 2 percent were homosexual and 2 percent were bisexual.

In the category of sexual coercion, 8.5 percent of females and 1.8 percent of males reported they suffered forced sexual penetration, while 9.7 percent of females and 1.2 percent of males said they suffered attempted penetration.

Also 37.1 percent of females said they had been victims of unwanted sexual touching, while 22.1 percent had received verbal coercion for sex, and 17.9 percent said they were stalked.

Sexual coercion of females most often occurred in the perpetrator’s residence, the report found.

The female victim was using alcohol in 47.5 percent of the sexual coercion cases. The perpetrator was using alcohol in 53.5 percent of the cases.

In incidents of sexual coercion reported by females, the perpetrator was a stranger only 25.8 percent of the time. The women said 29.7 percent of the events occurred during freshman year. The location was a fraternity 20.2 percent of the time, an apartment 18.8 percent and a dormitory 15.3 percent.

The vast majority of females and males told someone – usually a friend – if they were sexually assaulted, the report found. But only 4.6 percent of females reported sexual coercion to law enforcement. No males reported their experienced to law enforcement.

Mostly it was because victims did not consider the matter a big deal, or feared being blamed, the study found.

Asked if they had suffered physical or verbal abuse from a partner in a relationship, 41.7 percent of females said they had been hit, pushed, kicked or otherwise physically abused once. Of males, 43.8 percent said they had been physically abused once.