Category: Agency Serving a Population of Fewer than 20,000 Residents
The Problem
The Department of Public Safety serves a vibrant campus community located in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This includes more than 14,000 undergraduate and graduate students, a K-12 school, and more than 1,800 faculty and staff.
A large problem facing the community was gender-based violence. Gender-based violence is one the most pervasive, damaging and long-lasting crimes in the nation. Gender-based violence crosses all social and economic planes and results in more than $127 billion of annual economic costs.
The nature of gender-based violence in the campus community was a significant problem. College-aged women were disproportionately the highest number of victims of gender-based violence. Research indicates that few college-aged victims of sexual assault have filed or would file law enforcement reports in Iowa.
The impetus to address gender-based violence in a comprehensive way came out of the Women’s Studies Department at UNI. Members of the Gender Equity Association (GEA), along with faculty, began exploring ways to expand on the present university efforts to reduce the victimization of women. Previously, the services offered to victims were rarely advertised, but included a full-time sexual assault advocate, counseling staff, special training for residence hall staff and the investigations personnel at the Department of Public Safety.
Surveys indicated that rape, attempted sexual assaults and stalking were prevalent in the collegeaged group. In the university community, there was a significant discrepancy between the number of violent events that occurred and the number of victims who sought assistance, reported the crimes to law enforcement or utilized community counseling. A variety of community resources were available for victims of gender-based violence, but utilization was reduced by limited reporting and fewer opportunities for referral to service providers. The university began a campus-wide and then community-wide effort to address gender-based violence in 2000. The interdisciplinary effort involved law enforcement, community service providers, university sexual assault specialists and academic staff. This broad-based group focused on preventing gender-based violence through peer “norming,” self defense training and security improvements to campus.
To address this, the Department of Public Safety has participated in a wide-ranging effort to reduce the opportunities for victimization, prevent this behavior through education and training and, should an assault take place, provide the best possible care for the victim. All types of assault or threatening behavior, including stalking, are department-wide priorities and have been prosecuted successfully with the cooperation of the Black Hawk County Attorney’s Office.
Especially pressing needs included:
- Creating a formal peer support network.
- Increasing the access to and knowledge of sexual abuse services.
- Training all staff in best practices for prevention and victim assistance.
- Combining the various self-defense programs offered into one, higher quality class.
- Enhancing the physical security of the “open” campus.
- Building more connections with the larger community.
- Providing wide-scale peer support for victims and to advocate against violence.
The Solution
The Department of Public Safety is a top to bottom community-policing organization. It is this philosophy that allowed the department to quickly begin battling gender-based violence. Because of the community-policing practices already implemented in the community, the department was more easily able to attack this problem head-on.
One challenge in creating a solution to this issue was identifying the entire scope and breadth of the problem. There are many facets involved in genderbased violence, all of which needed to be determined and solved. As a general rule, it is believed that approximately one in 10 (10 percent) sexual assaults (rape) are reported in some way. The overall victimization rate for females aged 18-24 was 6.3 percent in a 12-month span translating to more than 100 assaults annually on female UNI students.
Several of the most important elements of this issue had to be addressed:
- Males are predominantly the offenders in gender violence. Crime statistics indicated that men were offenders in more than 90 percent of sexual assaults. The Iowa Crime Victim study noted that 93 percent of sexual assault victims knew the offenders prior to the assault. Because of this, the University of Northern Iowa effort also focused on male offender education.
- Knowledge of resources for female victims was another serious issue to be addressed. Surveys indicated many victims were unaware of the resources available to them to address their needs. The University of Northern Iowa had been distributing annually a packet to all students describing the availability of sexual assault services and had trained contact staff in the referral process. These efforts would continue, but opening new avenues of communication became a project priority.
- The availability of marked emergency phones on campus had to be dramatically increased.
- The department and Advisory Committee identified Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) as the best comprehensive self-defense program available. Officers became certified in simplified defensive tactics combined with a focus on avoiding or escaping from dangerous situations. As the university created a coherent strategy on gender-based violence, the theory and practice of RAD became vital.
- Increasing training was the final priority in the effort against gender-based violence. Additional training was needed to increase the level of service and consistency to victims. Instances of violence were not confined to campus, as many situations occurred in off-campus residences, in the primary jurisdiction of the Cedar Falls Police. Incorporating the municipal police in training opportunities strengthened the capabilities of the Department of Public Safety and Cedar Falls Police and allowed consistent service in joint investigations. The cooperative effort leveraged resources, with more officers from both agencies receiving the information to better serve victims.
As the campus and then community-wide needs had been established and prioritized, the wideranging plan was transformed into a formal project. The various stakeholders reviewed the plan and submitted it through the university administration to the newly created Federal Violence Against Women on Campus grant program. The desire was to secure enough funding to jump start the initial phases of the ambitious plan and create a self-sustaining environment for the various plan elements.
The scope and innovative techniques used in the grant proposal, as well as the work put forth by all the planning participants, paid off as the Violence Against Women office granted funding to the University of Northern Iowa. Upon securing the necessary funding, a flurry of action on campus began. The peer support projects, male mentoring and referral mechanisms were assembled under an umbrella organization named SAVE - Students Against a Violent Environment - consisting of volunteers. Training programs, campus speakers and anti-violence retreats for student leaders were planned to kick off in the fall of 2001. Overall, the project evolved quickly from the proposal stage into active implementation thanks to the dedication of the people involved.
Evaluation
Anecdotally, the project appears to be working. One example is that those responding to victims, whether law enforcement, university staff or volunteers, feel more confident due to increased training. Referrals and utilization of sexual abuse services continue to increase or stay consistent. The formalization of a Sexual Assault Response team community-wide is continuing. Presently law enforcement and counseling groups work very closely together, and discussions to formally bring the medical groups into the initial response to the victim are continuing.
The rapid addition of the emergency phones is just one of the ongoing efforts the Department of Public Safety has participated in over the last three years. Department staff participates in the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), a group of male role models educating other men about violence and its corrosive effect on the community. The MVP program meshes with the other peer-norming and other volunteer-based efforts on campus to assist victims and educate potential offenders. One supervisor also is assigned to the university/community interdisciplinary committee that coordinates responding to gender-based violence through Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners and other referral agencies.
Statistically, the number of reported cases of sexual assault peaked dramatically in 1999. Thirteen cases of sexual assault were reported to various university offices in 1999. Two cases were reported in 2000 and three in 2001. Preliminary 2002 statistics show that there will be no marked increase for that year either. Aggravated assaults, crimes involving weapons or resulting in injury, peaked in six cases in 1999 and have declined from three cases in 2000 to two cases in 2001.
The University of Northern Iowa bases its sexual assault and gender violence measures primarily on the Clery Campus Safety Act methodology, which uses similar crime reporting guidelines as the Uniform Crime Report. In assessing the level of actual occurrences of crime, the Clery Act includes any sexual assaults reported to a wide range of university staff positions. The university has a refined anonymous reporting system, where victims can report incidents via simple form or over the Internet, without any personal identification or contact with law enforcement. This wide net of reporting sources adds validity to assessment of changes in occurrences of gender-based violence.
There is a belief that some reduction in rates of victimization has been accomplished. Bearing in mind that the reporting rate for such crimes was very low, the ability to provide measures is limited at this time.
The real measure of the effectiveness of the program will be felt in 10 or 20 years, if a campus environment that rejects gender-based violence has taken root. If this respect and rejection of violence spreads into the greater society, then gender-based violence can and will claim fewer victims and cause less societal damage.
