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On a weekend during November of 2021, Amanda* was out at the bars with some of her friends when one guy (large and muscular) kept bothering her and refused to leave her alone. He started touching her inappropriately over and over again even when she and her friends told him to stop.

“I would try to walk away or push his hand away but he was too strong for me to do anything. I was like a rag doll,” Amanda said.

She was then dragged away from her group by the man and he ordered an Uber to go back to campus. Her phone was dead so she could not contact her friends for help or let anyone on campus know what was going on. They headed back to campus where she offered him to sleep on her bed and she would sleep on the couch.

“I don’t remember a lot to be honest. I’ve just tried to cut it all out of my memory,” Amanda said.

She could not see much because she was crying the whole time and was begging for him to stop. Amanda got him to stop by faking a phone call from her ‘sick’ friend that needed her help. Her other friends came to take care of the abuser and got him off the campus for her.

“I went up to my room in the morning and just seeing my pants and belt on the floor that was literally broken really set in what happened,” Amanda said.

Amanda wanted to report this incident but she said she felt alone and was scared of getting harassed by the abuser and/or his friends. She has been going to counseling about the night to slowly get better and feel more comfortable going out with friends again. Due to her not being comfortable to report, she is one of many missing numbers in the sexual violence report colleges and universities recieve every year.

“Sexual assault is underreported… whether that’s because someone does not know how to report or people don’t feel like they have a safe way of reporting anonymously,” director of leadership and counseling at GV, Kent Schornack said.

So, why are students not comfortable with reporting at GV when sexual violence is a harsh reality on all college campuses? According to survey results by the Department of Justice, compared to the average woman, college women are three times more likely than non-college women to experience some form of sexual abuse and only 20% of them will report to law enforcement. These acts of violence do not stop at just females, 9.7% of male students are victims and are even more unlikely to report than women. Students who identify as part of the LGBTQ community or have a disability have an increased amount of rates of sexual violence compared to students who identify as straight or do not have a disability.

The Me Too movement brought to the surface questions about why victims did not report the assaulter to authorities, in a 2020 campus climate survey, victims were able to select their reasons for not reporting. These included the instance being reported but not to law enforcement or Title IX, believing police could not help, not wanting to get the assaulter in trouble, believing it was not important enough to report, fear of the assaulter or their friends retaliating or thinking it was a personal issue.

Recently, Jade Horning, the student success program director, made a word-flow-chart with chalk on GV’s campus asking students to write down what their current fear or worry is in their lives. Multiple students who participated wrote that their worry was sexual assault on and off GV’s campus.

“I wasn’t exactly scared of being sexually assualted or anything at college until I heard about it happening to one of my friends and people defending the guy who did it to her,” Amanda said.

In the Spring semester of 2021, an instagram account named gvanonymous was started for GV students to post their own stories of sexual violence to help spread awareness of the issue on campus. Not only does the account share stories, but also provides reminders of what consent is and letting victims know that they are never alone.

The first story on the account by an anonymous student wrote, “after the investigation Grand View had given me a no-contact order which did not do anything safety wise. The threats and harassment had gotten worse and led to me moving off campus for my own safety.”

Another anonymous student shared, “there was a guy who had noticed me and began to touch me in places I did not want to be touched. He had forced me to make out with him. Everything he was doing was very disgusting and I was obviously uncomfortable. Nobody was doing anything… It was all very scary. Because of what happened to me, I will not be finishing my college career at Grand View.”

So, how low are the statistics at colleges and universities? For total sexual criminal offenses at GV, both on and off campus, there was one case in 2014, zero cases in 2015, two cases in 2016, one case in 2017, one case in 2018, and zero cases in 2019. In comparison, Mount Mercy College had zero cases of sexual violence in 2014 and four cases in 2015. Morningside last reported zero cases in 2015 but since then had two cases in 2016, one case in 2017, three cases in 2018 and one case in 2019. Concordia University had five cases in 2017. A possible reason why reported numbers are low is because the victim needs to go through the process of Title IX and find the assaulter guilty in court.

“It literally felt like this only had happened to me. Rape is never talked about so it felt like I was so alone which was honestly the hardest part. It kept feeling like more my fault when I looked into it and there was no reports,” Amanda said. “I honestly couldn’t sleep in my bed so I would just sleep on the floor since I was too embarrassed to ask cause I didn’t think anyone would understand.”

There are different ways being discussed to avoid the issue of students feeling so alone, such as making the anonymous climate surveys public and possibly having each athletic program talk more about the issue and sharing resources.

“The biggest theme that I hear and I try to support is that [the victim] just doesn’t feel that there is a point in reporting,” Emily Barnes, counselor at GV said. “They feel powerless and they feel this is something they have to deal with and get over. This is something nobody should have to feel but it is going to take huge cultural changes here at Grand View.”

Barnes is actively trying to get changes implemented at GV. For her, counseling can only do so much to help a huge issue, so there needs to be difficult discussions within the GV community both for staff and students.

“I have actually started researching trauma-informed website design and recommendations from other colleges to make the process easier. My hope is to make access to help faster and easier by one button rather than searching for it,” Barnes said.

In order to find resources or information on the Title IX process, students have to search “sexual assault” on MyView and find exactly what they are looking for from the search results.

GV’s campus security may also be going through changes to ensure the highest level of safety for all students. According to Megan Hennigar, the director of campus security, there are no protocols or trainings that correspond with responding to sexual violence cases. As of right now, security uses “common sense” to respond to these situations.

These changes may take a year or two to fully implement so knowing the current resources for yourself or a friend is important. GV has counseling services available to all sexual violence survivors and they can help students through the Title IX process if needed. There are also groups around Des Moines that can help, including the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assualt.

*A pseudonym was used to protect the identity of the student.

Resources:

Grand View Counseling Services:

kschornack@grandview.edu

ebarnes@grandview.edu

Iowa Coalition Agaist Sexual Assault:

3030 Merle Hay Road, Des Moines, IA 50310

(515) 244-7424

Polk County Crisis and Advocacy Services

2309 Euclid Ave, Des Moines, IA 50310

(515) 286-3600

Mid-Iowa SART (Sexual Assault Response Team)

mid-iowasart.org

(515) 286-3600