Sexual Abuse & Domestic Violence

Students headed for college this fall can expect a slew of new efforts aimed at preventing campus sexual assault. A federal law that took effect this summer requires schools to offer programs to help raise awareness and lower risk.

It was once a tiny niche market, but it is now an exploding industry with everything from fingernail polish that detects date-rape drugs in drinks to necklaces that hide mini panic buttons — and all kinds of crash courses on how to get and give consent.

“Every other day there’s a new group sprouting up offering slick advertisements and products,” says Sharyn Potter, a researcher at the University of New Hampshire. Schools don’t want to risk stiff penalties, and “corporations know that these administrators are panicking … and shopping,” she says.

Potter says UNH can barely keep up with demand for a program it is selling called Bringing in the Bystander. Cited by the White House as one of the most promising, the program teaches students to recognize when trouble is brewing and how best to step in and try to stop it.

Georgianna Meléndez, head of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, was one of about two dozen campus administrators from around New England who recently came to UNH to learn how to administer the program. Like many, she says she was spurred by the new federal mandate. “It’s making us step it up a lot faster,” Meléndez says. “There were certainly some things we weren’t engaged in yet, we were talking about it. So now it’s sort of like ‘you need to get this done.’ ”

Bringing In The Bystander

During the all-day training session, Caroline Leyva, lead training and curriculum development specialist at UNH’s Prevention Innovations Research Center, demonstrates a series of exercises meant to increase empathy for survivors, educate students about consent and encourage bystander intervention. The day culminates with Leyva drilling the group members on what they would do in a series of hypotheticals.

For example, she says: Imagine you’re at a party and you see a girl who’s really drunk being taken home by a guy who has told you he wants to hook up with her.

A middle-aged administrator from a campus in New England ventures a solution. “So we looked at the pros and cons and felt it was most appropriate to go home with them, to look out for the woman but then also to have a talk with your friend if his intentions are less than honorable,” he says.

Leyva offers a nod and then gently tries to prod the administrators to think more like 19-year olds, who would be loath to intervene if it means sounding all preachy and holier-than-thou to their friends.

“Help students be creative,” she says. Rather than a direct confrontation, a student could walk over to the couple and ask if they want to go for pizza. Or maybe, she says, a student could just back up to a light switch and accidentally on purpose flip it on.

“It’s like deer in a headlight,” Leyva explains. “It’s going to halt the process for just a moment to let that person have an out.”

Bringing in the Bystander, which costs $1,600 plus $350 for training, can be run as one 90-minute session or as several sessions over the course of a week. Many other products on the market aim to do the trick in a lot less time.

Tracking Progress

Haven is a 45-minute online program that students do at home before they come to campus. A second 15-minute follow up is offered on campus later in the fall. Designed by EverFi, a company that has been offering online alcohol awareness programs since 2000, it includes basic education as well as exercises designed to boost students’ willingness and ability to intervene. It’s a slick design, with actors performing college party scene scenarios and a Wheel of Fortune-like device that students can “spin” for solutions.

“It’s incredibly effective,” says Rob Buelow, one of Haven’s developers. “Students are living and learning more and more in a digital world and to not use that environment to engage them on these issues is a real missed opportunity.”

Buelow says interest in the program has skyrocketed. Six hundred campuses are currently running it, twice what it was two years ago. Most schools pay between $10,000 and $20,000 a year, depending on their size. Part of the value, Buelow says, is that schools get a way to document that they’re complying with the law, since the program tracks whether students have completed it.

The company says exit surveys show students’ attitudes improve after the course, especially those students with the most room for improvement. But many in the field remain skeptical of what they call click-through programs.

“These quick-and-dirty programs online are really good at marketing their product,” says John Foubert, an Oklahoma State University professor who studies prevention and runs programs of his own. “But I’m not at all convinced that they’re effective at doing much of anything except documenting that policy has been met.”

There’s Even An App For That

Even more questionable to some experts is the bevy of mobile apps that promise to help curb assault. One that just hit the market, called We-Consent, records students agreeing to sexual activity. A breathy female voice with a British accent asks the user to “say the name of the person with whom you would like to have sexual relations.” Then the app announces to the other person, that so-and-so “would like to have sexual relations with you” and asks for consent. If all goes well, the app ends with the sultry female voice announcing, “Have Fun!”

“It’s a very powerful tool,” says developer Michael Lissack, a former Wall Street banker turned social scientist. He’s selling the app on his website, We-Consent, for $5 a year and is also trying to get schools to buy it in bulk, for all their students. Lissak says Apple has refused to sell it in its App Store, calling it “icky.” But Lissack insists his app is exactly the kind of tool that’s needed to change behavior.

“We need props. We need tools. We are human, This is how we make change,” he says. “It’s not going to happen by people saying education. No. We all took driver’s ed. How many of us speed? How many of us pass on the right?”

But experts caution that as new untested products flood the market, the risk is not only that some just won’t help but that some products have actually been proven to hurt.

“That scares me,” says Charlene Senn, who studies sexual assault prevention at the University of Windsor in Ontario. “Money is being poured into getting those programs that are homegrown, and usually that’s a bad idea.”

Senn says her research suggests the most promising approach may actually be one that virtually no one is doing: teaching women ways to avoid assault. Most schools are loath to go there, fearing they’d be seen as victim-blaming. But Senn says her method of training women to recognize risk and resist assault was proven to reduce rape by 50 percent, making it an approach schools can’t afford to ignore.

“We do need to make stopping sexual violence everyone’s problem, and that’s the long-term solution,” Senn says. “But women need the tools now. They need them this year.”

As research continues, schools can expect to have more choices of programs that have been evaluated for their effectiveness, Senn says. But as schools continue to scramble to implement them, it’s worth noting that the law requiring colleges to offer programs doesn’t require students to take them. It’s up to schools to decide whether to make any of these programs mandatory.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The University of Alaska system has defined “consent” for the first time when it comes to sexual misconduct terminology. The definition is in the university’s new student code of conduct, which is the basis of university disciplinary proceedings. One expert calls the definition good, but thinks it could go further.

“Consent is defined as being clear, knowing and voluntary. It can be withdrawn at any time. It’s defined as being active, not passive and cannot be given while an individual is incapacitated,” says Michael Votava, reading from the  University of Alaska’s updated Student Code of Conduct.

Votava is the director of student conduct and ethical development for the University of Alaska Anchorage. He was part of the working group that established the definition.

“Past consent does not imply future consent. And that silence, or an absence of resistance, cannot be interpreted as consent,” Votava adds.

It can be words or actions that create mutually understandable clear permission.

“So in other words, UA is not requiring a verbal yes,” Votava says.

He gives this example:

“If there were two parties that were involved in a romantic encounter and one party started removing their clothes and started motioning with their finger for the other party to come toward them and had a smile on their face, that’s in my mind, I think a reasonable person would argue that that was a form of nonverbal consent,” Votava says.

“Why not start with verbal? Because verbal is the most common way we make agreements for anything,” says Mandy Cole, deputy director of AWARE, Juneau’s domestic abuse and sexual assault prevention nonprofit.

“What I would like to see and what I think is kind of a best practice is that we get more used to getting verbal consent and that we get more used to saying the words, ‘Do you want to have sex with me?’” Cole says. “Because honestly if you feel comfortable enough to have sex with somebody, you should be comfortable enough to say the words.”

Cole says UA’s definition of consent has the necessary elements. Other higher education institutions like The State University of New York, Northwestern University and University of California have similar language defining consent as either words or actions.

Cole says it’s difficult to require a verbal agreement, but she’d like society to move in that direction.

“It’s kind of a new thing really. When I went to college, no one said a word to me about consent. Certainly no one ever said a word to me about getting verbal consent before sexual contact, so I think this is developing,” Cole says.

One company Consent Game Changers has gone beyond verbal by selling consent kits. Each pouch comes with a contract card, breath mints and a condom. The company’s website says the contract gives both parties “the confidence of a documented consensual encounter (or to at least remind you to have the consent conversation).”

Cole says she’s happy UA has defined the term and is part of a national conversation, even if it was prompted by an increasing number of sexual assault reports in colleges.

More than a year ago, the U.S. Department of Education put UA on a list of about 60 colleges nationwide being investigated as part of a compliance review or for mishandling sexual assault complaints. That list is now at about 130.

Cole says advancing the conversation about consent keeps people safer and more prepared to discuss sexuality.

“So that we don’t continue propagating this idea that sex is about power,” Cole says. “So if we talk about sex being more about consent and agreement, and it’s freely and knowingly decided by both people, then it takes away some of the old thinking about what is legal and what’s not legal.”

Cole says it’s more about what’s right.

The Office on Violence Against Women this week launched a website aimed at helping colleges and universities deal with sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking on campus. The office, which is in the U.S. Department of Justice, calls the site a “comprehensive online clearinghouse.”

An introductory video on the site features Bea Hanson, principal deputy director of the office. She says the site includes information from a variety of sources focused on prevention, policy and other topics.

“It’s designed to provide campus administrators, faculty and staff, campus and community law enforcement, victim service providers, students, parents and other key stakeholders with the resources needed to enhance campus safety,” Hanson said.

The website was launched  nearly a year after the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office announced it would be investigating post-secondary institutions across the nation — including the University of Alaska system — to determine whether they are handling reports of sexual violence according to federal law.

An Aug. 5 list from the Department of Education shows 129 institutions are under investigation. The department says the list includes institutions that are being investigated for cause and others that are subject to a compliance review. An attorney for the university told KTOO in September that their investigation fell into the latter category.

In February, the University of Alaska launched a survey to determine if sexual assault on campus was a bigger problem than they knew and how well they were handling it. The survey was sent out to 15,000 randomly selected students, faculty and staff who can respond anonymously. A university attorney said the results of the survey would not be published.

Testimony continued Wednesday in the trial of a Ketchikan man accused of sexually assaulting his 14-year-old stepdaughter, starting with the cross-examination of the now 16-year-old alleged victim. Fifty-year-old David Mason is accused of four separate counts of sexual assault on a minor. The trial in Ketchikan Superior Court is expected to last through Friday.

Some of the content of this report is of an explicit nature and may not be appropriate for younger audiences.

The alleged victim finished her testimony Wednesday, affirming that Mason did assault her.

Ketchikan Police Officer Charles Johnson testified next. Johnson talked to the alleged victim after the incident. He met the girl and her mother at the Women in Safe Homes, or WISH, shelter. He says the mother accused Mason of rape, and he found the daughter upset, “verging on hysterical.”

“Really heavy crying, shortness of breath. I remember she was sitting on a couch, and one of her legs just had this, like a jackhammer, just bouncing really hard, really fast. [She was ] not able to answer questions right away. [She was] pretty distraught.”

The defense questioned Johnson as to why he didn’t separate the mother and daughter immediately. The defense insinuated that because the mother made accusations against her husband in front of her daughter, who has developmental disabilities, it could have influenced what her daughter remembered about the incident.

The girl also told the jury that she is easily affected by emotions of those around her.

Others on the stand included Sergeant Carlos Rojas, who also met with the mother and daughter and documented the alleged crime scene, and nurse Crystal Pennino, who examined the child. Pennino also collected DNA evidence to send to the state crime lab.

Forensic Scientist Jennifer Foster testified that Mason’s DNA was found on the girl, and the girl’s DNA on Mason. It is likely that the DNA on Mason came from the act of rape, but there is also a chance that it came from excess skin cells transferred by other means.

The defense claims that Mason initiated contact out of mistaken identity, thinking the girl was her mother after the girl climbed into bed with both the mother and stepfather that night.

The trial will continues Thursday with Mason as the final witness. After his testimony and closing arguments, the case will go to the jury.

Law enforcement must uphold tribal protection orders the same as state protective orders, whether the order has been registered with the state or not, the attorney general announced in an opinion Thursday. Attorney General Craig Richards also encouraged the legislature to amend state law to comply with the Violence Against Women Act.

“I’m very excited to see this,” says Richard Peterson, president of the Tlingit-Haida Central Council. “I think it’s a step in the right direction in rural, tribal justice. It’s going to really, I think, have great impact and effect on our tribal court system and will have a great impact on tribal courts.”

Peterson says Tlingit and Haida is looking forward to more positive action from the Walker administration on tribal issues such as putting land into trust and transboundary mining.

The attorney general says the Violence Against Women Act clearly supersedes Alaska’s conflicting law requiring registration of tribal court and so-called “foreign” protection orders. The opinion basically affirms VAWA’s provision that tribal court and out-of-state protective orders need not be registered with the state to be enforced — a provision with which the Parnell administration refused to comply.

Nick Gasca, a lawyer for the Tanana Chiefs Conference based in Fairbanks, says the opinion is an indication of the thawing relationship between the state and Alaska tribes.

“This again no doubt reflects his position that with applicable law — instead of fighting tribes at every case, despite the fact that the law says otherwise, at least in this case — that he’s moving forward to correct the department’s previous position and reconcile relationships with tribes,” Gasca says.

The provision in VAWA requiring states to honor protective orders issued by other states and tribes was included when the act was first passed in 1994. When Congress reauthorized the act in 2013, a disagreement between the state and the Department of Justice regarding the validity of unregistered protective orders intensified.

In a December 2013 letter to the Indian Law and Order Commission, then-Attorney General Michael Geraghty said that while tribal court protective orders must be registered with the state to be enforceable, Alaska State Troopers could — “without the formality of State court registration” — choose to enforce the order if “confronted with an emergency or tense situation.”

After a June 2014 meeting with Tony West — then an associate attorney general with the Department of Justice — Geraghty sent a follow-up letter listing things the federal government could do to “help address public safety issues affecting Alaska Natives” and Native youths. The letter requested more funding for tribal courts, prevention efforts and support for village public safety officers, among other things.

About a month later West responded to Geraghty’s letter. He acknowledged Geraghty’s suggestions, but focused on how Alaska’s law requiring registration of tribal protective orders directly contradicted federal law. West offered to discuss a way to bring Alaska into compliance and offered training on the provisions of VAWA.

Jacqueline Schafer, an assistant attorney general with the State of Alaska, says the opinion intentionally doesn’t address the sticky issue of tribal jurisdiction. The opinion also makes clear that officers can enforce tribal court directives that are clearly intended to be protective orders. Tribal court orders aren’t necessarily standardized.

“It’s really just saying that as long as the order is clear that the issuing court says that it had jurisdiction and that they provided due process and that the order meets the requirements of VAWA, then the officer will enforce that order on the ground. It doesn’t matter if the order was registered or not,” Schafer says.

She says there is no set protocol for a situation in which a victim claims to have a tribal protection order, but doesn’t have a copy of it on hand and hasn’t registered it with the state. Schafer says she could imagine the officer simply contacting the tribal court in that case to ensure that the order exists.

“That would be an easy resolution but it would be most protective (for) the victim to have the order registered with the state court, and that’s a fairly simple process, you just fax the order to the state court,” she says.

The opinion does mention that orders must meet the requirements of VAWA in order to be valid. One condition is that the order must provide the other party due process. The opinion also points out, however, that the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated a tribal court’s obligation to provide due process does not mean tribal courts must use the same procedures as state or federal courts. What constitutes due process could be a point of contention for someone who wants to challenge a protective order issued against them, but Schafer says this area of the law is also to be determined.

Dillingham police have charged a man with third degree sexual assault for an alleged incident inside a jail cell.

On Tuesday evening Dillingham police picked up 54-year-old John Wassily who was intoxicated and lying in the street by the Senior Center. They placed him under Title 47 protection, meaning Wassily was given a jail cell to sleep it off but was not under arrest.

His cell mate that night was another man under Title 47 protection, also sleeping off having too much to drink.

Within minutes of Wassily coming into the cell, the other inmate called for help saying he had been sexually assaulted. Police say they separated the men and reviewed the video surveillance footage the next day.

According to police, the footage showed Wassily groping the man, curling up next to him with his pants off and committing other acts considered sexual assault. The victim woke up and kicked Wassillie off of him before calling for help.

Wassily told police he only remembered waking up in cell 5, and that he’d had a “fifth” of vodka and two beers to drink the day before.

Police interviewed the victim who recalled the specifics of the incident, saying he felt violated and would testify in court.

Both men told police they didn’t know each other.

Wassily was booked on a third degree sexual assault charge and held on $10,000 bail pending arraignment.