Bostonia: The Alumni Magazine of Boston University

Talk About It

Lombardi came to the project well prepared. In addition to her research on years of sexual crimes, she had completed a fellowship at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a Columbia School of Journalism project that teaches journalists how to report on violence, conflict, and tragedy. One of the most important skills they learn at Dart is how to interview victims without traumatizing them again.

She first approached her subjects by phone, sometimes talking to them for as long as four hours. When she felt she’d gained their trust, she met them in person.

“Those conversations really went wherever people wanted to take me,” she says. “I just let them talk.”

And she let them talk for as long as they needed to.

Lombardi’s tenacity — her encouragement for vic­tims to dig deep — put some students off, she recalls. And some needed more convincing after learning that she also planned to speak to their accused attackers.

For many, participating in the series opened an old wound. “Almost every victim I talked to said their educational career totally changed after the assault,” Lombardi says. “This was not something they could bounce back from.”

It was especially difficult if the attacker was an acquaintance or someone the student believed was a friend. Lombardi says many victims of campus rape chose to leave their schools. A place that once felt safe, like a home away from home, is stained forever by the memory of the assault. Even if they chose to stay, they never felt the same way about their school.

One of the most common and painful themes, she says, was the victims’ conviction that there was simply no available path to justice. Half of the students interviewed said they tried to file criminal charges, failed, and instead had to seek justice in closed school-run administrative proceedings that resulted merely in academic penalties or no punishment at all for their assailants.

Lombardi is convinced that when it comes to cam­pus sexual assault, extralegal disciplinary proceedings are often deeply flawed. Some schools conduct confidential mediation sessions, with the victim and the accused sitting together. It’s difficult enough to face one’s attacker in a populated courtroom — how can a victim be expected to resolve an assault claim when the accused is right next to her? Despite efforts by the Departments of Education and Justice, she says, schools continue to prohibit all parties from revealing the proceedings or the outcomes.

Victims say these processes “leave them feeling like victims a second time,” says Lombardi. Yet college administrators say they believe the existing policies provide “a fair and effective way to deal with ultrasensitive allegations,” she writes.

Denial As a Coping Mechanism

Lombardi knew, of course, that accusing someone of rape is difficult and frightening, but she was surprised to learn how many victims have trouble admitting that what happened to them was rape. According to a report commissioned by the Justice Department, fewer than half of college women who are raped identify it as rape, even privately. The alleged assailants were in some cases people they considered friends, and the victims have trouble acknowledging such a betrayal. Some blame themselves for drinking too much, or failing to protect themselves. Many just want to push the painful incident to the back of their mind and get on with their life.

Victims’ reluctance to report campus rape, Lombardi believes, is unlikely to rattle many college administrators. Her research suggests that colleges, competitive and reputation-conscious, are eager to advertise that their communities are safe. In fact, she and Jones assert that some schools conveniently interpret the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), intended to protect a student’s privacy, as justification for concealing accusations of rape. But the opposite is true, says Lombardi. FERPA states that colleges can release names of students found responsible for committing violent acts.

A 2002 federal study found that the nearly one in three schools that underreport crime statistics may be in violation of the Clery Act, which requires that universities receiving federal aid disclose information about crimes on or near campuses.

The series’ release sparked immediate interest. Lombardi spoke on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and fielded interviews, from CNN and Nightline to college newspapers. But the responses she valued most came from student victims. She says many have e-mailed thanking her for her compassion and care with their stories.

Mallory Shear-Heyman — a former Bucknell University student who was featured in the report — wrote to say the series was “spreading like wildfire” around campus. Her former school has already voted to address mediation practices this spring, a sign that the series is making a difference.

And that, Lombardi says, is the whole point. ■