Search results

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the development of a treatment program for students found responsible of sexual misconduct.

This project, supported by the SMART (Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking) of the Department of Justice, was requested by The White House toward the end of President Obama’s last term and was intended to identify the confluence of factors related to sexual misconduct on college campuses, and to design a treatment program to address those factors.

This paper will discuss the unique factors of this population that ought to be considered to successfully develop an effective program, and the complexities of implementing treatment programs to this population, within a higher education system. This will include a discussion of barriers to implementation and challenges of employing treatment. This paper will present steps for implementing a treatment program and outline the core components of a treatment intervention for this population.

Implementing a treatment option for students found responsible of sexual misconduct that specifically targets the associated risk factors as part of a comprehensive approach to help improve campus safety.

How do university compliance administrators implement the rules prohibiting campus sexual misconduct? Title IX Coordinators’ authority is legal–rational and derives from the power to enforce Title IX and university rules. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Analyzing narratives collected from administrators at 22 large institutions of higher education, this paper distinguishes rules from relationship-oriented Coordinators and develops an understanding of how and why Title IX Coordinators utilize relational authority as they implement Title IX.

The key finding is that relational administrators exhibit less institutional authority than their rules-based counterparts and focus on their relationships with complainants and respondents over university leaders and administrators.

While other researchers have focused on rules, this research demonstrates how Title IX Coordinators draw heavily on relational strategies.

Drawing on hegemonic masculinity theory, this study provides evidence supporting how gender, race and sexual identity, may shape the rates of sexual misconduct reporting, by keeping those targets who traditionally enjoy positions of power (i.e. white, cisgender men) silent.

Across 3,230 gender harassment, 890 sexual advance harassment and 570 sexual assault incidents that occurred within a traditionally masculine organization, the authors conducted tests of independence and hierarchical regression analyses to examine whether targets' social identity characteristics (i.e. sex, race, sexuality and gender alignment), predicted the reporting of sexual misconduct.

Although reporting rates varied based on the type of incident, white men were less likely than their colleagues to report workplace sexual misconduct. In general, men were approximately half as likely as women to report. Lower rates of reporting were similarly seen among all white (vs BIPOC) targets and all cisgender and heterosexual (vs LGBT) targets, when controlling for other identity characteristics.

Research on sexual misconduct has largely privileged the experiences of (white, heterosexual) women, despite knowledge that men, too, can experience this mistreatment. This research broadens this lens and challenges the notion that sexual misconduct reporting rates are uniform across employee groups. By articulating how the pressures of hegemonic masculinity serve to silence certain targets – including and especially white, cisgender men – the authors provide means of better understanding and addressing workplace sexual misconduct underreporting.

Congress has spilled a good deal of ink in an attempt to support survivors of sexual assault and to prevent sexual violence from occuring. Legislation has been passed to address and prevent sexual assault in the military environment, higher education, and even within various government agencies. However, Congress has had a long and sordid history of burying incidents of sexual assault within its own halls. Prior to the #Metoo movement, Congress had a rather lackluster bill that provided minimal protection for those who were harassed or assaulted by a member of Congress and rarely held anyone accused accountable for their actions. In fact, the original Congressional Accountability Act included a fund that was used to pay off those who came forward with allegations of sexual harassment or assault against a member of Congress. This chapter follows the legislative history of Congress with regard to the response to and prevention of sexual assault and its shocking lack of oversight of its own members who were frequently committing the same assaults that they were legislating against in other areas. The chapter also highlights the brave work of survivors of assault during their time in Congress, and the work of the #MeTooCongress movement, including current members of Congress, who helped to bring more accountability to Congress as a result of their efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on how responses to gender-based violence (GBV) in higher education (HE) changed as a function of COVID-19. Since the original lockdown directive was issued by the UK Government in March 2020, there was an acute awareness of the impact the stay-at-home order could have on prevalence and patterns of GBV, with technology-facilitated sexual violence and domestic abuse being of particular concern (Universities UK, 2020).

We give the illustrative example of our learning (from 2020 to 2022) around how we have changed our approach to supporting survivors to access information and support, and the conduct of investigations during this period.

For HE Institutions who were quick and keen to embrace online teaching, there was a necessity to recognise that this change in learning environment may bring an increase in online forms of sexual misconduct, and additional challenges associated with supporting survivors who were often remote from university campus. Subsequently, and swiftly, responses to GBV in HE (including formal investigations where requested) needed to change to ensure those who were subjected to sexual misconduct could access support and information, in the knowledge that they would not be disadvantaged by bringing their reports forward during a time of global uncertainty.

An insight is provided on the changes adopted to respond to GBV on campus during the early pandemic, and the impact that these changes have had to the provision of specialist service delivery over two years on.