Prosecutors recorded a win last week when Robert Adams III, of Syracuse, pleaded guilty to first-degree rape of a Syracuse University graduate student in late July.

But such court cases — regardless of their outcomes — do not accurately represent the nature of sex assaults on college campuses, which go highly unreported and have an even lower rate of criminal investigation and conviction.

At SU, though steps are taken to protect the victims of sexual assaults, the crimes are severely underreported, and when they are, identifying and punishing defendants is difficult because the personal nature of the crime and the stresses of a judicial process discourage victims from pressing charges.

‘Sexual assault is very highly underreported for a number of reasons,’ said Rick Trunfio, first chief assistant district attorney for Onondaga County and former chief of the Special Victims Bureau, which handles sex assault cases.

‘Almost all of them are personal reasons,’ he said. ‘Women are embarrassed; they’re humiliated; they don’t want to repeat it; they’re afraid their credibility is going to be attacked,’ he said.

What SU reports

There are about 35 incidents of completed rape or attempted rape each year for every 1,000 women on a college campus, according to a study in 2000 by the U.S. Department of Justice titled ‘The Sexual Victimization of College Women.’

As of fall 2006, 54 percent of SU’s 12,144 full-time undergraduate students — more than 6,500 — were women, according to the university’s Web site.

If the study’s rates are accurate at SU, this would be equivalent to 231 rapes or attempted rapes in the current academic year and much greater figures for other sex crimes, including attempted sexual touching and verbal threats of sex assault.

But in 2005, the university’s Public Safety department reported only 11 forcible sex offenses and four non-forcible sex offenses (defined as incest and statutory rape), according to the numbers published under the Clery Act, a federal law that requires colleges and universities to publish the number of crimes that occur on campus or on public property in the area immediately surrounding campus.

Public Safety also lists statistics from the university’s Rape, Advocacy, Prevention and Education (R.A.P.E.) Center, an office that gives information and support to victims of sexual assault while promising confidentiality. The R.A.P.E. Center added eight sex offenses to the 2005 figures.

Janet Epstein, associate director of the center, said she looks at the numbers Public Safety has and basically says how many sex offenses she knows about that weren’t reported. The figures are then given as a separate table in the university’s published report.

‘You’re going to see higher numbers on a campus where there’s a R.A.P.E. Center because people will be more likely to report on campus,’ Epstein said. Her office recorded 44 incidents in the 2005 to 2006 academic year, but those include other forms of sexual assault and harassment, and many occurred on private property off campus, which do not require reporting under the Clery Act.

The area reported under the Clery Act at SU extends to East Genesee Street, Standart Street, Ostrom Avenue and Thornden Park, according to Public Safety’s Capt. Mike Rathbun, who tallies the daily logs for the report. SU will release its 2006 figures during the summer, he said.

Though the Department of Education has said statistics from advocacy centers, such as SU’s R.A.P.E. Center, can be listed separately — as long as they are not presented to be of lesser value — Security on Campus, an organization that monitors this reporting, prefers the numbers are stated clearly and plainly, rather than separated, said Daniel Carter, vice president of the organization. The non-profit organization was founded by the parents of Jeanne Clery, for whom the Clery Act was named after she was murdered at Lehigh University in 1987.

‘They should just present the statistics and that’d be that,’ Carter said.’It’s pretty commendable that they’re collecting that info so it can be presented publicly,’ he said. But ‘we would prefer to see them presented all in one.’ SU did win the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety award in 2004 from the organization.

‘I just think that there’s so much information in here that it becomes confusing to a normal person,’ he said in a phone interview, as he flipped through SU’s 45-page report from his King of Prussia, Pa., office. ‘The purpose is to keep it simple.’

How to report at SU

When a sex crime occurs, the victim can seek help and information from the R.A.P.E. Center. ‘We give people information and we give them time,’ Epstein said. Primary concerns are safety and health, and the center gives victims the opportunity to receive medication against sexually transmitted infections, HIV and pregnancy, as well as counseling.

Information is also provided about how to report the incident to police authorities and methods of collecting evidence, Epstein said. ‘All that we do is with the decision and consent of the student,’ she said.

Victims can choose to complete a form as part of the Trusted Information Sharing Project (TISP), which allows details of the incident to be anonymously shared with the Syracuse Police Department and SU’s Public Safety. The student can decide how much information is included, and Epstein later delivers the form to the authorities in a sealed envelope.

Between 70 and 80 percent of all sex offenses are what is termed ‘date rape,’ but the term is not exactly correct, Trunfio said. The preferred term is non-stranger. ‘Date rape is a misnomer because it infers that there was some romantic involvement,’ he said.

Usually sex assaults occur between people that know each other — the guy who lives next door or the guy who works in the building, he said.

One of the most common situations on campus occurs when a recently separated couple gets back together and there’s a dispute between what sexual contact is allowed, said Drew Buske, deputy director of SU’s Public Safety.

Any information regarding sex offenses is shared between the Sensitive Crimes Unit and the Abused Persons Unit under the Syracuse Police Department, which takes the lead on investigating, said Sgt. Ed Weber of Public Safety’s Sensitive Crimes Unit, which handles cases of sex assault, as well as the recent public lewdness incidents.

A criminal investigation

Weber encourages all victims to at least report the crimes, even if they don’t want to take part in the judicial process. Officers can still monitor suspects to protect the community without making an arrest.

Very few victims want to press charges and be part of a criminal investigation, Weber said. They are afraid to testify in court and make their identities known, he said.

‘This process is not an easy process for a female — to tell about a sexual crime,’ he said.

‘You have to tell your story over and over again, and you have to be in the same room as the offender,’ said Epstein of the R.A.P.E. Center. Victims of sexual assault are also concerned that they might not be believed or that the incident might become public, she said.

To press charges, victims must confront the defendant and testify, and a lawyer must be able to prove the case without reasonable doubt to a jury with limited knowledge of sex offense cases, said Assistant District Attorney Trunfio, who also teaches advanced trial practice at SU’s College of Law

The difficulties of trying a suspect are also what discourage victims of sexual assault from reporting incidents to the police in the first place, he said.’These females that come in and are reporting these sex crimes, they’re not lying about it — very seldom are they lying,’ Weber said.

If a criminal investigation is pursued, police can gain probable cause and make an arrest, at which point the investigation goes to the district attorney’s office, Trunfio said. Most of the time, they can get the defendant to make a guilty plea; weaker cases are the ones that go to trial.

A defendant’s first move is to say that he or she was not the one who committed the crime, especially in the case of stranger rape, where the victim does not know the attacker. The second defense is that what occurred was consensual, Trunfio said.In the trial setting, prosecution lawyers must work around the fact that many non-stranger sex crimes boil down to a ‘he said, she said’ dispute, Trunfio said. ‘The issue becomes one of credibility,’ he said.

While the protections offered defendants by constitutional law are heralded, there is no asterisk in the law that protects rape victims, he said.

‘The rights that are afforded a criminal defendant — people forget that those rights still apply to the really bad people and the really bad acts,’ Trunfio said.

Published on April 26, 2007 at 12:00 pm