Indiana funds sexual assault study

The state recently allocated $65,000 to fund a study this summer that will investigate why Indiana has such a high rate of teen sexual assault, but the study may also shed light on sexual assault crimes happening in Bloomington.

Eighty-five percent of rape victims are under the age of 30, and 44 percent of those are under the age of 18, said Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams, prevention programs coordinator at the Bloomington Middle Way House.

“Indiana is second highest in the nation for rape among teenage girls, so we’re really suffering here,” Thomas-Williams said.

The researchers at IUPUI’s Global Health Communication Center will focus on teenagers younger than 18 in the study. Thomas-Williams said preventing early sexual abuse might reduce the rate of future abuse.

“A large percentage of the people who do come through our shelter have experienced child sexual abuse,” Thomas-Williams said. “Many of the crimes that happen get connected to other terrible outcomes later.” 

For every rape, the percentage of revictimization goes up close to 9 percent and close to 50 percent after that because rapists target vulnerability, Thomas-Willams said. These numbers also have effects at IU.

“We see a lot more assaults here, both domestic and sexual violence, in the week prior to the semester starting,” Thomas-Williams said. “What we think is there’s a lot of partying, maybe for the first time, but also, a lot of people are away from their parents for the first time ever.”

The highest-risk time for college students is their freshman year, especially for students 18 and younger, she said.

Representative Christina Hale, D-Indianapolis, said she will not stand for shocking numbers like these anymore.

“The national average is 10.5 percent,” Hale said. “In Indiana, it’s 17.2 percent, or one in six girls, and I find that to be outrageous and unacceptable. And nobody had done anything about it.”

For Hale, who proposed the study that IUPUI researchers will conduct, the biggest challenge is that these numbers are aggregate, meaning there isn’t just one type of rape happening in Indiana.

“Those crimes are everything from date rape to incest to random acts of violence to child seduction,” Hale said. “Many young women and girls don’t even realize that they’re a victim of a crime because in their family incest is normal.”

In order to be efficient and effective with tax dollars, Hale said Indiana needs more information about the nature of these crimes before the state can start to combat them with legislation.

Researchers will conduct two surveys. One will look at people who interact with teenagers, such as teachers, and the other will try to understand why victims don’t always report their child sexual assault.

“People in general don’t want to report because it doesn’t feel good,” Thomas-Williams said. “The questions that a law enforcement officer asks a victim of a crime are based on trying to find facts and that’s why it can feel very impersonal for survivors.”

Hale said her ultimate goal is twofold. She wants to aid victims in attaining the services they need so that they feel more comfortable reporting a sexual assault, and she wants to use the research to prevent sexual assaults in the first place.

Another component of the study will focus on social media’s influence on sexual assault, trafficking and blackmail. One in five girls will be raped on a college campus, Hale said, and social media is becoming a part of the problem.

“These crimes are being iterated in ways that are unprecedented even five or 10 years ago,” Hale said.

Both Thomas-Williams and Hale said they are hopeful the study will give the state some important insight into teen sexual assault and put Indiana on the right track toward recovery.

“I think that this is indicative that change is happening, that people are involved and that people want to work on it,” Thomas-Williams said. “To have federal support for that means something. It means something good.”