Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Saturday, November 12, 2011

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ: The recent decade-long sexual abuse and sodomizing of young boys by a trusted individual associated with Penn State has brought to the fore another hidden criminal problem; lack of reporting to local police by universities of incidents of rape and sexual abuse. A recent article which appeared on the MSNBC cable network website outlined numerous incidents of failure to report or make public disclosures of sexual abuse on campus

The article further indicated that such failures are in violation of the Clery Act which sets out requirements for handling such incidents. It is contrary to the notion of the type of environment which should be commonplace at an institution of higher learning that accepts federal money and also violates the "equality of access to education." Certainly, no student would want to attempt to obtain their education with the spectre of rape or worse hanging over their heads.

What type of psychological environment would that create and how would it not only interfere with your education, but your entire life afterwards? If you can't depend on the people who are 'in locus parentis,' who can you depend on when you're maybe several hundred or thousands of miles away from your support system?

The cat is out of the duffle bag now and the law which goes back to 1990 is going to be more carefully administered, In 2006, a young woman was found in her East Michigan University dorm room, naked from the waist down and with a pillow on her head. The college police found "no reason to suspect foul play." Oh, really, she just stripped down and then suffocated herself? Ultimately, the family received $2.5 million dollars from the university; an incredibly small price to pay for a life cut short in such a terrifying way.

But the problem goes beyond the campus police. Those of us in psychology are quite familiar with the Tarasoff case where a student told a campus counselor that he intended to murder her when she came back from vacation. The campus police never warned her that she was in danger and she was, in fact, murdered. Her murderer pleaded that he had schizophrenia and left the country to return to his homeland. Now, every mental health professional understands the seriousness of the duty to warn and to protect.

How do you, with any degree of good conscience, see a young 10-year-old boy being raped in a university shower and you do nothing? How do you walk away and just tell your father? Don't you immediately walk in and pull the man away as you reach for your cell and call the police? Or do you think about that coaching career you hold so dearly and then do the least you need to in order to somehow take care of your water-down moral imperative? Walk away when a kid is being raped?

Local police, too, come under the sway of the university's incredible machine. Generating millions of dollars via their sports programs and having local resources dependent on good public relations, they, too, can become ensnared in the web of deceit that begins to grow at the school. Coaches have power both on and off the field and the illustrations seem too many to mention.

Sadly, two cases of young women committing suicide are also detailed in the article. The women at Dominican College, Orangeburg, NY and Notre Dame killed themselves after their sexual assaults were "mishandled."

I was a bewildered witness several years ago at a famous Midwestern university where parents were being given a tour of the campus with their daughters. They were shown the laundry rooms, the computer facilities, the libraries and the wonderful sports programs and buildings that housed them. One thing they were not shown was the 8x10 notice near the front door where women were advised to call for an escort to their dorm if they were in the lounge area at night. Rapes had become rampant on the campus. Neither were they shown the photo of the young woman who had disappeared while bike riding on campus. As far as I know, she was never found. It is a Big 10 school.

Will things change with regard to the culture on campuses all over the US? Only time will tell. But one thing we know for sure; the guilty should not be coddled and allowed to play another day.

Dr. Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D.

Licensed Psychologist

Dr. Patricia A. Farrell, Ph.D., LLC

Fort Lee, NJ