Last year Sexual Assault Counseling and Information Services worked with 613 people in six different counties, 17 of those people were Eastern students and 14 of those experienced the assault that year.

All over the country rapes and sexual assault are not being reported. This can be due to a variety of different reasons.

First, the definition of sexual assault is not clearly defined. According to Eastern’s website, Eastern defines sexual assault “as acts of rape (stranger and acquaintance), other forms of coerced sexual activity, including unwanted touching, fondling, or other forms of sexual conduct.” It is not solely limited to these acts, it states.

The Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault defines sexual assault as a number of things including rape, unwanted touch, unwanted sexual comments and sexual harassment, said ICASA’s media consultant Sean Black.

ICASA is an organization that is the funding agent for the 33 rape crisis center across Illinois, including SACIS.

SACIS reported 25 percent of college women have been victims of rape or attempted rape since they were 14 years old, and 84 percent of those women were raped by someone they knew.

“It wasn’t a stranger jumping out from a behind a bush at night with a knife, so that is the typical scenario that they think of when they think of rape,” said Bonnie Buckley, the executive director of SACIS.

Also, our society focuses on blaming the victim instead of blaming the offender, said Katherine Bass, a professor of sociology and a criminologist.

Society asks victims what they were doing at the place they were assaulted and if they were drinking. Victims internalize this, so then they don’t report what happened to them, Bass added.

It is clear how victims are treated by the media in large cases that are reported on the news, like the Kobe Bryant case. Victims become less likely to come forward because they see how victims are treated before the outcome of these large cases, Bass said.

Another approach to preventing sexual assault is the bystander method. While teaching people to watch their own drinks, the bystander method teaches others to watch out for their friends.

“If you wouldn’t let your friends drive drunk, why would you let them walk off with somebody,” Bass said.

Black suggests that schools should focus on the actions of the perpetrator.

“The rapist is the person committing the crime,” he said. “We need to stop the rapist from committing the crime.”

Approximately 0-3 cases come into the emergency room each month, Joesph Burton, a medical director of the Sarah Bush Lincoln Emergency Room said.

They range from about 15 to 45 years old, he said.

“When school is in session and people are out drinking and socializing, that’s typically when most of them occur,” Burton said.

Victims can also feel pressure to not report their sexual assault. The victim’s family and friends can put pressure on victims to not to report. They can also feel intimidated by family and friends of the accused person, Buckley said.

Reporting a sexual assault

If a victim were to go to the hospital after a sexual assault they would have an evidence collection kit done.

“A rape kit is a very long excruciating, embarrassing process,” Bass said.

The kit includes samples of clothes and underwear as well as samples of hair including pubic hair.

Smears and cultures are also done for microscopic examination. bathing or cleansing. If the victim has showered then evidence should be collected within hours to get results, Burton said.

Most women tend to shower after the sexual assault occurs, he said.

“From a psychological standpoint you understand why you would do this, from a medical legal standpoint you are essentially diminishing the chances of collecting evidence against the assailments,” he said.

“Our job is two-fold, one is to make sure medically that they are okay, to make sure nothing else has gone on,” Burton said. “The next step that we take once we do the initial medical screening is we also notify SACIS, and so SACIS gets involved right at the get go.”

The SACIS advocate can be there to support the victim through the medical process.

Advocacy

The numbers of victims that reach out to SACIS versus the number of sexual assault cases reported is quite different.

When victims go to SACIS, they can do anything from making a Civil No Contact Order, counseling for a sexual assault or to get advocacy.

It can be a hard decision for a victim to go to talk to SACIS. Bass explains it as a huge to step to overcome. By talking to someone about what happened, a victim must confront the situation by talking about it and therefore accept that it happened.

A victim will make a service plan with a counselor when they step into SACIS. This includes the goals the victim would like to overcome by talking to the counselor.

The advocators help weigh the pros and cons for each options.

“We don’t ever make the decision for the person, but we will help them work through their decision making process,” Buckley said.

When talking to victims, SACIS is careful about how they talk to the victims. Some victims believe the sexual assault is their fault. They try to get the victim not to look at it like that, but to view the situation in a different light.

Just because a person was passed out or drunk doesn’t mean someone has the right to sexually assault another person, Buckley said.

A person has the right to control his or her body.

“The bottom line is it wasn’t their fault that they were sexually assaulted it is the fault of the person who chose to make that decision and carry it out,” she said.

Kristin Jording can be reached at

581-2812 or kejording@eiu.edu.