Content warning — This project contains graphic content that may be triggering for some readers.

On May 1, 2014, the list of 55 was released. The list is extensive, with no room for interpretation. Temple was among the original schools listed.

The U.S. Department of Education released the names of 55 universities under investigation for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and misconduct, and Temple was one of them. The list has since grown to include 175 institutions.

The university’s inclusion on this list had to come from complaints—complaints that tipped the proverbial dominoes that would topple Temple onto the list of non-compliant schools when it came to sexual violence. Under federal law, this includes physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person’s will or where a person is incapable of giving consent. This means rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual abuse and sexual coercion.

Today, there are three known Title IX complaints filed against Temple.

This issue is widespread among universities across the country, showing no trends to why one school is on the list, and another is not. The students we’ve spoken to and the Climate Survey from the president’s task force showed us a majority of students aren’t familiar with Temple’s formal reporting procedures. There’s uncertainty about Temple’s resources and how to use them. This project is a comprehensive answer to those questions.

Staff members and reporters interviewed students, faculty, staff, nurses, survivor advocates, survivors, administrators and Temple Police to try to understand the process of reporting and how survivors can seek help. In more than a dozen interviews, countless hours with survivors and nearly five months of reporting, we now understand how the university addresses sexual violence, specifically sexual assault, among students, faculty and staff. “100 miles of unpaved road” outlines the system in place for survivors to get support, and the personal experiences of those who have been a part of that process.

“100 miles of unpaved road” was a phrase told to us from one of those people, a rape advocate. She described a survivor she met years ago as such, as a woman who had endured something traumatic, with a road to recovery ahead of her. But this “unpaved road” can mean much more than just how a survivor feels in the moments following an assault. This project outlines the system in place for survivors to get support—a road that is progressing, with work that still needs to be done.

In that five months of reporting, The Temple News found:

• There are currently three Title IX complaints filed through the Office for Civil Rights that are in ongoing investigations. One of these complaints was given to The Temple News from the complainant.
• The university has the proper institutions in place to support survivors and provide education to students about consent, sexual misconduct and sexual violence, however many—if not all—of these offices are underfunded and understaffed, administrators say.
• During the 2014-15 academic year, 20 students were expelled or suspended from the university. Of those, five were expelled because of violations of Temple’s sexual assault policy. In 2014, there were nine reported cases of sexual assault.
• The system in place, described by multiple administrators as “points of entry” into the system of reporting and support, can be confusing for someone in crisis, survivors say; some have suggested a more centralized approach.

We have heard the stories of four survivors, whose experiences will appear throughout this project. Their stories are powerful—but they’re not the only ones. Their voices speak to their own experiences, and not the experiences of all survivors at Temple, or on any university campus. To read detailed accounts of two of these survivors’ stories, click here. These stories include details that may be triggering for some readers.

Last year, 4.7 percent of students on Main Campus reported an incident of sexual penetration—as defined by the Wellness Resource Center as vaginal, oral or anal penetration—without their consent.

Nearly 44 percent of students who have experienced sexual assault said reporting was not helpful, according to a climate survey conducted by the Presidential Committee on Sexual Misconduct.

Nationally, 27 percent of college women have reported an experience of some form of unwanted sexual contact, and almost 38 percent of female rape survivors were first raped between the ages of 18 to 24, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

A spokesman for OCR provided a statement saying the office’s policy was not to discuss details of complaints. When an investigation concludes, it will be disclosed whether or not OCR found Title IX violations at the university—or if there was insufficient evidence, the statement said.

Sandra Foehl, the university’s Title IX coordinator, said she could not recall details of specific complaints. At least one of the complaints, she said, involved an after-the-fact dispute over whether or not sex was consensual.

The OCR requested copies of years of university records to review Temple’s handling of sexual misconduct, Foehl added.

As part of the investigation, OCR visited Main Campus in 2014 to conduct focus groups to ask if students were aware of the sexual harassment and misconduct policies and how to report misconduct.

Foehl said answers “ran the gamut,” ranging from “people who had no notion that we have any of these things, to very informed individuals.”

Harmony-Jazmyne Rodriguez arrived on Main Campus as a liberal arts student in 2013. She filed a Title IX complaint that year, in which she alleges that the university mishandled her sexual assault case.

Rodriguez recounted parts of her more-than-80-page complaint to The Temple News last month as she did late in 2014. She said administrators did not accommodate her request to change housing to get away from the dorm room in which she was raped in August 2013, and further alleged that the Wellness Resource Center declined to assist her because she is a trans woman.

“I am told that they help students in need. But they didn’t help me,” Rodriguez said. Her complaint includes emails from WRC staff asking her to return to their office and encouraging her to involve Campus Safety in her efforts to report.

In her complaint, Rodriguez faults a Student Conduct administrator for disclosing details of her rape to The Temple News that blamed alcohol as a cause of the assault. She said opinion pieces focusing on drinking as a cause of sexual assault made her uncomfortable.

“It was excruciating to have people focus on drinking as a cause of rape rather than rapists,” she wrote.

The complaint is still being investigated.

The most recent reports of sexual assault on or near Main Campus include an incident in late September, when a 20-year-old female student reported to Philadelphia Police she had been sexually assaulted by someone she did not know on Carlisle Street near Jefferson.

Temple, SEPTA and Philadelphia police all collaborated in the investigation to find the suspect, which led to the arrest of Shakree Bennett in mid-October.

More recently, an 18-year-old female student reported a Feb. 13 sexual assault late in March. The student told Temple Police she was inappropriately touched by a 22-year-old male unaffiliated with the university. The student did not want further involvement with Temple Police, said Executive Director of Campus Safety Services Charlie Leone.

In 2014, there were seven reports of forcible rape on-campus, and two that occurred off campus.

In September 2014, President Theobald tasked Laura Siminoff, dean of the College of Public Health, with organizing a task force to investigate sexual misconduct on campus and provide recommendations.

The task force included faculty, students and administrators who met mostly during September 2014 through February 2015, Siminoff said. The group reviewed the university’s current resources and policies and surveyed students’ perceptions of leadership, policies and reporting related to sexual misconduct, according to the official report which was released in April of last year. It also compared best practices around the country and gave administration an idea about what students saw as a problem.

Of 3,763 student survey responses, 58.3 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed they knew where to get help if they experienced sexual misconduct and 37.6 percent said they agreed or strongly agreed that they knew Temple’s formal procedures to address complaints of sexual misconduct.

“A lot of different students are unclear about what sexual misconduct is and what rises to it,” Siminoff said.

The task force was a “one-time thing,” she said, adding that it will be up to Theobald if he wants it to reconvene.

In August 2015, President Theobald approved four of the task force’s recommendations:

• the creation of a new website focusing on sexual misconduct
• requiring all students to participate in mandatory, annual online sexual-misconduct awareness training
• updating the Student Conduct Code
• improving the infrastructure of resources and services allocated toward the issue

“Think About It: Part 3,” online training implemented by the Dean of Students, was a starting point for education about sexual misconduct, Siminoff said.

“It can’t hurt, it can only raise awareness,” she said. “It’s not the only solution, but we have to have good education in order to make any real changes. … Big schools are more challenged with how to do this with everybody.”

Dean of Students Stephanie Ives said the decision to use “Think About It: Part 3” was because it “seemed consistent” with the other two installments of the training. “Think About It: Part 1” is sent to incoming students in August, before arriving on campus. “Think About It: Part 2” is a follow-up for freshmen, given in October.

Ives said some students were “really angry” about the mandated training. Foehl, who oversees training for faculty and staff, said there was pushback as well.

“No, I do not think it’s enough,” Ives said. “I think it’s one way to ensure that all of these students in so many different locations get consistent educations.”

For Valerie Harrison, the resources for sexual assault survivors at Temple are adequate, but the coordination of those resources is lacking.

The task force agreed, and now she shares a floor with President Theobald as the centralized resource to help survivors get help. Since being hired in March, she is responsible for advising the President Theobald for compliance issues—including sexual assault—as a part of a three-person department.

Andrea Seiss, the current senior associate dean of students, will serve as the university’s new Title IX coordinator responsible for “services” and “systems” related to sexual misconduct beginning June 1.

Seiss’ responsibilities will include working with Harrison and making sure policies are “up to date and user-friendly,” defining what sexual misconduct is on Temple’s campus, ensuring compliance with federal guidelines, explaining to students the resources available for education, prevention and support.

“As time has passed, we’ve come to realize there’s more that we can be doing and should be doing for students. That’s where this position has come from,” she said.

“A university of this size … you can’t have one person doing that,” she added.

This summer, Seiss will begin reforming current university policy on sexual assault, connecting other resources on campus and assisting investigation.

“It’s going to be an area that’s going to continue to evolve through what we learn from students, faculty, staff, families, as we get talking more,” she said.

“We [have to] take advantage of confidence of our best practices, so that we are better coordinated and hopefully at the end of the day for our students, that would mean our resources and information are more easily accessible and you know where to go. You don’t have to go to five or six different places to get an answer.”

Kimberly Chestnut, director of the Wellness Resource Center, said this office is closer to her vision of a “victim advocacy center,” which has not previously existed on Main Campus. Chestnut imagines a confidential reporting office that could also offer all the necessary resources to survivors of any kind of sexual violence.

“That role doesn’t really exist here,” Chestnut said. “I think it would be an incredible asset.”

Addressing sexual assault or mishandling of sexual assault was on many platforms of tickets running for Temple Student Government for the 2016-17 academic year.

Take TU, a group comprised of student-activists Tina Ngo, Jared Dobkin and Isabella Jayme, said their campaign was the only intersectional-feminist campaign, and prioritized sexual assault as the most important issue facing the Temple community.

Ngo said she experienced an abusive relationship during her freshman year at Temple that affected her studies and well-being. She should have enough credits to be a junior, but she said she struggled academically due to the trauma that followed the relationship.

Ngo said she didn’t report the incidents of assault at the time, even though some of the reportable action happened on Main Campus in her dorm, because she wasn’t sure of the implications of reporting and what an investigation would mean.

Eventually, Ngo said, she reached out to Temple Police who put her in touch with Gray. After talking with her, Ngo sought counseling at Tuttleman Counseling Services, but she couldn’t get an appointment for about a month. The experience, she said, was draining.

This process led Ngo and her team to propose the idea for a sexual assault crisis center on Main Campus. The ticket identified the currently overworked staff in mental health resource centers, lack of clear information about reporting and a lack of serious education for students about what sexual assault is and how to handle it.

“I would literally have no idea how to report,” Jayme said. “I can’t even remember what we were told during orientation. There has to be more people who don’t know where to go.”

Ngo said “Think About It: Part 3” is not even close to what the university should be doing. A lot of students, she said, do it just so their account won’t be put on hold.

“These types of learning exercises need to be taken outside of the computer. It needs to be addressed with students face-to-face,” she said.

Any campus event can be an opportunity to talk about and educate on the topic of assault, Ngo said. She thinks Temple Student Government is responsible for addressing these issues and implementing ways to improve.

Ngo said the center should also be available to community members and should be a single place where any survivor can go get any help they may need.

“It’s just a room, that’s all we need,” Ngo said. “We just need a place where victims and survivors have one place they can go and get the help they need and know how to report.”

One of the priorities for the student group Student Activists for Female Empowerment, or S.A.FE., is having a resource center for sexual assault survivors on Main Campus. As of February, the group has spoken with administration once this school year and is focused on bringing attention and improvements to resources.

“I think Temple would like to portray that we have a lot of resources for this,” said Taylor Davis, the group’s vice president. “The ones that we do have, they’re just not communicated well enough to the student body at large.”

It is nearly pitch black in the basement. The air is stale and the floor is sticky. People pack in tight, elbows folded against sides to keep cups from sloshing over. The music throbs like an irregular heartbeat. Using the backlight on their phones, boys scrutinize the bodies of other party-goers in the darkness.

It’s a familiar scene, played out a thousand times across Temple’s campus and surrounding areas. The address changes, but everything else—the sickly sweet jungle juice, the wafting smell of marijuana, the roaming hands, the lingering eyes, the unspoken expectations—stays the same.

In 2015, 32.9 percent of respondents to the Wellness Resource Center’s Annual Report said they consumed five to six drinks or more the last time they “partied/socialized.” And 30.1 percent of those students said they “pace drinks at 1 or fewer per hour.”

“Some of these behaviors are—not some, most—are influenced by drugs and alcohol,” said Kevin Williams, the director of residential life on the nature of sexual assault.

Every assault, however, is different. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 75 percent of self-identified sexual assault perpetrators reported using alcohol before the incident. The report also includes the addition of alcohol into sexual assaults are “much more likely to include attempted or completed rape than incidents without alcohol.”

For Williams and the assistant director of residential life, Shondrika Merritt, sexual assault too often occurs in tangent with parties, drinking and alcohol in relation to residential life. Williams and Merritt, as well as the rest of the residence life team, often partner up with the Wellness Resource Center and Campus Safety to promote education and sexual well-being among students who live in these facilities.

According to the Climate Survey conducted by the president’s task force, which was released last April, 41.7 percent of respondents indicated they received training on policies and procedures concerning sexual misconduct. The rest of the respondents said they had not received training and or were “unsure.” But all freshmen receive training at orientation and online before arriving. The numbers were nearly the same regarding prevention training.

“How do we help them become aware of themselves, how they interact with others and the responsibility to be part of a larger community?” Williams said. “A lot of that is about self-responsibility, knowing what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, teaching someone who maybe didn’t have this in high school what are expectations here at Temple.”

But aside from these programs, Williams said the majority of prevention education takes place in orientation and at residence halls.

“Our programs build from where orientation leaves them off,” Williams said.

As a survivor, Caroline said she thinks incoming students need more direct information about consent and the risks of binge drinking.

“There needs to be a better education, especially to incoming freshman,” Caroline said. “We’re told that it’s wrong, and then you go to police, and it’s not wrong. … It’s not what I always thought it was.”

Before taking on their roles during the school year, resident assistants undergo training sessions on handling sexual misconduct in August, which prepares them for counseling and communication with survivors.

Instruction on how to properly report an assault is also delivered through the Wellness Resource Center, which educates RAs on the different forms of sexual assault and how to spot potential instances. Winter training is also mandatory for RAs, as are Wednesday staff meetings and bi-weekly, one-on-one sessions to address flaws and collect feedback on how each floor is handling issues.

At Temple, resources are spread out across Main Campus, disjointed and independent.

The system has several different offices that can help start the process of support, and can serve specific, immediate needs for a survivor.

The Temple News found that if a student is assaulted on, near or off Main Campus, there are several resources or “points of entry,” including, but not limited to:

• Special Services Coordinator Donna Gray
• Tuttleman Counseling Services
• Women Organized Against Rape
• Campus Safety Services
• Special Victims Unit and Philadelphia Sexual Assault Response Center
• The Wellness Resource Center
• Student Health Services

Each office can start the process of reporting or seeking professional support. Instead of one center for psychological, medical, emotional and criminal support, it’s designed to allow survivors to choose where they are most comfortable seeking help first.

The Climate Survey from the president’s task force said more than half of the respondents reported they knew where to get help for sexual misconduct on campus, but less than half agreed or strongly agreed that they knew Temple’s formal reporting procedures.

Valerie Harrison, the new adviser to the president for compliance issues is expected to streamline the process by “centralizing” the university’s efforts to provide support.

“Victims of sexual assault are not the same and don’t respond the same,” Harrison said. “So for some, they may not be comfortable reporting immediately, and we have to recognize that and accommodate that.”

“[We have to] allow them to be who they are and to navigate the process at their own pace in their own way,” she added. “We’re just there to support them.”

“Temple should make it really clear what avenues you can take,” Taylor Davis, S.A.F.E.’s vice president, said. “Whether you choose to first call the police and file a report right away, or if you want to go to the hospital and start a medical exam, or if you really just want some crisis counseling.”

The Navigator

Her office, located across from Mitten Hall next to Saxby’s Coffee, has windows on three sides. Her desk gives her a view of passersby and the entrance to Polett Walk. But on a particularly sunny day, it’s almost impossible to see who’s inside.

“We try to be very intentional in terms of creating a good atmosphere so people feel they can come in and they can talk,” Gray said. “It’s nice because it allows for openness, without like, ‘Oh my god everyone knows I’m in here.’”

Over the course of a semester Donna Gray said she has about 30 conversations with individuals on campus concerning sexual assault. Her role allows her to be a “liaison” between survivors looking for resources, education, to start the criminal process with police or file a report with Student Conduct.

Charlie Leone said Gray is “on the front lines” and helping survivors “navigate” through Temple’s system. Her main role is to connect survivors to other resources, on or off Main Campus. With the priority of explaining a survivor’s options, Gray said she has gone to court with a survivor, attended Student Conduct hearings and regularly helps survivors file reports with Temple Police.

In terms of reporting a case to police in order to pursue the case criminally, Gray said often it can take years to resolve, meaning an underclassman could file a case that may not be resolved by their senior year.

Caroline said she wouldn’t have come back to Temple to finish her degree in psychology if it weren’t for Gray and her support.

“Mainly just knowing that there’s somebody there that understands and knows everything and knowing that I can text her or call her if I need to come see her anytime,” Caroline said. “She saved me here. I really don’t think I could have finished at Temple otherwise.”

“I think the scariest thing is, you don’t want people to feel like they’re alone in it,” Gray said. “You don’t want somebody to feel like, ‘I went through all of that, and what for?’”

She added that sometimes police may tell a survivor that even though they want to pursue a case criminally or through Student Conduct, there is not enough evidence.

“Oftentimes we have a tendency to think … ‘It’s all about the victim and the victim gets to decide,’” Gray added. “The reality is that, it’s not. It’s the district attorney’s office, as well as the officer, the detective.”

For Caroline, it was up to the District Attorney. In her report, she told officers she had no recollection of the physical assault.

“I didn’t realize who he was or anything,” she said. “But what I know now is it took place at like 3 or 4 in the morning, in my bedroom.”

“My whole being for the last year has been focused on the hope that he will go away, and I will never have to think that he didn’t get what he deserved,” she added. “But he won’t pay for this. And the law needs to change, really, is what needs to happen.”

“Typically there is going to be a degree of anger, and that’s understandable and frustrating,” Gray added. “Sort of feeling like, believe it or not, the system has failed in some way.”

A confidential office

For survivors in need of support, Tuttleman Counseling Services, the university’s free, confidential counseling center, has a team dedicated to helping survivors of sexual assault known as the Sexual Assault Counseling and Education Unit. The SACE Unit has existed for 23 years, and is currently made up of seven counselors, including Coordinator Aisha Renée Moore.

“We generally provide crisis intervention, advocacy, counseling and referral services for students who’ve survived things like sexual assault,” Moore said.

In addition to Moore, SACE is composed of an assistant coordinator and five trainees who can also provide services to students dealing with partner violence, stalking, sexual harassment and childhood sexual abuse.

For students hoping to address any of these concerns, one of the benefits of accessing Tuttleman Counseling, Moore said, is confidentiality. Tuttleman Counseling is one of the few offices on campus that is not required to report a sexual assault to Campus Safety Services. Kim Chestnut called all other offices on campus—besides Tuttleman Counseling and any clergy on campus like the Newman Center or Hillel at Temple—“mandated reporting offices.”

Moore said having a confidential office can allow a survivor to receive more information about the resources without committing to filing a police report or following up with Student Conduct.

To begin receiving counseling for sexual assault or to find out about other resources available on campus, a student must come to the center during walk-in hours, which vary by day. A student must sign in at the front desk and fill out paperwork, including a mood assessment form called C-CAPS. After that, the student can see a therapist in the center.

Last year, about 3,100 students used Tuttleman Counseling Services’ walk-in hours, Moore said.

Sarah Trotta, assistant coordinator of SACE, said the therapist will then conduct an assessment “to get a better understanding of the level of risk, the urgency of what’s going on and to provide a first intervention,” if the student is coming to the counseling center as a survivor.

During these walk-in appointments, called a “triage appointment,” survivors meet with whichever counselors are available, which may not be a counselor in the SACE Unit. But all Tuttleman counselors are equipped to offer help to survivors, Trotta said.

Counselors discuss medical, safety and criminal justice concerns with survivors and present them with resources and options to further pursue action within these avenues if they so choose. Counselors also address substance-use concerns, eating concerns, risk of homicide and risk of suicide.

Survivors are then seen back at Tuttleman Counseling by a SACE Unit counselor within two business days of the initial walk-in appointment for an urgent intake appointment, Moore said.

“We make room in our schedule for our SACE urgents,” Moore said. “So whatever’s happening, room will be made and we will meet them without fail in that timeline.”

White-Walston oversees WOAR’s preventative education and awareness programming for all students in Philadelphia, all the way from children in pre-K to college students. She’s been a guest lecturer for Temple’s Human Sexuality class and has co-facilitated workshops in dorms on Main Campus with the Wellness Resource Center.

When working with student survivors of sexual assault, White-Walston said WOAR’s job is to operate “parallel to university services.”

“WOAR is a resource outside the university,” she said. “Sometimes students don’t want to go to the university’s health services. They want complete anonymity, so they can come to WOAR.”

WOAR assists survivors throughout a process of healing. When a survivor initially goes to the hospital or SVU to receive treatment, the survivor can be accompanied by an advocate from WOAR, who will help them understand various treatment and legal options. Some hospitals will automatically offer the survivor access to an advocate, but in other hospitals, the survivor must request an advocate independently. Additionally, the survivor can call WOAR’s 24-hour hotline to receive immediate help from an advocate.

Advocates are especially important because they provide survivors with information that some hospitals don’t, White-Walston said. For example, some Philadelphia hospitals will not automatically offer survivors pregnancy or HIV prophylaxis, an immediate preventative treatment to prevent a person from becoming pregnant or HIV positive, and a WOAR advocate can recommend a patient ask for those services when they are not immediately offered.

Laquisha Anthony is a volunteer advocate for WOAR and founder of an organization called Victory Over Inconceivable Cowardly Experiences, or V.O.I.C.E., which strives to empower survivors of sexual assault through processes like one-on-one workshops, anger management classes and awareness events.

Anthony got her start as an advocate with WOAR long after she was sexually assaulted herself, as an undergraduate at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. After Anthony was assaulted, she didn’t tell anyone. They only found out after she realized she was pregnant about two months after the incident.

“I know that I’m helping someone to not go through what I went through,” she said. “That’s what being an advocate is for me: standing up for someone who isn’t in a position to do so themselves. Standing beside them, and doing it with them.”

Following the initial treatment, WOAR keeps in close contact with the survivor to help them receive regular counseling, which can be done on-site in WOAR’s office at 1617 John F. Kennedy Blvd, Suite 1100.

White-Walston said she thinks a rape crisis center on Main Campus would be a positive step for the university.

“To enhance what’s there is not a bad thing,” White-Walston said. “If you do expand your center, it says that student safety is a high priority.”

But Anthony said she’s not sure a centralized rape crisis center is the best way to maintain the privacy of survivors.

“If someone sees you at that location, then everybody kind of knows,” she said. “I think that’s the downside of having one particular situation. It could be beneficial, but it could be harmful at the same time.”

In the future, White-Walston hopes to continue to see prevention programming incorporated into Temple’s battle against sexual assault.

“If you only address it when something happens, it’s already too late,” she said.

“I would shout in front of millions of people if I had to,” Anthony said. “What I’ve been through is not in vain.”

Reporting an incident

Charlie Leone says underreporting of sexual assault is a problem. But when he sees an uptick in reporting, there’s no way to know if it’s because of an increase in crime, more education or more awareness on campus.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, more than 90 percent of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report incidents of sexual violence.

2015 saw a decrease in sexual assault cases. These trends are complicated, and often rely on more than one variable, he said.

Leone said if a survivor comes to the police to file an initial report they do not have to pursue the case criminally or through Student Conduct. Some survivors, he said, can file an anonymous report, under a “Jane Doe” but include details surrounding the incident like location, time and nature of the assault.

“We try to talk to the person and see, ‘What do they want?’” he said. “Of course from our end, we are always thinking of prosecution, evidence, that kind of thing. But there is also another side of us that we know there is other things that the person needs.”

“You have to handle this the way you want to handle it, and it doesn’t necessarily include reporting,” Olivia said.

Filing a report through Temple Police starts when an initial call is made. From there, an officer will ask the survivor a few basic questions, Leone said.

An officer will generally meet with a survivor to complete a report. From there, Temple Police will notify the Special Victims Unit in Hunting Park. An investigator from SVU will review the case and notify Temple Police if the survivor should come to their facilities for further questioning and to have a rape kit

In some cases, the call from SVU will not occur until days after the initial report to Temple Police.

When Olivia saw Donna Gray months after she was raped, it wasn’t until a few days later that Temple Police called her and—despite her protests—took her to the Special Victims Unit.

“I was like, ‘I have a lesson, I don’t want to do this right now.’ And she was like, ‘Well you have to go now,’” Olivia said.

And it wasn’t only like that with police. Weeks after her initial report, she was notified by Student Conduct that the university was investigating her case. When she was called in for a meeting, it was explained to her that she would have to tell her story to a panel of faculty members at a hearing with the perpetrator.

At the time Olivia would have brought the case to Student Conduct, the university utilized a student panel to hear cases. After the 1960s, Senior Associate Dean of Students Andrea Caporale Seiss said, it became “best practice” for a student to tell their story in front of their peers in Student Conduct matters. Two years ago, Student Conduct adopted a board of administrators and faculty members for sexual assault cases, and then in August 2015, Student Conduct hired former Supreme Court Justice Jane Cutler Greenspan to hear all cases.

For officers to best handle situations with survivors when filing reports, Leone said the department has “customized” training that involves equipping officers with all of the information they may need to refer a survivor to another office. These skills include interview techniques, knowing when an individual may not want to disclose certain information, referring resources and educating them on the reporting process at Temple, Leone said.

“Right now, [officers are] doing well,” he said. “We want them to be sensitive in these types of environments. Especially talking to someone who has been through a horrific experience.”

From her experience, Tina Ngo said she believes police aren’t properly trained to deal with the emotional side of responding to assault, and that sensitivity training could be used across the board throughout the process. She said often, she felt like she was the one to blame during the reporting process and in seeking mental health help.

After Temple Police had notified SVU and given the information from the report to the Dean of Students or any other “points of entry” offices that may need it, like Student Conduct, police are no longer involved. Leone said he will often divert survivors to other resources on campus after police have finished reporting.

“It’s not just us here,” he said. “It’s a group of us.”

The facility for Philadelphia

Inside the facility at 300 E. Hunting Park Ave. sits four different units: the Department of Human Services, the Philadelphia Children’s Alliance, the Special Victims Unit and the Philadelphia Sexual Assault Response Center.

The facility is a place for survivors of sexual assault to report incidents of assault to SVU detectives and have medical examinations conducted.

Olivia’s experience on Hunting Park Avenue was brief. She said she told a detective her story, one that occurred more than two months prior and with little evidence.

“He ends it, and he goes, ‘Well, so this is a very gray-area case and nothing is going to happen,’” Olivia said. “And I was like, ‘Why am I here then?’ He said, ‘Well, you know, it would be really good if there were more people who brought up these gray-area cases, even if you lose cases like this, they are really important.’”

“Is this like you want me to be some kind of martyr for other victims?” Olivia said. “What is going on here?”

Since the incident occurred months prior, Olivia did not have a rape kit conducted. In some cases, however, if the survivor consents, a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner is called to the facility. It takes up to an hour for a SANE to arrive for an examination.

When a SANE arrives, Mike Boyle, the center’s program director, said they ask for consent to conduct a private and sometimes internal examination. If the survivor agrees—including signing a document to affirm—the nurse will inform survivors if she sees any injuries that are “probative,” Boyle said, and, if she receives consent, will photograph those specific injuries, like bruising and broken blood vessels.

Anne Marie Jones is a SANE who has been working at PSARC since December of 2014. Last year, she conducted 103 examinations.

Jones said before a SANE starts collecting forensic data—also known as a rape kit—they will ask for urine samples for a pregnancy test, an oral swab for HIV testing and an initial DNA swab. At PSARC, Jones said nurses cannot conduct any sexually transmitted disease testing or Pap testing, but can offer prophylactic medications to prevent survivors from contracting STDs they may have been exposed to like gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, bacterial vaginosis as well as a five-day starter pack for HIV testing.

Following this testing, SANE nurses will conduct a brief interview. These questions include details on the type of force used in the assault like choking, kicking or punching, and if there was ejaculation during the assault. Boyle said this is more like a “checklist,” and less like a “narrative” to reduce any kind of bias in a nurse’s report.

From there, the nurse will swab the patient based on information collected in the interview as part of the rape kit. This can include an internal exam to look for injuries and collect DNA.

Inside a rape kit—which is initially supplied by the police department and funded for examination by the city—are envelopes. Each has a label, like “rectal swabs,” “vaginal swabs,” or “blood sample,” and contains two Q-tips and cardboard tubes to preserve the evidence. This examination will take about an hour to an hour-and-a-half, Boyle said.

Jones said she tries to stay professional while conducting the exam and doing the kit.

“When they start breaking down and crying and starting to hug you, then it can be a little tough sometimes,” she said. “But you can’t really show emotion. We’re supposed to be in control and professional and we’re their first support and to comfort them, but there’s a line. You can’t be a friend.”

“They’re all professional and worked in various capacities in medical settings: in emergency rooms, on medical floors, so they’ve seen a lot of sadness,” Boyle added.

“This is just part of the job.”

‘I just want to check in’

Kim Chestnut said her role with the Wellness Resource Center is just that: providing resources.

Chestnut said any student is “welcome” to come in and get information or support around any topic of concern. For a survivor, she said, there are a multitude of options.

“Ultimately we say, ‘You have lots of options and you are in control,’” Chestnut said. “‘So, let me offer you what you can do moving forward and you decide what feels best to you.’ And so that could just be accessing medical and therapeutic support, it could be moving forward with wanting to do a police report. It could just be moving forward through with a conduct, internal Temple report. It could be nothing: ‘I just need information. I don’t need anything else, I just want to check in.’”

The Wellness Resource Center, she said, sees one or two survivors a month and more traffic in the fall semester than in the spring.

When Harmony-Jazmyne Rodriguez came to the WRC in the days following the night she was raped, she said no one in the office was ever available to see her.

As far as filing a report on campus, Chestnut said she “can imagine it would be helpful to students.” She said she supports a “victim advocacy center” on campus that would be more “thoroughly resourced.”

“As we currently stand, one entity can do certain things, but not really as one human are we capable of being a confidential reporting destination and providing all interim measures for a student that was assaulted,” she added.

Chestnut said the possibility of this is “under review” as part of the task force recommendations. She said additional reporting and investigation was needed from the university. So, hopefully that would provide “all that [President Theobald] needs.”