Univ. identifies student sex offenders

4-20-2011 Maryland:

Office of student conduct finds four students guilty of assaults in 10 years, CNS reports

Four university students have been found guilty of sexual assault over the last 10 years, including a former Terps quarterback who left the university without explanation in 2006, according to information obtained by a group of student journalists.

The Office of Student Conduct released the information to student reporters at the journalism college's Capital News Service last month after more than three years of university resistance and an opinion by state Attorney General Doug Gansler last year that rejected the university's argument that the names were private information.

According to a CNS report that aired Thursday, ___ was suspended for sexually assaulting another student on the campus, although the details of the actual incident were not released by the university. He subsequently transferred to Jacksonville State, a Division II school.

The other three students found guilty in Office of Student Conduct investigations over the years were ___, ___ and ___; no further details on their incidents were available.

Allison Bennett, director of the university's Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Program, said the fact the list only includes four students doesn't mean the crime isn't happening frequently at this university — according to the U.S. Department of Justice, one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college, and only 5 percent actually report it.

"This shows that a lot of people are not being held accountable for these crimes," she said. "Often survivors do not want to come forward, so there are few actual suspects. This is a tiny, tiny percentage of people actually being found guilty. There are a tremendous number of people getting away with this and that is unacceptable."

CNS broadcast bureau Director Sue Kopen Katcef, a journalism professor who oversaw the investigation, said even though she had heard a rumor that an athlete had been punished for sexually assaulting another student, she was still surprised to see his name on the list three years later.

"We were stunned," she said. "We had no idea what we were going to get, whether we were going to get nothing or volumes of material. We just decided we wanted to able to quantify what was being done by the administration on this issue. That's really at the core of what we wanted to find."

Statham could not be reached for comment yesterday. Athletics spokesman Doug Dull declined to comment.

CNS students first began uncovering the prevalence of on-campus sexual assaults in 2008 through a six-month investigation that resulted in a Terp Weekly Edition radio report entitled, "Out of the Shadows." CNS student and journalism major Danielle Lama conducted the final investigation and put together last week's most recent report.

Kopen Katcef said her students asked the university to release the names but were told the information was protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects students' records. Student Conduct Director John Zacker agreed to comply after Gansler's opinion. Last month, after paying more than $300 in processing fees that Lama fundraised, the student journalists finally got the list.

University and CNS alumna Alex Moe, who worked on the project last spring when Gansler's opinion was released, said the information was the public's right to know.

"We weren't really sure what we were going to uncover," she said. "It doesn't matter if it's an athlete or whoever. The fact is, there are 35,000 other students on this campus who deserve to know."

Bennett said she has faith that the university prosecutes all students found guilty of sexual assaults. However, based on the scarce information released by the Office of Student Conduct, she said it's hard to say whether the punishment fits the crime — only one of the students found guilty was expelled, and the other three were suspended for a year and forced to meet certain requirements, such as staying away from the victim and writing reflective essays.

And although the released information still leaves many questions to be answered, Bennett said she is hopeful the CNS report will encourage students to come forward when they are assaulted and show that anyone — even an athlete — is capable of committing such a crime.

"I think people will be surprised by this," Bennett said. "It's often assumed offenders are creepy men who don't have access to consensual sex and need to prey on women to get sex. But often, it's someone who is in a position of power and uses that to victimize women. They use those positions of power to hurt people." ..Source..