OSU center didn’t report 57 potential felonies
Ohio State’s COLUMBUS — now-shuttered Sexual Civility and Empowerment center failed to report nearly 60 potential felonies as required by state law during its threeyear existence, The Dispatch has learned.
The university announced in June 2018 that it was dissolving the unit, known as SCE, and firing four employees after an external review found it failed to properly document and report at least 20 sexual-assault complaints by students.
At that time, the university hired independent auditing specialists to review files at SCE, which opened in 2015. That audit identified 57 potential felonies that SCE should have reported to law enforcement but did not, the university said, revealing the review’s findings for the first time in response to public records requests from The Dispatch. Given the nature of SCE’s operations, it is likely that most, if not all, of the unreported crimes involved sexual assaults.
“This failure is unacceptable, which is one of the reasons the university shut down the office and engaged nationally recognized experts to create a redesigned, bestin-class model to support victims of sexual assault,” Ohio State spokesman Chris Davey said in an emailed response to the audit findings.
The university paid more than $1.1 million in legal fees to create the redesigned Title IX program and review the SCE cases, according to payment totals obtained by The Dispatch. Most of that went to Philadelphia law firm Cozen O’Connor, which helped Ohio State create the new program, followed by national auditing firm Margolis Healy, which reviewed whether SCE cases were properly reported.
All 57 cases have since been reported to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, Ohio State said. Of those, 20 have been reported to university police, 30 have been reported to Columbus police and seven have been reported to other agencies.
As part of the audit, Ohio State told survivors about available resources and their rights and options, Davey said. That could include filing a police report or proceeding with a university investigation, for example. In all 57 cases, none pursued police investigations or authorized Ohio State to share their names with law enforcement.
Numerous federal and state laws can impact sexual violence reporting on or near a college campus, said Taylr Ucker-Lauderman, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence.
Sexual assault survivors may not want to pursue police involvement, but reporting processes must be followed and survivors must know what to expect, especially since they often struggle with whether, when and how to report what happened to them, Ucker-Lauderman told The Dispatch in a statement.
“When these processes are not followed, that leaves the possibility of breaking the survivor’s trust, causing additional trauma, and interrupting their healing process,” she said.
The 20 cases reported to Ohio State police — in November and February, in the wake of the SCE review by auditing specialists — occurred mostly in 2016 and 2017. Two occurred in 2014 or 2015, according to campus police reports obtained by The Dispatch. Because survivors did not pursue police action and their names were not included when Ohio State did report the crimes, police did not pursue investigations and the cases were closed, according to the police reports.
Columbus police did not respond to inquiries about the 30 cases reported to them by Ohio State.
The 20 campus felonies that initially went unreported to Ohio State police until the audit was completed were also required to be included in Ohio State’s annual crime data reporting mandated by the federal Jeanne Clery Act. However, all were properly reported under the Clery Act — either by SCE, through other university channels, or as part of the SCE review before the annual Clery Act reporting window had closed. Clery Act campus safety reports are due each year by October for the crime statistics from the previous calendar year.
Separately from the 57 potential felony cases that had gone unreported to law enforcement, two SCE cases that had been properly reported to law enforcement had not been included in Ohio State’s Clery Act campus safety reports, the auditing specialists found. Ohio State notified the U.S. Department of Education about the ongoing audit of SCE cases and the Clery reporting errors and identified the discrepancies in its 2018 campus safety report. No fines have been issued to date, Davey said.
Documents obtained by The Dispatch when Ohio State closed the center last year detailed a variety of complaints about SCE and its leadership. The records indicated some survivors were subjected to victim-blaming, told they were delusional or lying, or advised that they needed to embellish their stories because “their real experience wasn’t’ serious enough” to receive justice or legal protection.
Since the SCE’s closing, Ohio State has announced it is forming an Office of Institutional Equity, which will oversee the university’s response to sexual- and gender-based harassment violence, and other forms of discrimination and harassment. The office will be responsible for Ohio State’s compliance with Title IX, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal and state laws and university policies.
Leading the new office is Kathy Lasher, who oversaw a similar office at Central Michigan University.
Lasher said more colleges nationwide are shifting to such offices, and Ohio State’s commitment to addressing sexual misconduct was part of what drew her to the university.
“We are starting to see more universities move to this model because it’s important to have the same individuals who are trained specifically in this area — addressing concerns of harassment, and discrimination and sexual misconduct for all individuals at the university,” she said.
Ohio State’s system for preventing sexual misconduct and supporting survivors includes its Counseling and Consultation Services, Student Wellness Center, and Student Health Services.
Since the closure of SCE last year, Ohio State has brought in two confidential advocates from the Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio, or SARNCO, to help students, faculty and other staff process trauma and share information about reporting processes and resources.
It has also hired three new intake and outreach coordinators to assist students and campus employees in understanding their rights, options and resources when dealing with discrimination and harassment. And it has made a case manager from the Wexner Medical Center’s STAR Trauma Recovery Center and a therapist available for several hours a week at Ohio State’s Counseling and Consultation Services. Both serve students who have been victims of crime.