“A college campus isn’t the first place that comes to mind in a discussion about violent crime.

But research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 1 out of 5 college women will be sexually assaulted. NPR’s investigative unit teamed up with journalists at the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) to look at the failure of schools — and the government agency that oversees them — to prevent these assaults and then to resolve these cases.”

Download an .mp3 of the NPR report

[Running time: 7:47 mins.]

University of Colorado at Boulder

Officials at the University of Colorado know about a pattern of alleged date-rape drug use at a fraternity in Boulder, but say the law prevents them from naming the fraternity to police.

An investigation of sexual assault on college campuses found CU and others colleges across Colorado are withholding information about sexual assaults against students.

But the issue is more nuanced than first glance might suggest: Advocates say the secrecy is necessary to protect rape victims who wouldn’t come forward otherwise. Law enforcement officials say the secrecy may be allowing more people to fall victim.

This tension is emerging amid major changes in the way universities in Colorado try to prevent sexual assault, and how they publicly report crime on campus. And it matters to all of us because the effects of what some experts are calling an “epidemic” of assaults nationwide are long-lasting and costly to society.

In almost all sexual assaults – 90 percent, according to the U.S. Justice Department – the attacker is someone the victim knows.

[tweetmeme]And that means the rape prevention programs of the past 30 years – rape whistles, walking in pairs, staying out of dark alleys – haven’t really made a dent in the number of assaults on campus.

That’s because efforts haven’t focused on how most rapes happen, says Davian Gagne, gender violence prevention coordinator for the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“If somebody is blowing a whistle, it’s probably going to be in somebody’s residence in a bedroom, and the likelihood of somebody intervening in that situation is pretty slim,” Gagne said. She was hired in 2008 as part of the university’s response to the high-profile sexual assault case involving Lisa Simpson and the university football recruiting program.

Gagne has been focused on a new prevention tactic being introduced at schools around the nation. It’s called “bystander intervention.”

The idea is to teach people to be aware of a bad situation as it develops and to intervene. For example, it might be stopping a friend who’s had too much to drink from leaving a party with a potential attacker.

Studies have shown if roughly a third of the population becomes aware of something, that becomes a tipping point for changing attitudes and behaviors in a culture.

Studies have shown if roughly a third of the population becomes aware of something, that becomes a tipping point for changing attitudes and behaviors in a culture.So Gagne has been working to reach that point, and begin shifting attitudes and actions long before any whistle could be blown.

It hasn’t been easy. Fully funding the program, which would train everyone from the Chancellor, to faculty, staff and students, would cost about $260,000 — money the university doesn’t have. And not everyone on campus sees the need, she adds.

But Gary Pawlas does.

Pawlas, an instructor of mechanical engineering, worked with Gagne and others to develop a sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention program for engineering students.

“I wanted to make sure it was a safe environment for everybody that we had,” Pawlas said.

He was halfway through the workshops when he ran into a former student who told him the kind of story that reinforced his view. She had just quit her job because she said she was being sexually harassed at work.

Pawlas said he’s surveyed workshop participants and found a third said the sessions were helpful, which is around the 30 percent tipping point Gagne cited as necessary for changes in a culture.

“I’m hoping that out of this we can get some awareness at least going, so somewhere in the back of their brain they’re going to say, wait, this isn’t right,” Pawlas said.

That kind of awareness might mean a bystander steps in next time one of his former students encounters harassment at work.

“Part of this,” said Pawlas, “is trying to change the attitudes and protect people one tiny step at a time.”

Would you like to replay the video or share the link to it with your friends?

[tweetmeme]Mary Friedrichs, who directs the Office of Victim Assistance at the University of Colorado, the District Attorney for Boulder County Stan Garnett and Joanne Belknap, who survived a sexual assault as a student at CU in 1980 and now researchers sexual violence as a professor at CU, discuss the tangle of conflicting priorities between preserving confidentiality of victims and law enforcement’s ability to identify and prosecute attackers.

[Running time: 4:59]