Hopkins: Students Should Have Been Told Of Alleged Rape
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A Johns Hopkins University internal investigation into how it handled an alleged rape is over.
Pat Warren reports the university finds fault with its response.
A student protest is just part of the fallout from Johns Hopkins University's failure to alert the campus of an alleged rape at an off-campus fraternity house. Hopkins senior Alexy Abramson has been following the case.
"There are a lot of concerns about how exactly these procedures have been handled," Abramson said.
Johns Hopkins concludes that it should have issued a timely warning of the alleged assault and has made policy and procedural changes to assure a rapid response. Prevention and response improvements include new training for students and staff, a website launched in July of this year and a sexual assault hotline.
Johns Hopkins has created a victims advocate position and a standing sexual violence advisory committee of students, faculty and staff.
"I'm pretty open about being a campus sexual assault survivor. And when I was on campus, I was the only one speaking out," said Laura Dunn, SurvJustice.
Dunn heads the group that filed a federal complaint on behalf of Johns Hopkins students and that investigation continues. Meanwhile, there are varying degrees of student awareness of the complaints.
"I don't really know what they're doing here, what they're doing. I don't know enough about it," said student Amanda Inns.
Warren: "Are you satisfied with the direction they're taking on this now?"
Abramson: "I'm satisfied in the direction, but I'm just anticipating the results because you can say something but obviously want to see progress made."
"I can tell the school is actually caring about it," said student So Yon.
The university declined an interview and gave no further information about its own internal investigation, citing attorney client confidentiality.
The Obama Administration has targeted sexual assaults on campuses as a national epidemic.
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