NGU offers resources for investigative and healing help after sexual assault
By Alex Miller, The Vision Magazine Editor-in-Chief
Jeanne had just gotten back on campus. Exhausted from a fun, but busy spring break, she shuffled into Stoughton Hall and pushed open her unlocked door. Slamming her cumbersome bag on the floor, she let the door swing behind her, an empty pizza box preventing its full closure.
After she slipped into her pajamas, brushed her blonde locks and scrubbed her teeth, she set her alarm for 7:30 a.m. Climbing into bed, she drifted off to dreamland.
What would awaken her the following morning would not be the blaring of her alarm signaling a new day, but a knee shoved between her legs and hands tightly gripped around her throat signaling her end.
Jeanne Clery was just 19 years old when 20-year-old Josoph M. Henry raped, sodomized, strangled and murdered her in the early morning. Her body was unrecognizable.
Henry was arrested for Clery’s murder after friends turned him in for bragging about his sexual encounter with her and how he stole some pretty nice things from her room. The Clerys were heartbroken enough to lose their only daughter. But to lose her by way of such a gruesome sexual assault only served to twist the knife in their hearts.
In this case, unbeknownst to the Clery family, Lehigh University had 38 instances of rape, robbery and assault within a three-year period. Case after case, the victims had been silenced and shamed and hidden.
Her parents, Connie and Howard Clery, soon after Henry’s death sentence and their settlement with Lehigh University, created the Clery Act which now requires all schools receiving federal funding to annually publish their crime statistics. The Clerys claimed many schools were hiding their student’s criminal activity; in their eyes, prospective students deserved to know the facts.
However, at North Greenville University, the Clery report is less-than exciting, with mostly page after page of zeroes. The highest number is for theft, which typically involves stolen textbooks. But if sexual assault were to occur, NGU does not shy away, but offers several resources for investigative and healing help.
NGU falls under Title IX, which once was only used to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex, age, gender or race, but now encompasses sexual assault and harassment, too.
Title IX coordinator at NGU, Robin McCarter, said “Students can report anything…it can be as simple as, ‘Someone hugged me and I didn’t like it,’ to, ‘I was raped.’ Sexual assault doesn’t have to be rape, though. You can hit someone’s leg and that can be assault. It depends on how it is perceived.”
Regardless of the severity of the act, there are many reasons why people don’t report sexual assault, including: Embarrassment, fear of retaliation, intimidation, shame and fear of not being believed. At a Southern Baptist university like NGU, McCarter explained victims of sexual assault may not come forward for fear of getting in trouble. However, she assured NGU always looks for criminal behavior first and foremost.
“During my time [at NGU] we haven’t had an assault or a rape on campus,” said McCarter. “However, if something were to happen, it’s not for me to judge what they were doing and whether they were breaking policy. It’s my job to judge whether someone was breaking the law,” she continued.
Unfortunately, we live in a society which loves to shame those who cry rape. The victim is judged and blamed for everything: the clothes they wore, misleading words they uttered, or laughing off a sly sexual comment instead of saying “stop.” Bottom line: they put themselves in the situation so it’s their fault.
McCarter expressed her concern and dismay over this reality.
“No one seeks to go out and be raped. Period,” she said. “As a victim of molestation in my teen years, I know what it feels like to go to the police and for them not to believe you. My hope is that no student, faculty or staff member at NGU would ever experience that feeling. Shaming is never an appropriate response to assault.”
NGU offers several resources for victims of sexual assault. If a victim wishes to report to authorities, he or she may go to either McCarter or Charles Snook, both of whom are victim’s advocates on campus. Of course, off-campus authorities would report any offenses back to NGU’s campus security.
However, if a victim does not want to pursue a criminal investigation, he or she may confidentially speak to counselors, Sue Suomi or Steve Bielby, as well as campus nurse, Kathy Bailey. None of these people are required to report to authorities anything a student discloses to them.
Everything NGU does, from the policies they institute to the free counseling they offer is to pursue the end goal of a Clery Report full of zeroes. Because Jeanne Clery didn’t just fall victim to an enraged student; she fell victim to a college campus with lax security and hidden crime. Fortunately, her parents have made sure other parents, hopefully, never have to endure the agony they did.
