The Baylor rape culture scandal keeps getting worse and worse.
According to the Associated Press, instead of being met with support & options when they tried to report their assaults, Baylor rape victims were told the school would tell their parents they’d been drinking if they said anything. Unbelievable.
Here’s more from the report, via Deadspin:
One woman said her case began when she called police to report a physical assault on another woman at an off-campus party. Police demanded to know if she was underage and had been drinking, then arrested and reported her to the school office that investigates conduct code violations, she said. She told Baylor officials her drinking was a result of being raped a month earlier and detailed what happened in person and in a letter.
She received an alcohol code violation and told to do 25 hours community service, and when she tried to appeal, the woman said Baylor officials urged her to drop it. The school never pursued her rape claim.
“I was told by many Baylor staff that they couldn’t do anything for me because my assault was off campus, yet they had no problem punishing me for my off-campus drinking,” the woman said.
Although underage drinking is cause for being kicked out of school under Baylor’s student conduct policy, federal law requires all universities to investigate any student’s claim of sexual assault…be it on or off of campus.
This has rapidly become much more than an athletics issue, this behavior seems to be coming down from the very top of the university’s leadership chain.
How can they expect students to be upstanding on issues such as this, when they discourage reporting so blatantly?
How this moves forward should have the upmost attention of every parent of a Baylor student because it’s clear the school is not doing all they can to protect and prevent these things from happening to students.