All survivors, not just students, need civil law options
All survivors, not just students, need civil law options
In 2015, let’s take the lessons we’ve learned from the movement against campus sexual assault and apply them to help survivors off campus, too. This should be the year of civil options. We can no longer avoid the reality that victims of gender-based violence need options other than criminal law. A recent strand of argument, found in the New York Times’s opinion page and the Huffington Post’s comment sections alike, is that colleges’ widespread mishandling of rape reports proves that victims should call the cops instead of their deans. Yet this faith in policing and criminal courts ignores the voices of those with intimate knowledge of the problem (and is particularly tone-deaf in the aftermath of the failed indictments in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island).
The lesson from student activism for better campus responses to sexual assault is that victims desperately need options outside the criminal justice system. Many survivors say that, had the school reporting option not been available (or had their schools, as some politicians have proposed, been forced to hand over the report to the police), they wouldn’t have told anyone at all. Students tell us they largely don’t trust the cops, and they recognize that the criminal justice system can’t provide the accommodations they seek in the wake of an assault: a new dorm room away from an assailant, access to mental health services, or an extension on a paper due the week after the assault. Many want to retain control over their cases but know that in a criminal trial it is the state, not the victim, who calls the shots. And some just don’t want to deal with a two-year trial — but they do want some small justice, and they do need services.
These voices shouldn’t only inform our policy debates about campus reform, however. They also suggest our laws should provide all survivors, whether or not they’re students, with the support and solutions they need outside of the criminal justice system. But 911 remains generally the only option for victims off campus; they cannot call up a trusted dean if they are assaulted or abused.
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Here’s the tragic thing: this right used to exist. The original Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) included a private right of action to allow survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault to bring suit in federal court against the perpetrator and any enabling third-party institutions. VAWA thus provided an avenue for justice even when no criminal charges had been filed. The bill passed Congress with bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994.
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http://feministing.com/2015/01/02/all-survivors-not-just-students-need-civil-law-options/
