On December 9, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism held a hearing, “Campus Sexual Assault: The Roles and Responsibilities of Law Enforcement.”
"Nearly one in five women in college will be victims of sexual assault or attempted assault during their undergraduate careers … and it demands our action. Too many young women's lives are being changed forever for us to accept the status quo," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). She continued, "Time and again, I have heard from far too many survivors of campus sexual assault that they have felt re-victimized by the process of trying to seek justice for the crime committed against them. This inescapable fact must be fixed."
Peg Langhammer, executive director, Day One, stated: Campus-based adjudication processes don't work. Colleges alone are not competent to handle the investigation and prosecution of these cases, nor should they be. The college hearing process should be integrated with law enforcement. Police need to be involved, but it has to be a team approach." Ms. Langhammer added, "Most sexual assaults are never reported to law enforcement and even among reported cases, most will never be successfully prosecuted. Nationwide, the Department of Justice states that about 35 percent of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to the police last year. That's a low number, but it's a lot better than the five percent reported by college students. We need to create a new system, that's the first step. We can't expect victims to report when the system in place doesn't work. We know we can't just leave these cases to the criminal justice system, in part because most victims are so reluctant to report assaults to the police. So the question is not, should colleges be mandated to report these crimes to police? The question is how do we create a system where the victim's choices are the priority and the process is designed to work in the best interest of the victim?"
Kathy R. Zoner, chief, Cornell University Police, noted that "Sexual assaults occurring in a campus community can be investigated pursuant to two types of adjudicative processes — administrative and law enforcement." After outlining the differences between the two processes, Chief Zoner explained, "Concurrent investigations raise tricky issues for law enforcement and campus adjudicators to navigate. Campus police will, more likely than not, gather evidence that could be useful to the Title IX investigation. As a law enforcement officer conducting an investigation, my biggest concern is that sharing evidence may undercut a criminal case — which is on a much longer timeline — against a respondent. The collection and maintenance of evidence for a criminal prosecution is tightly controlled by procedural rules. This is not the case with administrative proceedings. The way that campus officials receive and treat evidence in an administrative investigation can negatively impact its admissibility in court, potentially undermining a criminal case. Additionally, if evidence is discovered after an administrative case is closed that would affect or overturn a decision, both parties may have already suffered irreparable consequences."
The following witnesses also testified:
- Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO); and
- Angela Fleischer, assistant director, Student Support and Intervention for Confidential Advising, Southern Oregon University.
* Proposals from Catherine Dodd:
Testimony of Catherine J. Dodd, PhD, RN Chair, Board of Directors National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Committee on Finance's Hearing (Senate) On "Social Security: Is a Key Foundation of Economic Security Working for Women?" December 9, 2014
My name is Catherine Dodd, and I am the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare in Washington, DC. The National Committee is a grassroots advocacy and education organization dedicated to preserving and strengthening safety net programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
I would like to thank the Senate Finance Committee and Chairman Ron Wyden and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch for the opportunity to testify on why Social Security is key to the economic and retirement security of women.
Thirty-two years ago, the National Committee was created by former Congressman James Roosevelt, the son of President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Through the years we have focused on protecting their work by thwarting attempts to cut Social Security.
But we also know that it is time to build upon those decades of success through new efforts to strengthen Social Security. That is why the National Committee Foundation, working with the National Organization for Women and the Institute for Women's Policy Research, published the Breaking the Social Security Glass Ceiling report in 2012 with proposals for strengthening benefits for women. It is why we launched the Boost Social Security Now campaign, in February of this year, to change the national discourse from cutting to improving benefits. And now, it is in the spirit of our Roosevelt heritage and Eleanor's work on women's and social issues that our new project to direct greater attention and resources to women's issues will honor her name. Eleanor would have celebrated her 130th birthday this year, which makes it a perfect time to kick off our Eleanor’s Hope initiative.
In so many ways, women have come a long way since Eleanor's day. However, the inequalities faced by women continue to threaten their retirement security because:
• Women have generally worked for lower wages due to persistent gender wage discrimination, leading to a smaller Social Security benefit.
• Women often interrupt their participation in the labor force to provide care to other family members, usually children and elderly parents or relatives. These temporary interruptions can lead to a significant reduction in the amount of a woman’s Social Security benefit.
• Women are less likely to have a pension, and even if they do have pension income it is likely to be less than what men receive for the same reasons their Social Security benefit is often smaller.
• Women live longer than men and consequently are more likely to outlive their retirement savings.
About 22 million women aged 65 and older receive Social Security benefits. A woman who reaches age 65 can expect to live an additional 20 years. For these women, Social Security represents a vitally important source of income, and is often their only available hedge against inflation. Without Social Security, over half of these women would be living in poverty. Even with Social Security, 11 percent of older women still live in poverty; for widows, the rate is worse, at 15 percent. This is 50 percent higher than the poverty rate for all people 65 and older. These facts led to the National Committee’s support for legislation that addresses the inequities threatening millions of retired women and to our work to promote the Eleanor's Hope vision of retirement equity for women.
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