WASHINGTON — The most likely victims of sexual assault in America are college women, according to a report.
One in five women say they’ve been sexually assaulted while in college, according to “Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action,” issued Wednesday by the White House Council on Women and Girls.
Yet only 12 percent of the victims reported the attacks.
Nationwide, 22 million women and 1.6 million men have been raped in their lifetimes, the report said.
President Obama signed an executive order Wednesday at the White House creating a task force to deal with the problem and gave it 90 days to recommend what colleges could do to stem the epidemic, improve public awareness, and hold schools accountable.
It explained that an assault often leaves a victim’s memory impaired or fragmented, and described a need for “new trauma-informed interviewing techniques” for law enforcement.
“This is not an abstract problem that goes on in other families or other communities,” Obama said at the White House. “It affects every one of us … Sexual assault is an affront [to] our basic decency and humanity.”
The report calls out police bias and lack of training to prosecute sex crimes, saying the criminal justice response is often inadequate.
In 2012, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing a 2009 study in the Journal of American College Health, said 19 percent of college women “experienced attempted or completed sexual assault since entering college.”
It also found that 37 percent of victims reported being raped between the ages of 18 and 24.
Among other recommendations, the presidential report called for a “coordinated federal response” to campus rape and assault, and increased use of brain science in assault investigations.