Eastern Iowa advocates hope FBI changes will clarify sex assault picture

With the FBI changing how it defines rape to be more inclusive and comprehensive, human service agencies across Iowa are hoping to finally get a clear picture of the sexual assault problem locally and nationally, and advocates are bracing for a possible increase in clients.

“Male sex assault is the obvious change - they will count those now,” said Karla Miller, executive director of the Iowa City-based Rape Victim Advocacy Program. “That is huge both in being able to get an accurate assessment of the number and types of sex assaults that occur and in recognizing that there are male victims.”

Until this year, the FBI only acknowledged incidents of rape in its Uniform Crime Report as “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” It lumped other sex crimes - including rapes that do not involve force, occur in marriage or are perpetrated against men - into less serious generic sex offense and assault categories.

The change, announced this month by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, defines rape as “penetration, no matter how slight,” by another person, “without the consent of the victim.”

Miller said the new definition brings the FBI's tracking system in line with local law enforcement agencies, and it enables advocates to develop a clearer picture of the problem of sexual assault. The FBI's inclusion of male victims in its rape statistics - paired with the recent reports of sex assault against boys out of Penn State University - could prompt more victims to come forward, Miller said.

“And if we saw the number of cases going up, then that would have funding implications as well,” she said.

The Rape Victim Advocacy Center, which serves Johnson, Iowa, Washington and Cedar counties and the University of Iowa, keeps its own records of people served, and it responded to 249 reports of rape in the 2011 budget year, up about 10 percent from 224 in 2010.

Of the 2011 total, 17 were male victims, and Miller said she hopes the FBI change not only will bring to light more male victims and allow them to get help but also break down the stereotype that they were assaulted by women or were involved in gay relations.

“The vast majority of sex assaults on men are committed by men who consider themselves to be straight,” Miller said. “They are predators. That's the difference.”

New rape tallies out of the FBI should jump in 2012, Miller said, not only because male victims will be counted but because they will include rapes involving coercion rather than force.

“The vast majority of assaults on females weren't counted before because they didn't involve force,” Miller said. “Most don't.”

After reading through the new FBI definition of rape, she said, some people might realize for the first time that they are the victim of a crime.

“I think this is important in terms of education,” Miller said.

But it could take years for the new way of reporting to have an impact on the larger sexual assault picture, said Beth Barnhill, executive director of the Iowa Coalition against Sexual Assault. The organization oversees 28 crisis centers across the state, including in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

“We've never had a clear picture of the sexual assault violence that gets reported to law enforcement, and we've never had a clear picture of the sexual assault violence that doesn't get reported to anyone,” Barnhill said.

The Center for Disease Control recently released results of a sexual assault survey that included information on incidents never reported, and Barnhill said the FBI numbers will provide a more complete view of crimes that are reported.

“Unfortunately, we will see bigger numbers,” she said. “But that will give a better picture of what is happening and what we can do to intervene.”

But Michael Shaw, co-director of domestic violence and sexual assault services for the Cedar Rapids-based crisis center Waypoint Services for Women, Children and Families, stressed that the coalition always has served a wide variety of sexual assault victims.

“We have known for years that the FBI reports and what law enforcement reports to the FBI has been under representative of the reality of what we have been seeing,” Shaw said. “So this context doesn't really change the reality for us.”