Texas Tribune
3.2.16 | Jordan Rudner
Acknowledging that survivors of sexual violence often behave differently than victims of other crimes, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin released an expansive report Monday that the UT System will use to train hundreds of officers who handle campus sexual assaults.
The Blueprint for Campus Police, drafted by UT Austin’s Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, will be incorporated into training for almost 600 officers across all eight of the system’s academic institutions.
“Police in America, historically, have responded to the investigation of crimes in kind of a generalized fashion, regardless of whether it’s a homicide, robbery, theft,” or assault, according to Mike Heidingsfield, the UT System director of police. Because assault victims have experienced trauma, their cases often call for a more specialized officer response he said.
The training is especially necessary because of the prevalence of sexual assault, according to Noël Busch-Armendariz, the report’s principal investigator. One study, released in September, found that more than 18 percent of female undergraduates at UT Austin had been sexually assaulted since arriving on campus.
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