About
270,000 American college students studied abroad last year. A lawsuit
that settled in 2011 makes a compelling case about a program's
failure to warn.
Stephanie
Slattery enrolled in a Antioch Education Abroad (AEA) for Mali, while
attending Eastern Michigan University. She was subsequently raped for
not understanding 'cultural differences' and expatriated to Paris for
medical attention. An article in
On Point, Woman Blames Study Abroad Program for Rape in Mali, has a compelling argument that programs have a duty to protect students from “foreseeable, reasonable dangers.”
AEA's
“negligent failure to warn of cultural difference directly and
proximately caused physical harm ... and severe, permanent emotional
damage, pain and suffering to Plaintiff,” the article quotes the
lawsuit.
A more recent story by Elizabeth Redden,
Inside Higher Ed, Sexual Assault and Study Abroad, December 2012, discusses a more recent study published by
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy with
mind-boggling statistics. Ms. Redden reports, "Sixty of the
respondents (27.5 percent) reported at least one experience of unwanted
touching while abroad, 13 (6 percent) reported an attempted sexual
assault (anal, oral or vaginal), and 10 (4.6 percent) reported rape."
Matthew
Kimble, an associate professor of psychology at Middlebury College and
co-author, William F. Flack Jr., of Bucknell University are citing
parallels of rape of female college students on American campuses to
study abroad. It' a whole different world when American students are
raped in a foreign country.
“Despite the limitations,
there is evidence to suggest that, in this sample, studying abroad in
certain regions puts female students at risk for unwanted sexual
experiences,” quotes Ms. Redden's article.
Mr.
Whalen, Forum on Education Abroad, frequently quotes an outdated
'voluntary' incident data report. He goes further explaining its a
well-established practice in study abroad to have response protocols in
place and to conduct pre-departure and orientation sessions covering
health and safety topics.
To date, the majority of study abroad
programs do not have qualified health and safety directors with rape
crisis skill sets. One has to wonder what defines 'well-established'
practice and whose watch-dogging those practices.
Representative
Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), "What concerns me is that there may be a sizable
gap between the best and the worst run study abroad programs. That gap
is likely to increase if there is a headlong rush to expand student
abroad activities by institutions that are not prepared to do so. I fear
that they may be tempted to cut corners or to send students to
potentially dangerous areas without taking the necessary precautions.”
Twelve
years later, not much has changed in federal or state protections.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra's concerns may be even more pertinent today. Failure
to warn? Should programs even be sending students to high risk, high
rape crisis areas?
If you're a female college student, or parent of one, please become familiar with
http://www.oneinfourusa.org/
Safety is NOT an Accident!
Parents
of kids who have been abused, raped and killed on student programs
abroad want protections from the White House, not massive 100,000 Strong
all calls 'Head'em UP! Move'em OUT!'