FAILURE TO WARN

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 Whalen, Forum on Education Abroad, frequently quotes an outdated 'voluntary' incident data report.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!