McCaskill Reaches Out to President Trump on Campus Sexual Assault

Noting common goal of supporting survivors, Senator asks to speak with President on her bipartisan bill— Senator also raises concerns with Education Secretary DeVos’s rescinding of campus guidance

WASHINGTON – In an effort to forge common ground around the goal of supporting survivors of sexual assault on college campuses, U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill—a former Missouri sex crimes prosecutor—today wrote to President Trump asking to discuss her bipartisan legislation to combat campus assaults and her concerns with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s recent action to rescind the Department’s campus guidance.  

“As a former sex crimes prosecutor, I take the issue of sexual assault prevention and offering support to survivors of sexual assault seriously,” McCaskill wrote in a letter to President Trump. “I have held the hand of a sexual assault survivor while she tells her story of being sexually assaulted for the first time. The pain of sexual assault is one that no one should be subjected to, especially students on our college campuses.”

McCaskill’s letter continued: “I believe your administration shares the goal of ensuring that survivors are supported, but the recent decisions by Secretary DeVos and Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Candice Jackson to rescind the Department’s guidance on campus sexual violence is not only creating confusion for colleges and universities in the midst of their academic cycle but it also fails to fully protect students and offer the needed support for survivors.... It is with this in mind that I ask to speak with you about the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, how the administration can fully support survivors while protecting the rights of all students and how we can work together in a bipartisan manner to ensure the safety of our college campuses. I look forward to hearing from you and your staff on this important topic.”

In 2014, McCaskill announced the results of her unprecedented nationwide survey of how sexual assaults are handled on college campuses, which demonstrated a disturbing failure by many institutions to comply with current law and with best practices in how they handle sexual violence against students. Among the survey’s key findings were:

  • 22 percent of institutions gave athletic departments oversight of cases involving athletes.
  • More than 40 percent of schools had not conducted a single investigation in five years.
  • 21 percent of schools provided no training to faculty and staff, and 31 percent provided no training for students.

Following her survey, McCaskill and her colleagues have led a bipartisan coalition of Senators in introducing the Campus Accountability and Safety Act—legislation to combat sexual assault on college and university campuses by protecting and empowering students, strengthening accountability and transparency for institutions, and holding perpetrators accountable. The legislation is also informed by feedback McCaskill heard when she traveled across Missouri, visiting 10 different campuses and speaking with representatives from nearly 50 colleges and universities.

Last week, after Secretary DeVos announced her department is rescinding its current campus sexual assault guidance in favor of interim guidance while it writes new rules, McCaskill—who has helped lead the effort to continue these key protections for students—expressed deep concerns that the move had “taken the progress we’ve made protecting survivors and making our campuses safer, and thrown that progress into chaos.” And during Secretary DeVos’s recent visit to Missouri, McCaskill joined a group of 28 colleagues urging Secretary DeVos not to rescind the Title IX guidance, which requires schools respond promptly and effectively to sexual violence and sexual harassment.

McCaskill also recently called on Secretary DeVos to remove Candice Jackson, the acting head of the Department’s civil rights office, after Ms. Jackson’s comments that 90 percent of sexual assault accusations can be characterized as, “‘We were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.’”

Full text of the letter HERE.

Visit mccaskill.senate.gov/violence to see more about McCaskill’s work to curb domestic and sexual violence.

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