L.A. Now Live: USC, Occidental underreported sexual assaults

Join us at 9 a.m. when we talk with Times reporter Jason Felch about two universities – USC and Occidental – that disclosed they underreported a number of sexual assault cases on their campuses in recent years, a potential violation of federal law.

At USC, officials indicated that they had not reported 13 accounts of sexual assaults to federal officials for 2010 and 2011, bringing the total for those years to 39. Occidental acknowledged that it had failed to include 24 reports during that period, bringing the total to 36.

The disclosures could lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties for each school under the federal Clery Act, the 1990 law that requires schools to report campus crime statistics to the Department of Education.

The law, which stemmed from a 1986 rape and killing on a Pennsylvania campus, is intended to give the public an accurate view of campus safety, and the statistics are consulted by parents, students and others evaluating the campuses. The law covers criminal allegations, regardless of whether they are reported to police or adjudicated in court.

Over the last two years, women at USC, Occidental and college campuses across the country have organized — mostly through social media — to file complaints with the Department of Education alleging that administrators discouraged them from reporting sexual assaults or downplayed the severity of the attacks.

Occidental is now under investigation for violations of the Clery Act. Students at USC have filed a complaint alleging Clery violations that federal investigators have yet to act on. In addition, both schools are under investigation for possible violations of Title IX, a federal antidiscrimination law that requires colleges to impartially investigate sexual assaults.

“If they’re fixing them while the complaint is being investigated, it’s too late,” said Alison Kiss, executive director of the nonprofit Clery Center for Security on Campus, which trains schools on complying with the law.