The number of sexual assaults reported on campus increased for the fourth straight year in 2002, while total thefts edged up slightly, according to crime statistics released by the University in August.1

Last year there were 25 sex offenses reported on Harvard’s Cambridge campus, up from 23 in 2001, 16 in 2000 and 11 in 1999.

There were 632 robberies, burglaries and larcenies, up from 591 in 2001, but down from a four-year high of 709 in 2000.

Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) spokesperson Steven G. Catalano warned against drawing conclusions from relatively small changes in the statistics, noting that these figures typically fluctuate from year to year.

Catalano attributed the increase in reported sex offenses to campus-wide efforts to improve outreach, an explanation echoed by several campus rape counselors and rape prevention advocates.

HUPD is concerned about the increase, Catalano said, but the department is also encouraged that victims are coming forward more often.

“We know that rape occurs,” he said. “The numbers trouble us, but the flip side is that people are starting to trust us and realize we can help...they’re using us as a resource.”

Sarah B. Levit-Shore ’04, president of Coalition Against Sexual Violence (CASV), agreed that the change in assault numbers is probably due to increased reporting rather than more campus assaults.

“One possible conclusion to draw would be that there are more sex offenses occurring on campus,” she said. “But it seems unlikely, because there is no reason I’m aware of for the rate of sexual assault to increase over the past four years. More likely, people are just increasingly willing to report the rapes.”

Catalano said HUPD has spread the word through self-defense classes, literature and safety talks.

“The biggest hindrance was that people used to be afraid we would violate confidentiality...and force them to press charges,” he said. “But there has been an increase in the amount of formal reports because the department has worked very hard to go out to the community and explain how we handle a sexual assault investigation.”

The statistics came as part of an annual campus crime report mandated by the Clery Act, a federal law named for a Lehigh University undergraduate who was raped and murdered in 1986.

All of the sex offenses reported at Harvard fall under a category defined by the Clery Act as sexual acts “directed against another person, forcibly and/or against that person’s will; or not forcibly or against the person’s will where the victim in incapable of giving consent.”

The 2002 increase came after a year of protest for greater awareness about sexual violence at Harvard and the subsequent formation of a committee to examine the problem of assault on campus.

Levit-Shore said this attention may have in part driven the increase, encouraging more victims to come forward.