TOLEDO, Ohio – A University of Toledo student may feel she’s been assaulted twice – once by the person who allegedly raped her and then by the school which punished the accused with what amounted to a slap on the wrist.

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Sarah, which she goes by to hide her real identity, says she was just beginning her senior year. She alleges that someone she trusted and had known for three years raped her.

She was traumatized for six months after which she reported the incident to school officials. She was shocked when the school meted out a $25 fine, 10 hours of sexual assault education and one year’s probation. Additionally, the accused was allowed to remain on campus and keep his job as a student worker.

Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education says schools receiving federal funds are under a lot of pressure from the Obama administration to show they are doing something about the problem of sexual harassment and assaults on campuses. But they too many times mishandle those investigations.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen time and time again that schools and colleges are not really qualified to make many of those determinations. They don’t have the same tools that law enforcement does. They can’t even take testimony under oath. So it’s difficult to imagine them doing a really great job with such a delicate area of criminal offense.”

Sarah has filed a complaint with the DOE alleging that the university’s poor response violated Title IX. She believes UT was biased in favor of the accused and that the school was participating in “victim blaming.” Cincinnati.com reports that university spokesman Jonathan Strunk has confirmed the meager punishment but couldn’t comment further.

The Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Education is currently investigating 76 schools based on student complaints of the way the sexual assault investigations have been handled. However, Shibley says, the OCR has not been very transparent in revealing what many of the investigations are about or how serious the allegations are or what actions their proposing.

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Earlier this year Congress introduced legislation that would dramatically increase financial penalties against colleges and universities that fail to report sexual assault crimes, which is required by federal law. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., held hearings on the subject. She said 41 percent of the 236 colleges that responded admitted they had not conducted a single sexual-assault investigation in the past five years.

One wonders why Sarah didn’t go to the police in the first place considering the seriousness of the crime. She says it was because thought school officials would have a better understanding of acquaintance rape. It would seem she was mistaken.

Shibley says that FIRE has been advocating for a long time that sexual assault investigations should be handled by the police rather than school officials “… because if someone is committing sexual assault that person should be in jail. Whether it be a fine or probation from school or expulsion, those simply aren’t harsh enough punishments for someone who actually commits the felony crime of sexual assault.”

Sarah withdrew from UT and finished her studies at another school.