“When I was 18 years old and a freshman in college, I was raped by someone I thought was my friend.”
It was 2010.
Emily Kessinger was a freshman at a school in Kentucky when she and her friends went out for the night. She didn’t know that night would change her life.
“I just remember for several months not really knowing how to process what happened,” Kessinger said.
At the beginning of second semester, she found out she had a class with him.
Kessinger told her advisor about what happened, but she said that was not helpful.
“And after I told my academic advisor, and I was told that no one would believe me, that was very hard for me because I was like, ‘How do I tell anyone else? This woman doesn’t believe me, so why would anyone else?’” Kessinger said.
So she kept it to herself, not telling another soul for years. Kessinger said she spiraled into depression, she turned to alcohol and drugs, her grades tanked and she transferred schools. She said she even attempted suicide.
“I was so empty, I hated myself, I hated my body,” Kessinger said. “It was almost as if it didn’t belong to me anymore.”
According to a 2016 Department of Justice study, one in five women will experience some form of sexual assault while in college.
A second Justice Department study says of those assaulted, only one in five will report to police.
If we assume those numbers apply to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, that would mean about 2,200 women assaulted and about 440 reporting. The campus has about 11,000 undergraduate full-time and part-time female students, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment 2018 fall enrollment numbers.
But a 2018 campus climate survey indicates lower numbers.
The My Campus Survey polled 4,147 undergraduate and graduate students at the UTK campus. 153 respondents said they’ve experienced some form of unwanted sexual contact while a member of the UTK community.
Administrators say that includes any experiences that happened on or off campus during their time as a student.
The survey says unwanted sexual contact includes fondling, rape, sexual assault, penetration without consent or gang rape.
That’s about 3 percent of those surveyed.
“Our reports still don’t match that prevalence rate,” said UT Title IX Coordinator Ashley Blamey. “And so, our goal long term is to drive down the prevalence rate, which we will evaluate.”
The Title IX Office at any university is in charge of protecting students from gender-based issues that may impact their education, and that includes sexual assault. Students who report a sexual assault to campus leaders or police are referred to the Title IX office for help.
"They can come in, they can talk with someone, we can work with them around mental health, physical health, academic accommodations, housing," Blamey said.
She said the Title IX Office can help students figure out what their next steps are, which can include going to police, campus discipline, neither or both.
Blamey says it's each student's choice, and each one is unique.
"They have the right to decide how much to participate," Blamey said. "You can't force someone to participate, and you shouldn't."
“If something happens on our campus, or if something happens to one of our students even not on our campus, we want the opportunity to support them and to give them their options and to understand what is available to them,” Blamey said. “And so reports are necessary. And while we don’t want this to happen to anyone, if it does, we want to know.”
Blamey says data collection about sexual assault varies among different groups—in sample size, in questions and in collection.
Her focus is on the students and information at UT.
Part of the Title IX Office's role is keeping track of reports of sexual misconduct, which include harassment, exploitation and assault.
According to the 2017 annual report, sexual misconduct reports increased from 64 in 2016 to 115 in 2017.
Blamey said she believes this is because of improved campus awareness and education among students and faculty.
"I think we'll continue to see them go up for a period of time," Blamey said.
In a Nov. 8 email to students, the Title IX Office says there have been seven reports of rape on campus this fall 2018 semester. In the email, Blamey writes she has noticed patterns in some of the reports: alcohol is involved, the students know each other and some reports allege it happens in campus dorms.
The email also states at this time in 2017, there were 16 reports of rape, and in 2016 there were 10.
“Even if you look at a two percent prevalence rate, you are still looking at a number of individuals in your community, so I think our goal, and while we put out the report and while we talk so openly about our numbers and these issues is because our goal is transparency and accuracy for our campus community,” Blamey said.
To Kessinger, the discrepancies in data from study to study is simple: victims don’t report.
“There are so many people who are afraid to go through the process,” Kessinger said.
Kessinger didn’t report her rape—not to police nor her Title IX coordinator. She said she didn’t even know those were options.
“So I had a really hard time as an 18-year-old, new in college, being out on my own, really understanding what someone did to me. I cared about this person,” Kessinger said. “I had very little knowledge of what going through the process of reporting,”
If she had known, she says she absolutely would have reported.
UT hosts several awareness campaigns on campus throughout the year. Those include Take Back the Night, Red Zone and Hike the Hill in Heels.
UT Police also offers a free women's self-defense class called Rape Aggression Defense.
Now, Kessinger is helping make sure students like her know their options. She works for the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence in Nashville.
“I took something so painful and so dark and now I can help people who are similar to me,” Kessinger said. “It fuels me every day to be able to hopefully prevent what happened to me from happening to someone else.”
If you are a victim of sexual assault and need help, here are a list of resources: