A new California bill would change the rules of how colleges report rapes, especially after Southern California Assemblyman Mike Gatto listened to sexual assault survivors, Newsweek reports.
The original version of the bill would have forced college officials to report all sexual violence and hate crimes to police, but sexual assault victims told Gatto’s staffers that they would not have come forward to campus authorities if they knew the authorities would go to the police, as some victims would prefer not to go to trial in a long, arduous process.
The revised legislation, introduced today at AB 1433, amends the state Education Code to require any report of a Part 1 violent crime (willful homicide, forcible rape, robbery or aggravated assault) or hate crime received by a college campus law enforcement agency to be immediately reported to police, unless the victim expressly requests that such a report not be passed along, Newsweek reports. If administrators do not comply, they could be at risk of liability damages for negligence.