"Sexual assault victims often tell a friend about their experiences before anyone else. But according to a new study, college students from minority groups are less confident that their peers would support them.
Researchers looked at campus climate surveys from a single university. Students were asked how their peers would respond to a disclosure by a sexual assault victim.
Students who were disabled, LGBTQ, or people-of-color reported more negative predictions, and respondents with more than one of those identities scored their peers even lower.
'These perceptions can reflect their own past experiences, whether individually or with people they know,' said Oregon State University instructor Jill Hoxmeier, who co-authored the study.
Hoxmeier said these findings reflect a blind spot in preventative education. She said some programs still aren’t confronting how perceptions of victims can affect services.
'We're not having conversations around our own implicit biases about people with disabilities, or people who were victimized by someone of the same sex or gender,' she said."
