Colorado State says domestic violence reports increased nearly six-fold during COVID pandemic
In 2020, crimes on Colorado State University's Fort Collins campus decreased by 20%, something the CSU police department said was likely due to fewer students frequenting campus for much of the year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But despite the decrease in overall crime, domestic violence crimes increased drastically, rising from just three reported incidents in 2019 to 17 reported in 2020, according to the university’s federally mandated Annual Fire and Safety Report, also known as the Clery Report.
No other category of crime saw an increase during the pandemic year.
An increase in domestic violence was a trend across the nation throughout the pandemic. College campuses, where students are among the most at-risk populations to experience intimate partner violence, were no exception.
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“We're still figuring out what happened during lockdown for folks in domestically violent relationships,” said Casey Malsam, assistant director of victim services at CSU’s Women and Gender Advocacy Center. “But what we know is that across the country, in higher ed, just in general, dating and domestic violence really skyrocketed.”
Malsam said that the Clery Report doesn't encompass all domestic violence on campus as many incidents go unreported, and added that anecdotally her office received more domestic violence calls during the pandemic than it had in previous years. The report also doesn't account for incidents reported off campus, where the majority of CSU students live.
“Usually sexual assault is what we see more often. Last year, that flipped and we saw more relationship violence than sexual assault,” Malsam said.
In total, she said the number of calls received by the center decreased in the early months of COVID-19, potentially due to people being unable to reach out, but "numbers this year are definitely back up because people are starting to process through what happened last year."
The Clery Act requires all colleges and universities that receive federal funding to publish annual reports documenting crimes that occur on campus.
Clery defines domestic violence as felony or misdemeanor crimes of violence committed by a current or former spouse or partner, person with whom the victim shares a child, person who is or has cohabitated with the victim as a spouse or partner, person "similarly situated to a spouse of the victim," or any person protected under area domestic or family violence laws.
However, because of inconsistencies in categorizing Violence Against Women Act Crimes within CSU, some instances that the Clery Report would define as dating violence were included in this year’s count. Dating violence is “committed by a person who is or has been in a social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the impacted party,” according to Clery.
CSU spokesperson Dell Rae Ciaravola told the Coloradoan that while a mistake was made in the university's reporting, the numbers are still valid in quantifying instances of intimate partner violence reported on campus.
“The choice to group the numbers together was not wrong from the standpoint of Colorado law, which defines only intimate relationships. It does not differentiate between dating violence and marriage/domestic violence,” Ciaravola said.
“However, we acknowledge that there was inconsistency in how the numbers were counted across all offices, and we’ll work to streamline how information is gathered in the future.”
Ciaravola said there were seven instances of domestic violence that should have been counted as dating violence. If that were the case, domestic violence still would have increased from three reported incidents in 2019 to 10 in 2020, and a second category — dating violence —incidents would have risen from 15 reported incidents to 22.
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The report does not encompass all crimes committed by CSU students or faculty. Rather, it is geography-based, meaning incidents are included if they happened within “Clery geography,” regardless of who was involved.
For CSU, that geography includes on-campus property, public property like sidewalks and parking facilities within a campus or “immediately adjacent to and accessible from a campus” and all other property that the university owns or controls, “including buildings or property owned or controlled by a student organization officially recognized by CSU.”
According to CSU, more than 5,000 students — including nearly all freshmen — live in campus housing.
In 2020, 16 of the 17 reported domestic violence incidents were classified as “on-campus residential," and all occurred on campus.
Mari Strombom, executive director of housing and dining services, said in order to live in a CSU residence hall, one must be an enrolled student; in campus apartments, 75% of residents are students and those who are not are most often relatives of students, she said.
Pandemic conditions added ‘fuel to the fire’ in violent relationships
Malsam named three likely factors that led to the increase in reported domestic violence incidents last year: People spent more time in their homes and with their partners; people had fewer opportunities to get space from the person they were quarantined with; and people suffered a general decline in mental health and had added stressors as a result of the pandemic.
These factors were likely to impact people at any age in a domestically violent relationship, Malsam said, not just college-aged students. A survey from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence found that 83.7% of professionals in the field believed there was an increase in domestic violence because of COVID-19.
“People were having financial insecurities, housing insecurities, and the presence or increase in any of those factors will increase an abuser’s rate of violence,” Malsam said. “So I think that all of those things combined really impact the rate of domestic violence that we saw last year.”
But even without the additional factors in place last year that increased the risk of domestic violence, college-aged people “are the most at-risk age group for experiencing intimate partner violence,” according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Naida Henao, managing counsel for strategic advocacy and communications at the Network for Victim Recovery of Washington, D.C., said that not only are college-aged people at high risk for dating violence, but they are more vulnerable to negative effects of victimization.
“The added weight of the victimization can be very difficult, because they don't have that sense of comfort and familiarity that they would have during primary or secondary schools,” Henao said.
Kari Clark, executive director of Alternatives to Violence, one of the few domestic violence resources in Larimer County, said students may also be coming in under a common assumption that “domestic violence is between married couples in their home.”
“What people don't realize is dating violence is very common — very, very common — amongst high school and college-aged children,” she said.
While Clark believes “abusers are abusers, the adolescent brain can make it worse.” She said that college students in relationships may think “this is the first time I've been away from home, the first time a partner is paying attention to me.”
“We want to be loved, so we don't realize that what these people are doing to us is not normal,” Clark said.
Her organization received double the amount of calls between June 2020 and March 2021 than it would in a typical year, and Clark attributed that increase to much of the same factors as Malsam.
Crossroads Safehouse, a domestic violence shelter for women in Fort Collins, saw its crisis calls increase by 50% in 2020, according to Executive Director Pam Jones, who cited similar reasons to Malsam and Clark.
“We knew that people being isolated with their partners, whether married or in an intimate partner relationship, that that’s only going to foster the propensity for violence,” Clark said, adding that proximity wouldn’t cause violence but would make it far more common. Along with proximity, she said the stresses that came with COVID-19 escalated already bad situations.
“Being home and doing classes remote and the stress of that, along with the stress of being in close proximity (to an abusive partner) is just fuel to the fire for domestic violence,” Clark said.
What is being done at CSU to stop the rise in domestic violence?
The Women and Gender Advocacy Center didn’t increase programming in response to the rise or make major programmatic shifts, Malsam said. Rather, it's working to get back to pre-pandemic levels of service.
All new students and employees are required to complete training that reviews definitions and issues associated with domestic violence, sexual assault and dating violence. But in the 2020-21 school year, there was only so much that could be conveyed remotely.
“The engagement is different online,” Malsam said. “There were a lot of presentations that I did last year where everyone had their camera off, all of their speakers were muted the whole time, so it doesn't foster a conversation.”
In 2019, Malsam’s office had 147 prevention and awareness campaigns or presentations that reached 8,588 people, according to the Clery Report. In 2020, the number of people reached dropped by more than 80% to 1,384, despite just 10 fewer programs happening.
“Now we're moving back into those in-person things, I think we'll start to see that education paying off again,” Malsam said.
The Women and Gender Advocacy Center offers crisis intervention and confidential advocacy to victims, which can range from going with someone to report a crime or accompanying a survivor to medical treatment. Malsam said it can also connect students with counseling and offer academic support to students whose trauma is impacting their school work.
“Really, if it's impacting their trauma, we are happy to have a conversation with anyone about how to make that easier for them,” Malsam said.
The center also works with and refers students to outside organizations, like the Sexual Assault Victim Advocate Center and Crossroads Safehouse, nearby organizations for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors that can also provide service to those who may not feel comfortable using resources on campus.
Jones, who works at Crossroads Safehouse, said one of the best things campuses can do to address domestic violence is simply to increase awareness that it exists.
"Domestic violence needs a lot of illuminating and intentional messaging and communication around what it is and how to help," Jones said. "The more we can share about what it is and how to identify it and how to help the people that you love ... the better we will be at bringing people to the services that do exist."
And while the increase in domestic violence incidents on CSU’s campus was of note, Malsam said she believes it was largely situational and, by this time next year, they will be talking about different issues.
“We're seeing an increase in sexual assaults on campus now … and that's the conversation across the board, I don't think it's a CSU-specific thing,” Malsam said. “So if we were to have this conversation again next year, I think it would be about sexual assault.”
“One of the symptoms of the pandemic is we are going to see increased violence between people for the next couple of years as people try to figure out what this new normal is as the stress of living in an unprecedented time."
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Are you, or someone you know, a victim of domestic violence?
Local resources for domestic violence:
Crossroads Safehouse, 970-482-3502
Colorado State University Women and Gender Advocacy Center, 970-492-4242
Alternatives to Violence, 970-669-5150
National resources for domestic violence:
National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233
National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline, 1-866-331-9474
Violence Against Women Act crimes at CSU
In 2020, domestic violence was the only crime that saw an increase on CSU's campus according to its annual safety report.
Here's how many reports were made in 2018, 2019 and 2020:
Dating violence: 13, 15, 13
Stalking: 20, 15, 12
Domestic violence: 6, 3, 17
Molly Bohannon covers education for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter @molboha or contact her at mbohannon@coloradoan.com.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: CSU domestic violence reports jump during COVID, overall crime drops
