Sexual Violence in Public Schools in the United States

ABSTRACT

In the United States, sexual violence in K–12 public schools saw a 55% increase in incidents from the 2015–2016 school year to the 2017–2018 school year. These incidents included sexual violence by school employees against students and peers against other peers. The current study estimated the overall weighted average number of sexual assault/sexual battery, rapes/attempted rapes, and overall sexual violence within districts and across the states using the 2017–2018 data gathered by the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) results showed that the average number of incidents of sexual assault/sexual battery per district across states was 3.74, with a variance of 61.81 per district within the states. The average variability in the average incidents of sexual assault/sexual battery between the states was 265. Finally, future studies should use moderators to explain the variations in sexual violence within and across states.

KEYWORDS:

• School violence
• school sexual assaults
• peers
• rapes
• K–12
• public schools

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sesha Kethineni

Dr. Sesha Kethineni was a professor emeritus from Illinois State University and a retired professor from Prairie View A&M University, Texas, USA. She explored parent engagement programs, truancy, school violence, domestic violence, comparative criminal/juvenile justice, and cryptocurrency and crime.

Mariola Moeyaert

Dr. Mariola Moeyaert is an Associate Professor of Statistics, Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University at Albany, School of Education, State University of New York. Her research focuses on multi-level meta-analysis, single-case meta-analysis, truancy, and school violence.

Kaviya Shanker

Kaviya Shankar is a doctoral candidate at Prairie View A&M University, Texas, USA. Her research focuses on school violence, bullying and harassment, and victimology.

Dayanand Sundaravadivelu

Dr. Dayanand Sundaravadivelu is an Assistant Professor at Stillman College, Alabama, USA. His research interests include sexual assaults of minor children in India, caste discrimination, victimology, intervention programs for truant youth, and school violence.