New tool offers sexual violence reporting option for students

Stanford students now have a new tool for documenting and reporting sexual and relationship violence.

With support and advocacy from ASSU student leaders, Stanford has adopted the online platform Callisto for a three-year trial period. It will offer students a new avenue, in addition to existing ones, for documenting and reporting experiences with sexual assault or other forms of sexual and relationship violence.

“The structure of Callisto aims to provide agency to survivors of sexual assault and relationship abuse, giving them options as they think through these very difficult issues,” said an email to students sent by Catherine Glaze, Title IX coordinator; Carley Flanery, director of the Office of Sexual Assault & Relationship Abuse Education & Response; Helen Wilson, director of the Confidential Support Team; and Lauren Schoenthaler, senior associate vice provost for institutional equity and access.

“If you ever have the need, we hope you will consider using Callisto. If a friend ever comes to you in need, we hope you will mention Callisto as an option available to them. We’ll be evaluating Callisto over the pilot period, and we welcome the feedback of students.”

A nonprofit organization of the same name developed Callisto in an effort to address two challenges with sexual assault reporting. Some survivors decide to report an assault after the passage of time, but the details of the experience may no longer be fresh in their memories. In addition, repeat offenders cannot be identified if victims do not report them, and studies show that a large majority of victims do not make a report.

Callisto allows a student to document an experience with unwanted sexual conduct and time-stamp it in a secure web environment. If a student isn’t ready to submit a report to the university immediately, the system preserves the information.

Read more about Callisto on the Stanford news web pages.