To Prevent Sexual Assault, Do Colleges Target Serial Offenders?
When a University of Wisconsin student was accused last month of assaulting at least a half-dozen women, an idea resurfaced that’s embedded in the popular conception of campus sexual assault — that of the serial predator stalking unsuspecting students. In fact, the literature on repeat sexual offenders at universities is mixed. An oft-cited study from 2002 found that the majority of campus sexual assaults were perpetrated by a small cohort of repeat offenders. But two papers published in 2015 found the situation to be more complicated.