Grief aired: CBS features UVA student

A former UVA student whose dramatic account of rape was part of the Hook's November 11 cover story, "How UVA turns it back on rape," appeared Tuesday, May 24 in a network broadcast.

Kathryn Russell spoke on CBS' The Early Show about her alleged December 2003 rape by a fellow UVA student as part of a segment on campus crime.

Russell claims the university mishandled her case, and her assailant, she says, who remained at UVA, is currently under investigation for a subsequent incident. Russell transferred schools.

"I was paying the university money to get an education," Russell told interviewer Lee Cowan, "not to become a victim of a crime."

It was Russell's mother, Susan, who launched uvavictimsofrape.com, a website excoriating UVA for its handling of sexual assault cases among its student body. The site went up in March 2004, a month after the alleged attack on her daughter. Within weeks, Susan Russell says, her site logged over 100 testimonies from other women who claimed they were raped at UVA.

In January this year, two months after the Hook story and an on-Grounds protest, UVA released revised policies for adjudicating sexual assault charges.

Kathryn Russell says UVA policies led her to transfer to escape her alleged assailant.

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