Senators: More money needed for federal sex assault investigations

It's been 25 months since the federal Office of Civil Rights notified the University of Michigan it would be looking at how U-M handles complaints of sexual assault on its campus. There's no news about when the investigation might come to an end.

It took the OCR more than a year to investigate how Michigan State University handles sexual assault cases.

The length of time in these two cases isn't a surprise. In 2014, it took an average of 1,469 days for a complaint to be resolved, largely because of a shortage of staff, the OCR said.

A group of mostly Democratic senators – including Michigan Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters – is hoping to fix that. They recently sent a letter to the chairman of various Congressional committees that control the budget for the OCR, asking for full funding of the office – $137 million – plus money for 11 additional full-time employees for making sure colleges obey the Clery Act, a federal law on reporting crimes on campus.

Read more: www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/04/10/senators-more-money-needed-federal-sex-assault-investigations/82786952/