The I’ve-Been-Violated app, created by The Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, is being brought to college campuses in order to help victims of sexual assault.

The app can be used as proof or credibility for a victims of assault by recording them once they have reached a safe place and asking them what transpired and who harassed them. The video is then geocoded, time stamped and stored as a double encrypted record.

“What the app does is it gives you access to something you did make contemporaneously with your own voice and your own picture,” said Michael Lissack, American business executive, author, business consultant and director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence. “The chain of custody is good. You don’t have to go through a second trauma of proving that you’re credible.”

The video can only be accessed if the victim wishes to come forward and contacts appropriate authorities in order to have the video retrieved.

“It is a double encrypted file until you provide information to the authorities so that they can make a request for the file it will just remain on the servers,” Lissack said.

One in 5 women will experience sexual assault during their time in college, according to the White House task force to protect students from sexual assault.

The reality is that sexual assault on college campuses is happening and what’s worse is 68 percent of sexual assaults are not reported, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. 

One of the main reasons people who are sexually assaulted choose not to report it is because they are afraid of what will happen if they do.

“Survivors oftentimes don’t know how to tell someone or what will happen if they do tell someone,” said Michael Davis, assistant director for Student Assistance in the Dean of Students’ Office at Iowa State.

It is for this reason that the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence has created the four-part app suite that includes the I’ve-Been-Violated app. The app suite is available to colleges for free to help victims of assault, raise awareness and to change the way in which college students view and talk about sexual assault.

Iowa State does not yet have the app suite program, but students wanting to report a sexual assault have multiple ways in which they can choose to receive help.

Students can go to the police, the university or contact Assault Care Center Extending Shelter and Support. Victims can call ACCESS anonymously to talk through their experience and receive options on what they can do in dealing with their assault.

“I believe that students are feeling more confident with their resources and on their reporting options,” Davis said.

Technology has made it easier for students and victims to receive the help they need and come forward and report being assaulted if they want to through apps such as I’ve-Been-Violated and though centers such as ACCESS, which offer anonymous help.

“Seven percent of college students sleep with their phone in their hand,” Lissack said. “That’s why we did apps.”

The Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence hopes the suite apps will provide victims with readily available sources that back up their credibility and foster an environment where college students can grow in the way that they are aware of and the way that they discuss sexual harassment.

“What’s important is discussion,” Lissack said. “Anything that we can do to help tweak the environment so that discussion happens is a good thing.”