San Francisco's handling of sexual assault cases needs to improve

In the wake of several recent, high-profile sexual assault allegations in San Francisco political circles, city leaders today held a hearing to examine how San Francisco city authorities have handled sexual assault cases.

The picture is not rosy.

In 2023, 1,062 sexual assault cases were reported to the San Francisco Police Department, but that same year, according to the data, only 136 sexual assault cases received a resolution, be it an arrest, an unfounded finding, or a dismissal from the police by prosecutors .

Performance is similarly disheartening at the Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP), a first-of-its-kind office in the country created in 2018 to internally investigate city agencies’ handling of sexual harassment and assault cases.

Six years after its founding, the office has received just 72 complaints about its website and another 187 complaints about public relations.

“The reality is that sexual assault and rape are an epidemic in this society,” said County Executive Hillary Ronen, who called for the creation of SHARP and held today’s hearing.

The lack of progress by police and SHARP is unacceptable, she said. From this, she concluded that for survivors “not coming forward is a very rational decision because it is unlikely that you will get a response that will lead to anything.”

“We have to do more. We need all city departments. We need all elected city officials. We need to let the entire San Francisco community know that SHARP exists.”

She mentioned “the city’s perceived inability” to help survivors of sexual violence. At times, survivors felt that SFPD officers discouraged them from filing police reports, that rape kits went untested for long periods of time, and that officers and advocates failed to contact survivors about their cases.

Still, supervisors present at the hearing agreed that the goal of the hearing was not to assign blame, but to look forward.

“Shame, embarrassment,” said Capt. Alexa O’Brien, who heads the SFPD’s special victims unit, when asked why only a paltry number of cases were reported to police. Furthermore, even among reported cases, case information was often missing. Police have sometimes had to rely on social media to find out a suspect’s identity.

“I don’t want any woman to feel like she’s not heard or believed or understood because that’s not how we treat our victims,” she said. Several spectators snorted.

“The hardest thing for me is that people … don’t have to reveal their trauma to get the help they need,” said Sheryl Evans Davis, executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, which oversees SHARP. “It’s unfortunate that people have to share their stories to be validated.”

In response, Ronen mentioned an upcoming legislative update to SHARP that would make the confidentiality regime even more robust.

“No survivor will come to SHARP and feel comfortable about their choices and their stories being kept private if they want to keep that,” she said.

She also advocated increasing SHARP’s staff. The department has a budget of $400,000 and was expected to hire three employees, but currently only has two.

Supervisor Catherine Stefani suggested making additional investments in promoting the existence of SHARP, which is “known to a very small community,” Ronen said. “I don’t think many of my colleagues knew SHARP existed.”

Supervisor Mynar Melgar said city officials should take SHARP’s recommendations more seriously and be responsible for implementing those recommendations. She pointed to a recent Mission Local article about the case of DBI engineer Robert Chun, who kept his job with the department despite being federally charged and later pleading guilty to crimes related to the operation of an international prostitution ring have.

All city officials who spoke at the hearing agreed that schools should become more involved in educating their students about sexual assault and harassment.

“It starts young,” said O’Brien of the SFPD. “We see these young men grow up and … deviate in their behavior because no one has really told them that this is wrong.”

Police have taken the idea to schools, but have encountered “a lot of resistance from schools,” O’Brien said. “I guess they have their own programs and their own educational programs that they follow and they don’t really deviate from that.”

Monifa Willis, chief of staff for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, mentioned a healthy relationships workshop they conducted in schools. “How would you like to be treated?” “What should you expect?” were questions they asked the teens during these workshops.

In new legislation Ronen plans to introduce as soon as next Tuesday, SHARP will be moved from the Human Rights Commission to the Office of Victims and Witnesses Rights, a position approved by voters in 2022.

“I think this is a much better place for SHARP to grow as an agency and fulfill its original mandate in a more robust way,” Ronen said.

“The word ‘rape’ is hard enough to say,” said one viewer in the public comment section, who said he has received support from SHARP for the past three years.

“I call on the city of San Francisco to stop politicizing and come together,” the audience member said. “The moral injuries of sexual violence undermine the soul of our city and cause devastating consequences for us all.”

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