Ethical considerations of compelled disclosure of sexual assault among college students: Comment on Holland, Cortina, and Freyd (2018)

Abstract

The recent article "Compelled Disclosure of College Sexual Assault" (Holland, Cortina, & Freyd, 2018) documents the variability in how campuses define responsible employees, reviews the assumptions underlying compelled disclosure, and offers alternatives to compelled disclosure. Compelled disclosure conflicts with several of the general principles of the American Psychological Association's (2016) ethics code and, as a result, is likely to conflict with the values of many psychologists. In this response, the ethical conflicts are identified and recommendations to psychologists to address these conflicts are offered. Specifically, psychologists should take an active role in learning about their campus policy, identify methods to increase student knowledge of their disclosure requirements, consider ways of reminding students of their disclosure requirements if they believe a student is likely to make a disclosure, advocate to campus authorities to ensure appropriate roles are designated as confidential, and respond to the need for more research in this area to help inform policy change and increase student support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).