MISSOULA, Mont., May 2 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department is launching a civil investigation into how sexual assault cases are handled in a Montana college town, a federal prosecutor said.
Thomas E. Perez of the department's Civil Rights Division said investigators would review reports of 80 rapes that occurred in Missoula during the past three years, The Missoulian reported Wednesday.
Notification letters sent to the police department, the Missoula County Attorney's Office, the university and the campus police cited allegations local agencies "failed to investigate reports of sexual assaults against women because of their gender or in a manner that has a disparate impact on women."
"The allegations that the University of Montana, the local police department and the county attorney's office failed to adequately address sexual assault are very disturbing," U.S Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement announcing the investigation.
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Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg criticized the outside investigation, calling it "the heavy hand of the federal government."
"We adamantly deny we have done any such things and are deeply disturbed" by the allegations, Van Valkenburg said.
The federal review follows a University of Montana investigation that began in December with allegations that two students were gang-raped, possibly after being drugged by several male students.
A former Montana Supreme Court justice hired to look into the matter concluded the university has a problem with sexual assault both on and off campus.
In February, the university, which has about 15,600 students, notified a Saudi exchange student he'd been accused of rape but the student fled the country before his alleged victim filed a report with police.
The department review will examine all rape reports in Missoula, a city of about 67,000 people, for the last three years, not just those involving college students.
