The Sexual Violence Advisory Board and Vice Provost for Student Affairs Greg Boardman unveiled a new Web site last week that aims to centralize information about the resources available for student victims of sexual attacks.

The site, “Sexual Assault & Relationship Abuse Prevention & Support at Stanford,” includes a hotline number for Stanford’s Sexual Assault Center, a list of the various ways that students can report sexual crimes and other resources for sexual violence victims. It also offers information detailing which reporting options are anonymous, which are accompanied by legal investigations and which require a medical exam.

Officials said the new site was created to fill an important hole in the University’s existing support system.

“It was an obvious gap in student life issue that is governed by policy,” said Carole Pertofsky, director of Health Promotions Services at Vaden Health Center. “We thought students needed information about sexual violence and relationship abuse — awareness and definitions, prevention, response options and consequences for offenders.”

The Sexual Violence Advisory Board and the Women’s Center at Stanford launched the site a few months ago but only began to publicize it last week via promotional emails to campus lists.

Those involved said the new site was created in part to raise awareness about support on campus.

“It’s confusing for a member of the Stanford community, if they’ve been assaulted, to know what services exist and what kind of support is available,” said Assistant Dean of Students Laurette Beeson, who was instrumental in the site’s creation. “Very few people on campus are aware of all of the resources available, and certainly not the everyday student.”

According to Beeson, the University wants to get a better understanding of sexual violence on campus, while maintaining student privacy. Administrators hope that the site will help them identify trends and reveal ways to make the campus safer.

Tracking sexual assault at Stanford — and beyond — is difficult because many sexual violence incidents go unreported, Beeson added. Recently, the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA) conducted a survey of 32 colleges and universities in California which found that 1 in 4 women had been victims of rape or attempted rape. 84 percent of those attacked knew their assailant and 57 percent of the assaults occurred on dates. According to the study, 42 percent of victims told no one about the assault and only five percent reported it to the police.

According to the Department of Public Safety’s Web site, the number of reported sexual offenses (including rape and fondling) dropped from 38 in 2003 — when the “serial groper” was terrorizing campus — to four in 2005. The police received no reports of rape on the Stanford Campus in 2005, down from six in 2003 and two in 2004.

The Office of Judicial Affairs reported that after four years with only two combined sexual assault-related violations of the Fundamental Standard, there were seven cases last school year.

By making it easier for students to report assaults, Beeson hopes the University will be able to form a more concrete idea of how often offenses occur on campus.

“It is extremely personally difficult, if you are assaulted, to decide if you want to report it and to whom,” she said. “There are a lot of reasons that sexual assault is the most underrepresented crime.”

Users can access the new site’s resources by typing “rape,” “relationshipabuse,” “sexualassault” or “domesticviolence” into the URL line of any Stanford network computer.