The Center for Public Integrity

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Elton Yarbrough was a young man seemingly on his way up: An economics major at Texas A&M University; a member of the university’s military cadet corps; a musician in the marching band; the pride of little Palestine, Texas; and soon to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

But police say he was also one other thing: A serial rapist.

The one-time Texas A&M senior is now sitting in a Texas prison until at least 2015 for felony sexual assault. Five women, including four female A&M students, testified Yarbrough raped or sexually assaulted them between 2003 and 2006, although he was only tried on one assault charge. Yarbrough says he is innocent.

Yarbrough is one of six alleged serial offenders at colleges across the country the Center for Public Integrity found during its year-long investigation of sexual assault on college campuses. The six were accused of assaulting multiple women in court records, campus records or other public documents.

However, students who reported being raped by fellow students told the Center of at least five other men whom they suspected of, or had heard of, assaulting other women. Those men probably look a lot like Yarbrough did to Texas A&M administrators and to his fellow students: A promising young student with an outstanding resume of achievements. As one of his accusers would later write in a statement read at a university judicial proceeding, “If you cannot trust another student with a record which appears as impeccable as Elton’s, then who can we really trust in life?”

The number of serial offenders did not surprise psychologist David Lisak, a University of Massachusetts-Boston expert on campus sexual assault.

It took nine months in 2005 and 2006 for the University of Wisconsin at Madison to contemplate, then reject filing disciplinary charges against a crew team member accused of rape.

Enough time, too, for an enraged encounter with his accuser, Laura Dunn, at a fraternity party. “He started threatening me,” said Dunn. “When he hit the wall, he used his whole forearm, and just slammed within inches of my head.”Enough time for the accused student to start his fourth year at the university, compete in another rowing season, and glide into another spring as a celebrated college athlete.

The university said a police investigation and the alleged victim’s objections to one of her investigating officers accounted for the delay. The criminal investigation, too, ended without charges against the accused student, who said Dunn willingly participated in sexual activity.

Unsatisfied with the school’s response, Dunn hoped to find an ally in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The office, referred to as OCR, enforces Title IX, a federal law requiring “prompt and equitable“ action in response to reports like Dunn’s. The statute is intended to protect students’ right to an education without the hostility of sexual harassment or assault. But in a decision that left her feeling betrayed again, the enforcement agency said it found “insufficient evidence” that the University of Wisconsin had been less than prompt.

In my opinion … IU not only harbors rapists, but also completely disregards, ignores, and fails women

Indiana University freshman Margaux J. unleashed these fiery words in May 2006 after a campus judicial proceeding on her allegations of rape. It wasn’t that the two administrators running the proceeding panel didn’t believe her. In fact, they did. The panel found the student she accused was “responsible” for “sexual contact” with another person without consent. School administrators rank the disciplinary charge among the most serious at IU.

It was the penalty that left Margaux sputtering with rage. The panel recommended suspending her alleged assailant only for the following semester — a summer semester, during which he was unlikely to attend school anyway.