In 2014 California was the first state to introduce legislation that requires schools in the state to establish procedures, in line with contemporary recommendations of the Whitehouse, to prevent sexual assaults in colleges. A fixed effects model is used to compare the developments of sexual assault rates in California with the rates in states that considered similar policies and by using synthetic control methods. Estimates from this paper suggest that the reported number of sexual assaults would have been somewhere between 24 and 69 % higher if the policy had not been introduced. The policy will most likely tend to increase reporting in California for a given level of sex assault incidents and the effectiveness of the policy might, therefore, be understated.