Stanford has an uncommonly high bar for sexual assault cases, so the player was never punished despite two panels ruling in favor of the accuser.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/sports/football/stanford-football-rape-accusation.html
The panel did not " rule in favor" of the accuser. A panel only does so under Stanfords rules if the vote is at least 4-1. Something that should be hailed not criticized.
No one should be branded a rapist based on a star chamber proceeding with no right to confront his accuser. Let alone on a preponderance standard without a unanimous verdict. Criminal proceeding require a much higher standard and a unanimous verdict.
Note that Duke also has the " uncommonly high standard" , a school that knows all too well what happens when it’s all too easy to determine someone guilty of rape.
The bottom line is that Title IX In terms of sex assault proceedings is a terrible idea. It is unfair to all involved including universities who will be accused of acting in their own interest if they try to protect the right of the accused.
Serious crimes belong in the courts. Full Stop.
I couldn’t agree more. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to go to the police if such an incident occurred. Not the campus police or the school’s administration. These are criminal charges and should be handled in the courts.
“Campus police” is real police on some campuses. E.g. Stanford police is part of the Santa Clara County sheriff department.
This woman’s allegations are not being handled in the real courts.
Looking at this from the other way round, even using the easiest standard of proof, preponderance of the evidence, not everyone on the panel was convinced of his guilt. In a court proceeding, all 12 jurors would have had to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, a much higher standard.
It would appear that her chances in a real court proceeding would have been virtually nil.
This is not to say that she wasn’t raped.
While I agree that “real courts” and “real police” are probably the best routes to go for rape survivors, it’s worth remember that there is a horrendous backlog of rape cases, rape survivors are often treated like crap by police and courts- to the point of revictimization, and rape survivors rarely see real justice in their cases.
As someone who has gone through the process (and saw my assailant walk), I can absolutely understand why someone wouldn’t want to go through the “real” courts and police.
Stanford police are real police.
That’s very admirable, as long as you understand that as a practical matter it probably eliminates the possibility that she will get any redress. Because “criminal charges” are so serious, it can be very difficult to make them stick against a defendant who has the resources to contest them. Prosecutors are generally unwilling to pursue any but the most airtight cases if there is a likelihood of pushback from the accused, and juries are not especially good at voting unanimously to convict young men with lots of promise who don’t come across as criminals. And all the details of criminal trials become public record.
If your daughter wants to run that gantlet as a civic duty, that’s great, and there’s even a small chance that after months – maybe a couple of years with appeals – your daughter will actually win and feel some closure. If she wants some quick and effective action against the perpetrator, that will possibly act as a deterrent on other young men like him, I would advise her to go with administrative remedies.
That didn’t happen in this situation, however.
I return to the Parker Stevens case at Dartmouth on things like this, because there was both an institutional response and a court case.
The school apparently expelled him, or otherwise made it clear that he was not welcome. They supported the accuser. The campus police and local police supported her.The local prosecutor supported her. From what I read, it seems to me that he was guilty.
He was found not guilty by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
I think it’s a myth that prosecutors only take on the most airtight cases. Statistics, I’ve seen show acquittal rates in rape trials of 25-30%. If prosecutors only accepted the most airtight cases, you would expect acquittal rates to be much lower. Then, there’s the less than airtight cases where the prosecutor secured a plea deal.
Less than 20% of rapes reported to police result in an arrest, and less than 20% of arrests result in a prosecution. Of cases prosecuted, about 65% result in a felony conviction, and about 85% of those result in a prison sentence. In case you lost count, that means less than 4% of cases reported to police are prosecuted, and only slightly more than 2% of them result in a felony conviction. (Some others will involve a misdemeanor conviction, for something other than rape.)
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system
There’s no way to interpret these numbers to make reporting a rape to the police look like a good way to get a satisfactory result from the criminal justice system. I think all kinds of things that we have pretty broad consensus about – like a woman’s right to withdraw consent at any time, or her right to go out on a date wearing attractive clothes and drink without necessarily consenting to sex – are not recognized in the criminal justice system as a practical matter.
I think it is entirely reasonable to require 3 out of 3 or 4 out of 5 with regard to something that may result in expulsion. But really these things need to be in the courts not handled by colleges.
It’s too bad the Times didn’t share any of the important facts in the documents they read. Given the two split decisions, my guess is that this was a gray and fuzzy case.
Using one of RAINN’s own sources, 31% of reported sexual violence, resulted in an arrest, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvsv9410.pdf. Where does the 20% of arrests result in charges number come from? That contradicts other data sources, such as, https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/210346.pdf, which suggest that number should be closer to 80%. The very low 4% filing charges rates would also seem to be in conflict with the FBI UCR clearance data.
The problem is that for a jury or a college panel, acquaintance rape becomes a he said/she said. I wonder how many rapes are successfully prosecuted between acquaintances without visible evidence of battery. And a small number of reported rapes are falsified, making it much harder for a panel of academics to give more weight to the victim’s testimony than to the perpetrator’s. But if the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is applied to college rapes, then virtually no one has consequences, and serial rapists are free to act-- and this is exactly what is happening now. I would be in favor of a slightly lower standard for academic proceedings than for criminal ones, understanding that a few men may be unfairly expelled but many women now are effectively punished for having been raped, often with rather more serious consequences than expulsion.
@roethlisburger I am not certain why there are differences between the RAINN numbers I linked and the reports you linked. But they are not the same sources. My numbers were based on the FBI’s National Incident Based Reporting System data for 2010-2014. Your 31% arrest rate is based on DOJ numbers for 1995-2010, and your prosecution rate is based on randomized survey data that is 20 years old. (By the way, that survey reported that the conviction rate for prosecuted accused rapists who were intimates or former intimates of the victim was about one-third, which is stunning.)
But you know what? These differences in the numbers are not that important. I would make the same argument based on your numbers that I made on mine – the criminal justice system is not necessarily where you want to be if you are a victim seeking vindication.
It wouldn’t have fit the narrative that at the author was trying to spin: student gets a pass on assault bcos he’s a football player. (A better analysis with real critical thinking required is to look at all of the other 3-2 decisions to compare them to see if they were football players / athletes as well. Of course those decisions are all private so the NYT goes with one data point.)
" But if the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is applied to college rapes, then virtually no one has consequences, and serial rapists are free to act-- and this is exactly what is happening now."
Why do you think that’s what’s happening now? Colleges have never used “beyond a reasonable doubt.” They’ve all been mandated to use “preponderance of the evidence” since 2011; before that, many used “clear and convincing evidence,” but not reasonable doubt. Serial rapists are free to act to the extent that victims often stay silent; it isn’t true generally now that colleges are presented with strong evidence and won’t discipline predators.