All UVa frats on suspension

Parents Forum
3821

Why do you say this? Is there any evidence, any evidence at all, that if in the Occidental case the guy rather than the woman had brought charges, that he would not have been believed? Guys in such situations typically do not bring charges, but I don’t know how you know that if a guy did bring charges he would be disbelieved.

Has this been tested in law? What about cases where a woman gets pregnant by a boy who is under statutory age or is mentally incapable of consent-- would the woman be able to ask for child support in those cases? I suspect not. it might vary by state.

On edit: It has been tested! In the state of Arizona, a 14-year-old fathered a child by a 20-year-old. Years later, the state went after the father, who was now an adult, for child support. The state said that since the father had not pressed charges, and the mother had not been convicted of a crime, they were entitled to go after him for child support. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/05/nick-olivas-alleged-rape-victim-_n_5773532.html

I don’t know if there is any state in the US where a person can appear to consent (by saying yes and so forth) but be deemed to be too drunk to consent as a matter of law. If there is, which state is it?

3822

Google turned this up:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statutory-rape-victim-child-support/14953965/

Three cases are mentioned. Looks like it’s rare but it does happen. The theory is that the rape was irrelevant and that the child support was not owed to the rapist but rather to the child. Personally, I think the US is a rich enough society that the public could just eat the cost in these odd cases.

PHOENIX — Nick Olivas became a father at 14, a fact he wouldn’t learn for eight years. Olivas had sex with a 20-year-old woman.

State law says a child younger than 15 cannot consent with an adult under any circumstance, making Olivas a rape victim. Olivas didn’t press charges and says he didn’t realize at the time that it was even something to consider.

The two went their separate ways. Olivas, now 24 and living in Phoenix, graduated from high school, went to college and became a medical assistant.

Then two years ago, the state served him with papers demanding child support. That’s how he found out he had a then-6-year-old daughter.

The most well-known case was of a Kansas boy who, at age 13, impregnated his 17-year-old baby-sitter. Under Kansas law, a child under the age of 15 is legally unable to consent to sex. The Kansas Supreme Court in 1993 ruled that he was liable for child support.

California issued a similar state court ruling a few years later in the case of a 15-year-old boy who had sex with a 34-year-old neighbor. In that case, the woman had been convicted of statutory rape.

In both cases, it was the state social-services agency that pursued the case after the mother sought public assistance.

3823

Male and female college students, say.

3824

@CardinalFang, I’d like to think he WOULD be believed–but under some of these policies, it doesn’t seem to matter. In a male/female situation, it only seems to matter how drunk (or not) the woman is, and it is the man’s responsibility to interpret that information. It doesn’t appear to be applied vice versa, but maybe that is because there have not been any test cases where a man has filed a complaint against a woman?

It was only a hypothetical and not indicative of any feelings on my part.

3825

Some articles perhaps more on point:

http://www.salon.com/2011/08/03/male_rape/
http://jezebel.com/5827427/once-again-men-can-be-raped-too

17 year old male forced to pay child support after being raped by an ex-girlfriend. Says the sheriff laughed at him & his parents when he tried to file criminal charges.

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/mens-reactions-female-sexual-coercion

This cites several studies that claim 16% - 24% of college men have been forced to have sex. I have no idea if this journal is reputable or not. Personally, I find this very hard to take at face value. As part of my profession I read and apply a lot of social science research (finance) … I can assure you most of it is trash. Even the good stuff needs to be looked at skeptically and is often not reproducible. Nevertheless, here’s a quote:

"Our research suggests that women are most likely to use psychological pressure such as verbal pleading and arguments, emotional blackmail, and deception. Another common approach of sexually aggressive women is to take advantage of a man’s intoxicated state. A typical scenario, according to male victims, involves a predatory woman who encounters an inebriated man (or contributes to his drinking) and pursues him until he falls asleep or passes out. The woman then … "

Perhaps I’m closed minded, but I really don’t think men being raped by women is a big societal problem.

3826

@al2simon, those cases are horrible but there are also horrible cases where women who were victims of rape became pregnant, had the child, and years later the convicted rapist filed for (and received) partial custody! Also cases where men who thought they were the biological father, found out they were not, and were still ordered to pay child support because it was in the best interest of the child.

Don’t let these extreme cases sidetrack things or burn a hole in your chest due to the injustice of it all.

3827

Until you offer evidence, in the form of cases where college men accused college women of raping them because the man was too drunk to consent, and those men were not believed – and nobody in this long long thread has done that – I have to conclude your belief has no foundation in fact.

If Chris (male or female) accuses Lee (male or female) of taking sexual advantage while Chris was too drunk to consent, then the people evaluating the accusation have to consider the accusation before them. If the accused perpetrators are disproportionately male, as they undoubtedly are, then the evaluators are almost always faced with the question of whether a male took advantage of another person. That tells us nothing about what would happen if the accused person were female.

3828

Re Post 3817:

Your interpretation of what I wrote is exactly correct.

3829

Considering that I have said a million times in this thread and other similar threads that I believe the college tribunals are a bunch of crap, and that all rape cases (which are really criminal cases, not administrative cases) should be reported and handled by the police means that when certain posters read those words they do not understand them.

Nothing I can do about that.

3830

Which school has this policy? Which school has a policy that a woman who has had 5 shots cannot consent to sex? Which one? Which school has a policy that a woman can be deemed to be to incapacitated to sex, but a man can’t?

There is at least one school, Occidental, that has the policy that a PERSON (of either gender) cannot consent to sex if they are incapacitated by alcohol, but even if you think that is a good policy (I do not) the student has to be not just drunk, but on the point of passing out, and the policy applies to both genders.

3831

Here’s a link that relates to some of the above posts:

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/01/11/rethinking-gender-and-sexual-assault-policy-my-story/

Brief summary - It’s an editorial by a male Stanford student. He claims that he was trying to be a gentleman and walk a drunk female student back to her dorm. She propositioned him repeatedly; he said no repeatedly. She did things like put her hands down his pants without his consent. The story is a little unclear, but it appears he eventually dropped her off at her room and left. Months later he reached out to the Stanford sexual assault office. Although he decided not to press charges, they took his complaint seriously and didn’t seem to discriminate against him because he was a male (he does recount a bad experience reporting his assault to the campus YWCA, but I don’t know if that’s very relevant).

It’s only one data point, but I thought it was interesting. To be honest, he didn’t seem very upset about the incident to me - probably for cultural reasons and because he didn’t fear that he could be physically overpowered. I did get the sense that he talked to the sexual assault office as much to see how they would react as out of any desire to actually file a complaint. Although I think the written policies should be conduct-based and neutral with respect to gender, I think in the real world you have to acknowledge that men are overwhelmingly more likely to be sexual predators that women. It seems strange to ignore that fact, but I don’t know in what ways it should influence policy.

3832

Speaking as a CEO, who has a handbook that comports with the laws of many states, this is correct.

In all the states we do business in, which is most, it is illegal to have sex with a person who is passed out; technically, the term in the HR handbook is incapacitated.

And this is why when someone passes out at an office party or any company event, it is company policy actually to “kick” them out of the party, politely, and get them in a cab or have one of the cars take them home.

Speaking again as CEO, and knowing my company handbook inside out, this also is correct.

But, to be accurate, the number of drinks is irrelevant, it could be five or ten etc. drinks.

In no state, that I know of, is it illegal for a man and a woman to drink and then have sex, even if the woman is intoxicated. This is not classified as rape. Intoxication is not incapacitation, and the law recognizes that difference. This I know has happened at many office events (the cleaning staff speak too freely sometimes), yet not one charge of rape ever.

Plus, there are so many degrees of intoxication that it is usually impossible to judge where someone is on the scale after drinking; that is why incapacitation is the operative standard. The law acknowledges this distinction and thus the standard is it is rape if either party KNOWINGLY engages in sex with a partner so intoxicated that the partner cannot consent - and that goes for the female as well actually. I know companies where females have been charged with raping male co-workers.

Additionally, as per the law, there is no such thing as passive rape. By passive rape I mean the male and female are both drinking and intoxicated and they both are into it. However, the female is only into it because she is intoxicated and is taking a decision she would not normally take. Yet, she is engaging with the male, says yes (an intoxicated yes, but says yes in any event), they have sex, and then she later realizes she had sex, even though she did not mean to. Under the law, the male has not committed rape because there was no way of him knowing that the female was not doing it of her own free will or was not saying yes of her own free will.

To further illustrate the law, the situation could be the male is a teetotaler and his date is drinking. The female could get intoxicated and if she says yes to him and they have sex, then it is not considered rape if the male does not know she is intoxicated beyond consent. She was not incapacitated, he did not use force of any kind, and she willingly said yes, thus, no rape. Regrettable sex, yes. Rape, no.

3833

In California, one legal standard is that it’s rape if the victim was incapable of resisting because they were intoxicated, and the perpetrator knew or reasonably should have known this. I haven’t researched the case law for rape, but usually " reasonably" means the reasonable sober person would have known; being drunk is not a defense for raping an unconscious person.

3834

Rape definition: “unlawful [various explicit descriptions] of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.”

FBI, for the Uniform Crime Reporting standards: “The carnal knowledge of a person, without the consent of the victim, including instances where the victim is incapable of giving consent because of his/her age or because of his/her temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity”

Legal Dict, intoxicaton: “A state in which a person’s normal capacity to act or reason is inhibited by alcohol or drugs.”

From Nolo: “intoxication does not excuse criminal conduct.”

It is what it is. And it’s not that hard to pick up the basics. Now, we know that in some settings, people are fine with their actions and those of others. But you still have to drop all this back to “what it is.” Maybe two drunk kids have sex and are fine with it. That doesn’t change that, if one doesn’t “consent,” you can find yourself in a red zone.

Consent is tricky because its use runs all the way back, in law. “Consent is an act of reason and deliberation.” Right there, you see the issue with being drunk- no matter how any of us may personally feel about drunk sex. It continues, “A person who possesses and exercises sufficient mental capacity to make an intelligent decision demonstrates consent by performing an act recommended by another. Consent assumes a physical power to act and a reflective, determined, and unencumbered exertion of these powers.” Now, drunk puts one in the crosshairs.

3835

CF and LF, I do highly suggest that you both find attorneys and sit down and discuss this matter in depth. It is painfully obvious you do not have access to attorneys to explain this stuff to you.

For example, it is essentially only a neat exercise to print the FBI definition of rape because, as with all definitions, it lacks all the contexts surrounding a real case. It lacks all the details, all the actions, and all the motives; in short, the definition lacks everything that is so vital to the technicalities of administering the law.

It just seems that both of you do not appreciate or understand that the law is not just definitions, but is a rather tightly woven, rather technical, rather intricate set of criteria of which there are many ifs, ands, and buts.

All your opinions do not erase the fact that our HR guidelines are vetted, reviewed, and approved by several state and federal agencies, on an ongoing basis. And given the fact that each has approved how the handbook explains to employees what is necessary and required to report sexual misconduct, rape, etc,. including what is defined as such, it follows we are as accurate as it gets on the issue.

Face it, the law is not as simple as following definitions.

Why do you keep pretending that people said something they did not say or implying they said something they did not say? It just lowers your credibility every time you do this because other people reading know you are just making it up at that point.

I clearly stated this in my post:

Legally, you seem not to get that incapacitated (unconscious) is not the same as intoxicated, including even heavy intoxication. Maybe you and the lawyers should start there for you routinely conflate the two conditions.

3836

Baloney, awc. I’m taking the legalistic view and you tell us about your “counsel,” without any mention of his expertise. And now your company policy. Btw, I do suggest you verify “host liability,” since you are apparently the “deep pockets.”

Take a breath. There is no one expert on this thread. But we all can strip out the “I think” or “Someone told me” or “Well, yeah? 'Cuz this college did such and such.” It is what it is.

Incapacitated does not mean passed out.
Maybe ask your "counsel"or maybe do some digging among the legal pages.

3837

Has anyone ever brought up the issue of intent here? It matters.

3838

Incapacitated does have specific meaning depending on the circumstances, someone who is asking about condoms, or capable of texting coherent messages etc. is probably not legally incapacitated with regard to making a decision to have sex or not. That person might be too incapacitated to drive a car but I highly doubt anyone could make a legal argument that the person was too incapacitated to agree to sex and I would suggest that legally there will be much to do with “intent” if any of these cases even merited trial in a criminal court. Colleges and universities do not have the capacity to make such fine distinctions from a legal perspective and they are not legal settings. But I would suspect that “intent” and a basic understanding of that concept is an important distinction when individuals are listening to the supposedly investigative portion of a misconduct trial. In a legal court the concept of mens rea comes into play and again that concept in a university setting is what will turn 50% certain to 50.1% certain most of the time even though the college is not a “legal” court.

I think that this argument will go no where if people honestly believe that women are incapable of intent. or flip it around and it would require belief that the accused knowingly and willfully continued the sex in the absence of clear consent or that the accuser changed in in the middle of sex from consent to non-consent.

These are difficult things and continuing to harp on rape, which has specific legal definitions, and many states don’t even use the term preferring sexual assault, really has nothing to do with the majority of decisions on sexual misconduct the colleges and universities are “charged” with adjudicating. What was the intent of each partner and what did each partner willingly and knowingly do over a period of time is what is being asked of colleges (and courts) to determine.

3839

OMG Marie - we cross-posted and I loaded the diswasher in the middle of my posting! Exactly.

3840

@momofthreeboys‌

Oh, I though you were elaborating on my little post and did a great job!