@“Cardinal Fang”: without a complaining witness police wouldn’t do anything (in this kind of case) even if they knew the names. In terms of the accused, this anonymity provision won’t help in any campus proceeding because if the school tries to keep it anonymous the accused will subpoena the name. I suppose if it stops there maybe no one else would necessarily know, but otherwise I’m just not seeing the point of the anonymity.
If there’s any proceeding people will know of the accuser and accused. If there isn’t any proceeding then I’m not sure what we’re doing.
I think we’re allowing police to collect statistics on the number of accusations. The point is, the college will give the name of the accuser and the name of the accused person to the police in the required report only if the accuser waives her right to be anonymous. Otherwise, the college will just tell the police that there has been a report of a rape, but not give the name of accuser or accused.
So why would the accused person ever need to subpoena the name? I don’t understand this at all. Either the police get both names, or they get neither name.
@Cardinal Fang: Apologies if I’m not being clear. I do not mean the accused would need to subpoena the name in a judicial proceeding, but in a campus proceeding, should the school attempt to keep the accuser anonymous. The provision keeps the police from automatically knowing names, I suppose, though I confess I’m not sure how valuable that is.
I was, to make the point that I don’t see the anonymity being all that valuable, since you have to lose it to do anything. I don’t know what subset of accusers will want to only go so far as to make a report, but go no further, and want to be anonymous just in case. If you don’t want anyone to know, it seems to me likely that would include the university. I am open to being wrong on this point, but that is my impression.
You seem to be totally missing the point. The college is required to report the rape accusation to the police, even if the accuser doesn’t want the accusation reported to the police. If the accuser wanted to make a police report, she could, but if she doesn’t want to make a police report, she will be satisfied with the police being notified that an accusation has been made. If she decides to proceed with a campus disciplinary proceeding, the police won’t be involved in that.
She’s not keeping her name away from the guy she’s accusing-- she’s keeping it away from the police. Women who’ve been raped might not want to broadcast their name all over.
Again-- what is the situation you imagine where the accused guy would need to subpoena the name of his accuser? If she proceeds with a campus disciplinary proceeding, he will be notified who his accuser is so there will be no need for a subpoena. If she tries to press charges with the police, he will find out who is accusing him. If she opts for anonymity with the police, the police won’t know learn his name either; a subpoena makes no sense in that case.
@Cardinal Fang: I’m not really sure how to explain myself better. The anonymity provision appears to kick in for the subset of accusers that don’t want the police to know their name but are fine with the university knowing their name but only to the extent the university won’t take action. For everyone else, identities are disclosed (one way or another). That’s a pretty small subset of people, I expect, which is why I don’t think the provision is that valuable.
Technically, maybe, but in practice it’s the consent of the person bringing the charge against the perpetrator that the committee considers.
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So you are arguing that if Yu brought the charge against her, she would be the one being expelled? After all, he was drunk and could not consent to sex.
It’s ridiculous that whoever accuses the other first “gets to be” the victim just because they filed the case first.
Nevermind, I found the post from last April. I wasn’t actually arguing anything, but rather responding to the @sherpa’s question:
In cases in which the accuser claims that s/he couldn’t consent because s/he was intoxicated, the panel determines whether the accused should have been aware of this had he been sober. If a reasonable person would have been aware that the accuser was too intoxicated to consent, then the accused is responsible for sexual assault, even if he too was equally – or even more – intoxicated.
My point is that level of intoxication is very difficult to judge weeks or months after the event and that the determination is even further removed from the accused’s actual perception. The panel must not only determine whether the accuser was too intoxicated to consent, but that a reasonable person should have known as much. The fact that the accused may have been too intoxicated to realize that his partner was too far gone isn’t a consideration.
So far, I don’t know of any case wherein a male accused a female of sexual assault because the male was too intoxicated to consent, but that could happen. We have seen same sex and group encounters which are variations of the female accuser / male accused.
The only reason a private person would want to subpoena the names of people who reported a rape to the police would be to prove a negative, that a particular accuser in a specific campus process did not report the alleged rape or assault at the time. As far as a college keeping the names confidential, good luck with that. If a prosecutor wants the names of the accuser because he or she can have a grand jury subpoena issued and the college will have to turn it over. While it is correct that in the real world a prosecutor is not going to waste the time to find the name of an alleged victim who is obviously going to be non cooperative, I would be willing to bet that we will get there eventually. I think this will happen since this new policy is a pretty gross effort to inflate sexual assault statistics for publicity/political purposes. Eventually, law enforcement will have to start pushing back. Just like with the canard about the untested rape kits.
There’s the misunderstanding. The anonymity provision kicks in for the subset of accusers that don’t want the police to know their name. There is nothing about “to the extent the university won’t take action;” the university remains free to take the disciplinary actions it normally takes. Right now, most accusers don’t report to the police, so “the subset of accusers who don’t want the police to know their name but are fine with the university knowing their name” is almost all accusers.
@Cardinal Fang: if the university initiates action the accused would have to know about it, in which case anyone can tell anyone anything (except the school to the police). I have a hard time seeing someone who cares a lot about anonymity going that route, though of course it is possible.
The accuser’s name isn’t anonymous to the accused person. This is not about keeping the accuser’s identity from the accused person. Of course the accused person knows who accused him if any university action is taken.
The accuser’s name is anonymous *to the police. * We know that many accusers don’t want their names reported to the police.
@Hanna, it makes sense to me that if the rule is “You can’t have sex with sonmeone who is too intoxicated to consent” then sometimes both participants could be found to have violated the rule. And if the punishment is expulsion, then in those cases both should be expelled, or neither.