As is always the case, nobody knows what went on behind closed doors.
Is he lying? Maybe. Is she lying? Maybe.
Could both be telling the truth? Absolutely.
She really believes her consent was coerced. And he really believes he got affirmative “Yes Means Yes!” consent.
So then it comes down to what “The Reasonable Man” would think about whether valid consent was obtained. Problem is that colleges don’t require students having sex to wear body cams or to get it on only in front of trained TRM employees that act as sex consent referees.
All adjudication processes require proof. These cases typically don’t generate adequate proof. So every process that a college or the USDOE or anyone else comes up with, basically, is going to suck. You can’t do anything to change that. Although you can spend unlimited time tilting the playing field back and forth in favor of one side (and therefore less in favor of the other side).
So train the guys as best you can (although I’m not optimistic here).
Train the girls (if possible) to yell and resist more actively. There’s reason to believe this does work.
And maybe they thought it was OK because they believed he coerced her.
Where’s the part where she agreed to any of this, before the violence? Oh, I forgot, everything means yes. “I don’t want to have sex with you” means yes. Not running screaming from the room means yes. Being a naive teenager who can’t figure out how to get out of the situation gracefully means yes. Not putting a knee in his crotch means yes.
CF, as I read it, the original description is that she said yes to genital touching when asked but didn’t really mean yes. She says that she said yes and never once said no to genital touching. She said no to intercourse and they didn’t proceed. They did what she said yes to but did not do what she said no to. How is that “everything means yes.” Did I misread the original description? I have the impression that you are reinterpreting the description to match the situation you imagine, in which culpability is clear, but that doesn’t seem to be the situation Hanna described.
The real issue is how to parse culpability if she means no but says yes because she feels coerced. I think that is a very different question than the one you are posing. In one reading of this, she felt coerced to say yes to genital touching even though she meant no (but was able to say no to intercourse nonetheless.) In another interpretation, she was not coerced but was ambivalent at the time, although she did not show it and regretted things later. In another interpretation, she was not coerced but just regretted things after the fact and then decided she felt coerced.
It sounds like the tribunal (one judge) could not rely on her statement that she said yes and never once said no to the only sexually activity they engaged in because she may believe that she was coerced. If even her statements cannot be relied upon, then what do people (males and females) have to do? I wonder if college students need to have their phones on recording every potentially intimate encounter to demonstrate that they did or did not give/get consent.
@“Cardinal Fang”: My thinking ran along the same lines as yours: affirmative consent is meaningless if the accuser lacked the capacity to consent, such as by coercion. On the other hand, “coercion” generally requires something that would overbear the will of a reasonable person, and there’s no evidence of anything approaching that, even in the accuser’s statements.
Seems under this policy she would had to have made it clear to him that she did not want to have sex.
For me the type of coercion would be really important to focus on. Don’t think I would be on board with mere verbal coercion negating the ability to consent.
Here’s my understanding of Hanna’s description of what the accuser alleges happened, in this order:
(1) She said no to “having sex.” Unclear whether finger penetration was included in that definition.
(2) He kept talking about getting her ready. He kissed her forcibly and violently. (Again, according to what she said.)
(3) She was asked about finger penetration, and she agreed.
What I don’t see in this description (which is her story, not his) is any reason to think she agreed to any of this. He kissed her violently although she didn’t even want to be there. Then, after he had already shown he was violent, and after he had not shown any regard for what she wanted, he asked her about the finger penetration. The guy (in her telling) has already shown that he is violent and will do what he wants regardless of what she wants. This does not seem to me to be a case where she will feel free to say no.
I agree, this is only what she says. The reality could be completely different. But my point is, in her story there is never any agreement to anything, except for the agreement at the end after he had been violent.
What’s his story about why he thinks she agreed to any of this? I know that momofthreeboys will say that by not leaving, she agreed, but that’s not good enough for me, and in fact I think it’s a load of codswallop.
Edited to add: I understood Hanna to be saying that this should have been an open and shut case because even if the accuser is telling the truth, this cannot possibly be assault. I don’t buy it. The violent kissing is already assault.
I don’t buy that kissing=violence, or even passionate kissing=violence. I think the term “violence” is being flung around far too much these days, and this sounds like a case of it. I don’t buy that kissing in these circumstances =assault.
If she didn’t want to make out with him she was fully capable of saying so. If she didn’t like the way he was kissing her, she was fully capable of saying so. She had no problem telling him that she didn’t want to have intercourse, and he complied with her statement. She had no problem saying yes to genital touching. What is the guy supposed to be, psychic?
I’m sorry that she had a bad experience with this guy, and maybe he isn’t the most sensitive guy in the world, but at some point she has to take SOME responsibility for her own actions and words.
Where is the part where she agreed? I don’t expect him to be psychic, which is exactly why I expect him to ask her what she wants instead of relying on his psychic powers to divine it.
So you actually expect people to say “May I kiss you”? May I kiss you again? How about now? Is there some number of kisses to which you will consent in advance? Are you consenting to be kissed softly, or more passionately? Open mouth or closed? Tongue?
Love in the 21st century…maybe someone should just invent the perfect male robot substitute for some of these young women they can program the robot to do exactly what they want it to do and nothing more, nothing less.
Where’s the part where she agreed to any of it? It’s not a matter of continuing consent; where was the consent in the first place? What led him to believe that she consented, other than that she didn’t leave? I know, I know, you think that I can kiss and fondle anyone within my reach and I’m doing nothing wrong, but I think you’re nuts.
Hanna, do I misunderstand, or was there evidence that she told other people about this right away? That is, she didn’t wake up a week later and start telling this story?
She acknowledges that she gave non-verbal consent to the kissing. In fact, she said that she was on top of him, kissing, at one point in the encounter. She said later that she didn’t like the way the kissing progressed, but she does not claim to have expressed that to him in any way.
I have a big problem with holding young people accountable for mind-reading. The kid wasn’t disciplined for kissing her. He was disciplined for digitally penetrating her, and he had affirmative verbal consent for that. I don’t agree that there’s coercion just because you say you were scared. That standard would give every student expulsion power over anyone they kiss.
I’ve got another case where the accuser’s POV boils down to “I started a consensual hookup, and once the guy was naked in my room, I felt so scared of him that I went along with mutual oral sex that I didn’t want.” She didn’t say he threatened her, or tried to hit her, or anything that made it reasonable to fear that he’d become a monster if she said no…but she felt scared. (He’s a big black guy, heaven help him.) So she didn’t say no, they had mutual oral sex, and he got expelled.
Needless to say, I can’t identify the schools, but they’re both schools CC parents are thrilled to send their sons to.
" they can program the robot to do exactly what they want it to do and nothing more, nothing less."
My heavens, isn’t healthy, normal sex suppose to be about what the other person wants? Isn’t sexual assault doing what you want to another person’s body (and not what they want)? Robots, what a sad way to describe normal men! Aside from a couple of perverts in my early years of college, any man that I have dated seemed to be very concerned with what I wanted.
Mother of 3: This statement is very revealing about your view of male entitlement to women’s bodies.
This is really hard to believe! Even if they believed she was scared and said yes for that reason, the punishment seems really out of line. Was there anything else going on? Was there contact after she filed the charge in which she was intimidated by the boy or his friends? Was there any kind of appeal process? And are you helping him fight the charges/punishment or a transfer application?
they can program the robot to do exactly what they want it to do and nothing more, nothing less.