I’m not aware that we are in an endless celebration of masculinity…seems more like it’s an endless celebration of the Kardashian women and their ilk although their 15 minutes of fame is almost over…anyway I rather like men. Glad there are men in the world. Glad they are different than women. There are conversations with the gal pals and conversations with the guys. Keeps life interesting. And I don’t find it incongruous to point out inconsistencies in how each are treated…I guarantee you I’m still paid probably ten cents on the dollar less than guys that do the same thing I do and I never dropped out of the workforce. Never give up the fight…
Hanna, I think the crux of it is the tough questions. But i think it’s a pipe dream to think that you can claim that someone took advantage of you in a potentially criminal manner and not have to answer the tough questions. You don’t get in any aspect of life the right to lob an accusation without answering some tough questions. As parents say to kids, if you did everything you should do, you have nothing to hide. I have no problem if every woman on a campus reported something because there is probably a remedy for jut about anything, but you have to get to the real issue and the real facts and that’s not easy because people equivocate sometimes, or they reshape what happened in their mind to the point they believe what they are saying or they elaborate and then fear getting caught in a white lie. That happens. That’s not abnormal and that’s why investigations and getting to the truth is tough. I think it’s pretty generally understood that that is why speed of reporting is considered important. Time has a way of dimming and changing recollections.
The chilling statement in hebegebe’s post is the judge basically told the guy to sue the accuser. So far not many of the men involved have gone after their accusers, but in this case he wants evidence and I don’t like that direction of accusers and accused duking out their sex lives in courts of law. Relationships are tough. Marriage is tough. Divorce is tough. It’s not easy and really expecting institutions to solve your relationship issues is a rather drastic and risky measure.
Am I understanding correctly he has to sue the accuser for the Title IX documents in the case to be made public? Otherwise Amherst won’t release them?
To me this resembles the Boermeester media reporting. Based on the news report, Doe is the victim of injustice. However, possibly we just don’t know everything that happened. We have his report. I would be very interested in what happened in the Title IX investigation and hearing if it is available anywhere.
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Here is the Boermeester thread for anyone interested, who didn’t read it already:
Boermeester seemed clearly the victim of an over-reaching Title IX process based on press reports. Then HarvestMoon1 posted the Title IX documents, which changed the narrative dramatically.
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I am willing to believe Doe was falsely expelled, just not based on that article. Maybe he is protecting his accuser. Maybe he doesn’t want everything to come out. I have no way to know.
And since I am not a lawyer, it is also always very possible I’ve missed something here, very clear to most of the rest of you, that indicates he was falsely expelled…
Amherst settled with him a few months ago. it went through the courts for five years, I doubt he wanted to protect his accuser…Jane Doe’s parents are probably sighing a breath of relief that she didn’t have to go to court.
You keep saying campus rapes should be reported to police, in which case “accusers and accused will be duking out their sex lives in courts of law.” So why do you object here?
Thank you. Very complicated to me. Is the decision based on what happened between the two of them or the process by which the case was judged?
Do I understand correctly he was performing a sex act on her and she withdrew consent? He claims to have been blackout drunk.
If a woman is performing a sex act on a man and he is too drunk to consent, that is clear to me. If the man is the one performing the act on a woman, who is either consenting or withdrawing consent, that is a different scenario.
I have to go now for a while to do something else. I am interested in this case.
adding before I leave: This does seem to me probably the sort of case I think of, when JHS writes about the impracticalities of adjudicating some of these encounters. Or at least that is how I am interpreting some of your posts, JHS. I am trying my very best not to speak for you, but I have been interested in those posts.
Sorry–shortness of posts precludes adding all of the qualifiers that one otherwise might. I did not mean to suggest that every mother who pulled out all the stops to defend her son was delusional. I imagine in some cases, the young man actually is innocent.
However, I disagree with momofthreeboys’ reading of several of the cases that she mentioned on p.13 of this thread (on my computer anyway). I don’t think several of those were actual miscarriages of justice.
But the troublesome case that I had in mind when I picked the term “delusional” was the one involving a young man whose last name was Kennedy, I think. (Don’t have time to look it up right now.) And I think this was in Colorado. In any event, this was the case where the young man was on videotape carrying an unconscious woman from her own apartment to his apartment, where he raped her. The young man was charged with kidnapping as well as rape. This probably came as a shock to him, because as I understood it, they were still in the same building all the time. I believe that his mother represented him as trying to “help” the young woman. If I really stretch a point, I might think that he was concerned that the young woman might aspirate vomit while drunk, and by being with her, he could prevent that. Then he just got carried away, and decided to have intercourse? I don’t know, it doesn’t really make sense–but it’s the best I can do to avoid the “delusional” tag, about calling his actions “help.”
In my opinion it’s good that mothers love their sons no matter what. My religious beliefs allow for an all-encompassing love that covers everyone, regardless of how heinous their acts (going well beyond rape). But I think that having a realistic understanding of the son’s failures (and in the religious case, omniscience) is also good.
^According to the version of events, given by the female, John Doe was black out drunk, she proceeded to perform a sex act on him, she decided to stop at some point, and he then proceeded to force her to continue. Her own testimony made it clear the encounter began with her assaulting John Doe. Later text messages proved the girl’s testimony was substantially fabricated, but the university still refused to revisit its ruling.
I read the link, though not as carefully as I should have. It makes me remember just one of the reasons I dropped out of law school. If anyone is willing to summarize the facts of the case, I’d appreciate it. Hoping HarvestMoon will explain the important points.
If the events happened as she describes, he is guilty of sexual violence according to the policy (if I understand correctly) since he perpetrated an act against her will… Although the blackout state isn’t addressed in the policy, we don’t excuse people for vehicular homicide and other crimes for being blackout drunk.
Is she guilty of sexual violence against him for performing oral sex at the beginning of the encounter since he was in a blackout state? It seems to me she is, according to university policy. But she is the one bringing charges originally, not him.
I can not figure out what all is going on with the court case without giving it more time than I have at present. I might not be able to figure it out with unlimited time.
Universities have an obligation to keep their campus safe. After the university became aware she assaulted him, they would have an obligation to pursue Title IX charges against her. So if the events happened exactly as she described, a neutral Title IX office would expel both students. Beyond that, the university was sloppy in its investigation in not obtaining her text messages during the course of its investigation and clearly biased in refusing to grant a new review of the case after the the text messages emerged, which contradicted her account of events.
Do we have all the all facts the Title IX investigation was looking at?
I’m not arguing for this one way or another. Maybe Amherst was wrong. But do we actually have enough information to know that to be true?
adding: Is it possible for someone familiar with this case to summarize why this case went on so long if Amherst was clearly in the wrong? What were the arguments?
@Hanna the contention upthread was that in cases where women claimed they were too intoxicated to consent the rules were being applied unequally because in many cases the men were also too drunk to consent. My response was that men had to file a claim of assault with theTitle IX office in order to get the same protections. If they did so the school would investigate their claims as required under Title IX. I believe they do investigate when men report and have found little evidence to the contrary. Can I ** prove** that is true in every single case? No I can not. But I have kept on top of these issues enough to personally feel comfortable with my own conclusions. Others are free to draw their own.
I also believe we would hear a lot about it if schools were being blatantly discriminatory and not processing men’s complaints. This is especially true in this environment of intense public scrutiny of campus adjudications. As far as men being reluctant to go to the press if their claims were ignored, I am not so sure. Five years ago I would have agreed with you, but now it seems everyone is willing to tell their story. Many men have recently made public statements about being assaulted in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations. And I have always contended that nothing is private on a college campus – who the students are in these campus proceedings ends up being common campus knowledge through the grapevine. So if these men are willing to step forward and report an assault, I think they would blow the whistle if the complaints were ignored.
As to the cases that various posters have offered as examples of instances where a Title IX office has declined to investigate the claims of men, I’ll respond to the ones where I have read the court documents – although not recently.
In the Rossley case I think the school was correct – I also concluded this was retaliation instigated by the boy’s father who was a trustee. The father went to great lengths to have the case disposed of through his own channels and was unsuccessful. It cost him his board seat. The contention that the school failed to look into his son’s claim is untrue. He met with investigators and his claim was addressed in the investigative report. He made the claim more than half way through the process when it was going poorly for him and then could not substantiate it. I am making no judgment on whether he assaulted the woman or if she assaulted him, but his claim was considered by the investigator.
In the Amherst case if I recall correctly John Doe never made a formal report to the Title IX office that he was sexually assaulted. Rather his contention after he was expelled and had retained counsel was that since the hearing panel found his claim that he was blacked out “credible” they should have encouraged him to file a complaint. The only argument one might have is that the college refused to re-open the case after he was expelled. John Doe’s problem was that the evidence that might have helped him during the hearing was only presented to the college after he was expelled and was ready to litigate. Even then I do not believe he actually made a claim that he was assaulted. He seemed to want the college to make that claim for him. So this was not a case where a male student filed a formal report of assault and the report was ignored.
Having said that, I still have the same opinion I did when we discussed the Amherst case a while back – I believe that John Doe was sexually assaulted by Sandra Jones. Any woman with any experience with men can figure out from reading the totality of those text messages what happened in that case. But unfortunately he never made the assault claim and the text messages that might have defeated her claim only came to light after he was expelled.