“Unfounded” absolutely does not mean “false,” although false ought to be a subset of unfounded (I hope, and I also hope a small one). Unfounded, though, does probably mean at least messy and indeterminate in some way, and under the current standard that the investigator found the accused more credible than the accuser. I don’t agree with @momofthreeboys that often, but I like her idea about undertaking a systematic examination of complaints determined to be unfounded with an eye to figuring out what else the institution could do to address the issues they raise, both before and after any particular incident.
There is a psychological tendency to deny that something could happen to oneself by blaming events on the victim. Men don’t seem to have to do that when it comes to rape, particularly if the victims are women. That is to say, I don’t think this happens because women don’t understand how men think.
For all practical purposes it could be false, or the complainant withdrew their complaint, it could fail to rise to the level of misconduct that the uni manages, it could it mean they did not find enough factual information to go forth basically it is a complaint that the university feels no longer needs investigation. Young people these days are used to taking grievances up the ladder so it didn’t surprise me to see the volume of complaints that were unfounded. I would hope that the outcome would be recommendations for the accuser of resources that could be used if they need to talk to someone etc. about whatever their complaint was. But the interesting thing would be to parse the complaints and see if there are some over-riding themes…I’m sure alcohol would be one, but perhaps there are others that could be addressed either operationally within the unis or organizationally among students and educators.
I do agree with further sensitive inquiries into the unfounded reports. In the reports I’m most familiar with, the reporter withdraws (typically) her complaint but under circumstances of feeling personally unsupported, disbelieved, occasionally bullied (often by friends of the accused). In my extensive experience assisting victims (as well as accused), the reporter feels such a sense of shame and disruption of privacy that they refuse to continue the process.
jasmom: Thank you for posting. I would really appreciate if you felt you could comment on the following:
How often do you think this type scenario happens? Thank you in advance.
I would harbor a guess that with unfounded reports, you would find not reporting it immediately as a pretty common theme. @jasmom , do you also find victims feeling guilty for “getting someone in trouble”, at least at first?
"
If you had paid attention to the various recent threads on Title IX abuses, most of the cases are some variation of the situation that @momofthreeboys mentions. Girl and boy get drunk, have sex. Months later, after boy gets interested in someone else, girl accuses boy of sexual assault because regret equal rape."
For those of us not following and participating in every CC thread, do enlighten us and provide some statistical support.
When I was HS/college age I had sex I later regretted, rather like you describe here. I was also raped.
I never had any trouble telling the two apart.
^I am so sorry
Several thoughts…
@Consolation I don’t think anyone is suggesting that sometimes the mothers (and fathers) of daughters aren’t equally clueless. I’ve known mothers and fathers of kids of both sexes who were in active deniial about a wide variety of issues–from drug dealing to being sexual active to drinking to cheating to bullying or stealing. …Nor do I think most people on this forum think that MOST male college students are rapists. I think most parents think most young men are good, decent people who don’t view young women as “objects” to be used for their sexual pleasure.
We do think there are SOME young men who lack empathy, especially empathy with women, and that all too often, these young men set the tone for discussion–for locker room talk, if you will. And, all too often, other young men don’t speak up and stop it. In the Steubenville case, a video of a group of guys laughing about what happened to the young woman surfaced. ONE young man–ONE–spoke up and said it wasn’t funny and asked “What if this were your sister?” That took guts–and the sad thing is that most of the others brushed him off as a killjoy.
And , no, I don’t think everyone knows what rape is. The NY Times article quotes a mother who obviously thinks that having sex with a woman who is intoxicated isn’t rape. I don’t think she’s the only one who thinks that. Legally having sex with someone who is too drunk to consent is rape. But there’s a lot of disagreement about what constitutes being “too drunk to consent.”
State laws regarding what constitutes sexual assault and what constitutes consent and whether or not affirmative consent is necessary or the victim must say NO vary enormously. So do state laws regarding what constitutes coercion which will negate consent. So does the age of consent. So do the circumstances in which a person can claim the protections of Romeo & Juliet statutes. The outcomes of whether having sex with someone who is in a blackout are all over the place. Lots of people think it’s only rape is a male inserts his sexual organ in another person. Lots of state laws say otherwise. One of the Steubenville defendants said “It’s not like I raped her.” He penetrated her digitally and used her nude body to pleasure himself, but didn’t ejaculate into her, so he thought it wasn’t rape.
So, I wouldn’t say that we all “know what rape is.” We don’t agree on what SHOULD be considered rape.Nor do we agree on what the punishment should be–the sentencing of Brock Turner certainly proved that.
I would recommend against relying on any of the news stories describing what “really happened” in any of the Title IX cases. Rolling Stone illustrates just how wrong a reporter can get a story. The stories about Matt Boermeester at USC made the flesh of almost every parent crawl. But over time, a lot more facts came out and suddenly Boermeester’s expulsion seemed entirely reasonable. Usually, news accounts are based on the complaint, i.e., the allegations. These may not be true–or they can be true but incomplete.
While I agree with the message, this is problematic, because it is not enforced evenly. If it was, there would be a lot of women guilty of rape.
There are certainly women guilty of having sex with men too drunk to consent. However, men will have to accuse them of rape and report them. If men start reporting in these instances, I think that has the potential to change campus culture for the better. jmho
At this point, I am really A-okay with getting rid of campus drinking. Of course, it may just kick that particular problem down the road till our kids are out of college. I don’t know.
eta: Harvestmoon posted about this last night. I don’t want to mischaracterize her posts. Please read them. They are excellent. #115 & #122
@hebegebe – the college has to have notice of the alleged assault before the rules can be “enforced.” How can anyone be found guilty of an alleged assault if there is no initial accusation or report by a third party to the college?
I don’t think anyone here is contending men are not entitled to the protections offered by Title IX.The rules are applied evenly in the cases where men report.
Since we only find out about cases when there’s lawsuits, it’s nearly impossible to judge whether schools are in compliance with Title IX.
I think these numbers are far less skewed than many posters seem to think. Take a walk around some frat houses or undergrad housing on a Friday or Saturday night and you’ll find lots of young men who are drunk, some extremely so. Young men, especially, seem to turn getting as drunk as possible into a competition. Many of those extremely drunk young men will end up engaging in sexual activity that night. Whether they are too drunk to consent will depend on the exact wording in the student code of conduct, but it seems reasonable to assume many of them were sexually assaulted according to the university code. Whether they regret the encounter or report it, is a separate issue.
Roethlisberger you cannot complain about Title IX not being applied evenly if men do not want to seek the protection offered by the law.
“The rules are applied evenly in the cases where men report.”
How could we know this? We don’t have enough information to generalize about what happens at thousands of different schools.
The implication as I understand it is that the school’s are turning a blind eye to men being sexually assault while too drunk to consent. My point is that the college’s can do nothing if men do not report. After an initial report they would get an investigation and a hearing if there was sufficient evidence to move the case forward. No different than what transpires when women report.
“After an initial report they would get an investigation and a hearing if there was sufficient evidence to move the case forward.”
I agree that that’s the theory. Whether the theory is put into practice as described is not known.
If there are cases where the college has refused to investigate a male’s complaint of sexual assault I have not read about it. I would think that would be big news. The one case we discussed here on this forum the woman was expelled. Not sure how posters can contend the rules are applied unevenly without at least some evidence of that being the case.
Maybe because men with the exception of the predatory pig types have a pretty healthy mental attitude regarding sex for some reason. Maybe because they are less body conscious in general after years of locker rooms and peeing troughs and if they happen to wake up with someone that in a million years they would maybe not have slept with minus alcohol shrug it off and attribute the evening to the alcohol and simply don’t equate casual sex with being assaulted. Maybe young women are still conflicted about the “good girl” image or the casual hookup or really have zero idea that sex comes in many flavors or that prince charmings come from Disney movies and not real life (no offense men of the forum)…who knows. I only know how I felt.
I don’t think it’s that the Obama doctrine precluded equality…the colleges interpreted and acted with prejudice especially in many cases that ended up actually in courts. But as I said, many, many cases are unfounded and never go anywhere because the accuser doesn’t want to cooperate with the investigation and perhaps just wants to access the services that come along with reporting…and there are the people who never report, who chalk it up to stupidity and move on…again who knows and I doubt because of privacy laws anyone has studied the actual claims and followed up with the accuses who end up not cooperating with the investigation. This is an old, old article, maybe the first one that I read that I thought OMG what are they doing on university campuses but it give the back story to the NYTs article and how families started fighting back against unsubstantiated accusations. It is now 7-8 years later…http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2013/10/31/for-the-falsely-accusedmovingonfromrapistbrandingachallenge.html
The surveys do a terrible job of trying to get at the real problems and the questions are clearly geared toward criminal behavior (misdemeanor through high felony) and not relationship issues. But I think the colleges got the wake up call and hopefully they will be careful about how they conduct themselves when they actually do take something to the point of a hearing and work much more closely with the police on cases that actually are assault or rape for the states that make a distinction and get the kids involved in noncriminal disputes into counseling or mediation both male and female that could benefit from some frank conversations around relationships and the conduct claims.