Also, despite Hanna’s remarks in #199 that the evidence she mentions could point in either direction, most of them are much more effective in exculpating someone than in incriminating someone. I don’t know of anyone who subsequently sent an angry text message or email to a rapist, and there certainly weren’t any invitations to breakfast! A woman who was raped might avoid the man as far as humanly possible, so there would not be much evidence based on their subsequent interactions. The man, if he is wise, would not brag about the encounter to anyone. The absence of positive interactions later doesn’t really prove anything.
I have mentioned before that in my belief, cases where both parties are intoxicated need to be handled differently.
@roethlisburger What does that have to do with claiming there is some assumption that women can’t make decisions when they are drunk but men can? Title IX protections and issues of consent apply equally to both sexes.
And each school has quite clearly spelled out the definition of sexual harassment and sexual assault --some do so in gradations so there is no confusion – such as separating out instances where there is intercourse and where there is not. So no, there is no ambiguity in defining terms. You are responsible for understanding the terms of your school’s student conduct code. You agree to it when you enroll.
“most of them are much more effective in exculpating someone than in incriminating someone.”
It just depends. The testimony of witnesses to an accuser’s physical and emotional state after the incident can be damning.
I agree. Paul Nungesser faced 3 separate complaints from 3 separate women. In the end he did not receive university discipline from any of those complaints.
Yes. There is an saying that actions speak louder than words. I believe that women have agency. I believe they own their actions and I think that anyone who accuses someone of something heinous will and should have their accusation examined and scrutinized. And I don’t call that victim blaming I call that good investigation. I also believe if you have been accused of something heinous anything exculpatory should be given equal consideration and the accused’s story deserves examination and scrutiny. I think what is good for the goose is good for the gander and you cannot excuse alcohol or drugs either as an accuser or an accused.
I actually believe that if we used intoxication as a benchmark plenty of men have been assaulted and plenty wake up and think OMG I was wearing beer goggles and may very well wish they never would see their bed partner again. Somehow both parties managed to get somewhere together under their own steam because if there was force it is criminal and we have a system for that. And yes even in the criminal system the accusation will be scrutinized and the accuser will need to produce exculpatory evidence or plea or stand trial.
There are no free passes. If you leave your keys in the car and your car gets stolen you will get a ticket in most locales for public nuisance or whatever the ordinance is and a lecture most likely from the cop even though you were the victim. We have gone down a very slippery slope by circumventing the criminal system, operating from an assumption of guilt rather than innocence and creating an inherently discriminatory system that serves no one well on either side of the bed.
And the Yale data along with press on the schools’ reports to the Department of Justice on disposition of Title IX cases do not support that exculpatory evidence is not being given equal consideration. There are more “insufficient evidence to support allegations” than there are suspensions and expulsions.
Yale made a filing in the Montague case that stated since 2011 they have expelled 6 students pursuant to Title IX hearings. Compare that to the the number of complaints filed.
“One better would be giving frosh “men” an anti-rape training program. It is NOT the victims’ fault. (Of course everyone would benefit from a program teaching them how to be aware of their surroundings and what situations would present a danger to them.)”
MomDD – that would only be better if the data says that training the men is more effective. I’m not a neanderthal or a victim blamer. I’m just interested in doing things proven to actually work.
The training I mentioned seems to hold particular promise. Which is why I mentioned it. Check it out yourself. I want my daughter’s school to do stuff that works. Don’t really care about the perception. Just the effectiveness. I’ve yet to see any data showing Dear Colleague has done any good.
“A program that trained first-year female college students to avoid rape substantially lowered their risk of being sexually assaulted, a rare success against a problem that has been resistant to many prevention efforts, researchers reported Wednesday.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/health/college-rape-prevention-program-proves-a-rare-success.html
I’ll make this my last post in this thread, but you keep getting buried in the weeds. The interesting discussion isn’t about what the student conduct books say, but would they should say, or at even higher levels how Title IX should be interpreted or what federal and state law should be. If you’re saying schools apply Title IX protections equally to both men and women, I don’t believe you.
Well then you haven’t looked at the cases. There was a woman expelled in a case exactly like the example you cite to prove your point in your post #219. A female student lured a very drunk freshman male into her room and performed oral sex on him in her shower. He filed a Title IX complaint for sexual assault and she was expelled because it was found he was too drunk to consent.
So you don’t have to believe me @roethlisberger. Take the time to look at the cases.
And what the conduct codes should say is irrelevant to students on campuses today in terms of what standards they will be held to. They are charged with abiding by the terms of the ones they agreed to when they enrolled. Citing the terms of the conduct codes as relevant to the discussion is not getting “buried in the weeds.” To the contrary, those codes are the controlling factor.
One of the students in my department was raped. She got a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the man and later was able to get it renewed. A university lawyer told me that a TRO was easy to get, and did not prove anything. The woman reported the assault promptly to the police and to the university. (In this case, I do not know for sure, but I think it is likely that she had a rape kit done.). The police did not file charges. To the best of my knowledge, the man was not expelled nor suspended. I doubt that my testimony, or the testimony of others, that she was emotionally distraught would prove anything. It might help a bit toward preponderance.
But the story gets worse after that. The man sued the woman for defamation, based on her report to the university and/or to the police. The woman eventually won a summary judgment in this case, but in the process, she incurred more than $50,000 in legal fees. I had been told that the (outside) legal firm was handling the case on a pro bono basis, but that apparently only applied during the very first stages of their work. The woman was not awarded legal costs in the case, and I was told by a university lawyer that such an award happened only very rarely.
People with whom I spoke at the university indicated to me that the man (no idea who it was) was “known to them,” suggesting that there may have been previous complaints. They probably should not have said that much.
I would be satisfied with an arrangement whereby serial rapists can be expelled, and the process is just. The university advises the faculty that 90% of rapes are committed by repeat offenders. This fraction seems too high to me to be very believable. On the other hand, I would not be surprised if a higher fraction of reported rapes are committed by repeat offenders, as opposed to unreported rapes.
This is only one of a set of cases that make me angry about the whole issue.
If there is a way to get around the fact that the victim developed PTSD after an assault (following a line of reasoning that Hanna suggested on a different thread–she had a consensual interaction mixed up with a previous attack, due to flashbacks), I really do not place much confidence in the efficacy of testimony about the victim’s emotional state after the attack.
A young woman who was a member of our church was raped while she was visiting her brother. Our family knew her as she was growing up–she was in a number of church programs.
She let the rapist into her brother’s apartment where she was alone at the time, thinking that he knew her brother. She was not drinking! The attack was provable in court, because the rapist took an item of jewelry that was rather distinctive. That provided a break in the case, which made it possible to link him to the crime and then to obtain further evidence. Unfortunately, in this case, the victim did not survive–the rapist killed her. Every year at Easter, when the young woman’s family gives flowers in memory of her, I start to cry just reading the church bulletin.
This is another one in the set of cases that make me angry about the whole issue. I couldn’t even make this sort of thing up.
Just for clarity, in my post #232, in the second line “she” refers to the victim. Too late to edit.
I’m not sure “emotional state” is a position of evidential strength in the absence of anything else. Some people get hysterical or depressed or dysfunctional when they feel their lives are out of their control for instance which could be entirely independent of someone doing something to them that caused them to feel their lives are out of control. It’s unfortunate perhaps, but perhaps true. It’s a sad story that she got sued, but does not surprise me, generally people don’t like to be called “rapists” and especially without being charged. I could not speculate on why the circumstances of her story didn’t hold up with the police or the university.
Not that it brings back the victim, but was the attacker convicted?
Yes, hebegebe, the attacker was convicted in the case that I mentioned in #233. There is at least that consolation. Because he murdered the young woman, I believe that his sentence was long. I do not fault the young woman for being too trusting, in letting him into the apartment in the first place. She thought he was a friend of her brother’s–she had not met many of them. She was young (high school senior, actually, not quite college age) and inexperienced, because she grew up in a comparatively safe area.
I lead a normal middle-class life in an area that is about as safe as you can get, and it is surprising to me how many cases I know of personally.
With regard to #235 about #231, I think you are confusing “her story not holding up” with “the man was not charged,” momofthreeboys. Actually, since I don’t have any idea who the man was, he might have been suspended or expelled by the university, but I doubt it based on the limited facts that I do know. In any event, he wasn’t suspended or expelled as a result of any of the earlier charges.
The man was not charged criminally because there was no hope of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and not because the woman’s statements were disbelieved. The attack occurred in private with no witnesses. Immediately previously, they were not in a setting where many people knew either of them. I see no hope of winning a case like this. This is the point that I keep trying to make, to those who say that everything should be referred to the legal system.
Did you not understand my comment that the woman won summary judgement (dismissal) in the case of defamation, that the attacker filed against her?
The university also, in trying to uphold justice, is limited in the action that can be taken if the attacker denies everything and there are no witnesses. (“Deny till I die,” Owen Labrie).
Hanna was saying that the emotional state of the victim could be evidence that would tend to incriminate the accused. But you argue against that, momofthreeboys. It would be nice if I could rely on Hanna’s statement about its serving as evidence, but I am inclined to be skeptical, and not just based on post #235.
And thank you for asking, hebegebe.
One more comment: If a woman could be successfully sued for reporting a rape to the police or to a university, when it could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, that would certainly reduce the number of reports, while doing nothing to reduce the number of rapes. Probably it would have the opposite effect on the number of rapes.