If you’d have asked me before my son was accused of sexual misconduct, I would have said that trauma-informed investigations were a good idea. However, in our rush for justice, we are bearing witness to the creation of a new class of victims on college campuses and in the criminal justice system: The innocent. 

My son was accused of a felony sexual assault punishable up to 40 years in prison. What did he do? He accepted a woman’s invitation to lay on her bed. They were clothed at all times, and consumed no alcohol and no drugs. There was no sex, no fondling, no skin to skin contact, no kissing. She was on top of him and she was in control the whole time. We will never know what caused her to falsely accuse my son of assault. Her accusation was fabricated and disgusting. All of her statements were lies, used to destroy my son or manipulate the truth. As campus employees, the police officer and the school Title IX investigator worked hand in hand with the district attorney’s office. Not once was my son told his rights. The entire time, I kept asking myself, won’t someone just look at the evidence? Talk to the witnesses? But in the well-intentioned battle against sexual assault, facts become irrelevant, and truth never seems to matter. 

What we witnessed is that once you start from a position of believing the purported victim, you never move from it, despite evidence that proves the accusation to be false. If you start by believing, you start by assuming he is guilty.

• My child endured terribly unfair treatment as a result of trauma-informed methods.
  My son was arrested and spent the night in jail based on a DNA collection warrant. The DNA test results were exculpatory; unfortunately they were ignored by the school and disregarded by the prosecutor.
• The Prosecutor continued despite knowing the accuser destroyed exculpatory evidence and lied on a police report.
• The campus detective, while testifying under oath, stated that he did not use leading questions. Yet when interviewing my son’s ex-girlfriend, the first question asked to her, “Please tell me about the time xxx sexually assaulted you.”
• Neither investigator nor the prosecutor interviewed the very first person to interact with my son’s accuser after he left her, the responding RA. The RA had evidence that supported my son’s innocence.

Even though all of the evidence pointed to a false allegation, my son was forced to endure four days of a trial. He faced a sentence of up to forty years. The jury acquitted him in less than one hour. My family suffered significant, irreversible damage. Tears, anger, and heart-wrenching hate is a “new normal.”  The prosecutor can claim victory, though. Every time my son undergoes a background check it shows that he was acquitted of felony sexual assault, and he is judged guilty. Getting a good paying job is impossible. He will never get to live as an innocent person should. This is the result of a rush to believe, a lack of objective fact-finding, and the sheer bias with which my son was viewed. He did not break the law, his accuser did. And he will pay for it for the rest of his life.

saveservices.org– A. Pebble

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