DOES ANYONE Still Take Both Sexual Assault and Due Process Seriously?
A little recent history is necessary to understand how we got here. Until #MeToo, the most high-profile initiative on sexual assault was the Obama administration’s effort to put an end to it on college campuses using Title IX, the federal law that prevents discrimination in education. In pursuit of a worthy goal, the administration quickly went too far. Definitions on campus of what constitutes sexual misconduct became vastly inflated, and procedures to investigate and adjudicate misconduct were often stacked against the accused, overwhelmingly young men. Last year, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced a major reform of Title IX excesses, careful to emphasize that procedures must be fair to both accuser and accused. Democrats vehemently denounced her, but congressional Republicans remained virtually silent. Now, because of Kavanaugh, Republicans are fierce advocates of due process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted, “We will either give notice that totally uncorroborated allegations are now, officially, enough to destroy an American’s life—or we will declare that our society cannot, must not, set the bar so low.” I spoke to the historian KC Johnson, a co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities, who noted that McConnell’s high-mindedness about the accused is new, since he has failed to express concern for the many injustices taking place on campuses. …It is indeed possible to be a woman and yet fear an unfounded accusation against a male loved one. I have heard from many women who say their sons, and more recently their husbands, have been unfairly accused. In 2013, a group of mothers whose sons had been accused of sexual misconduct on campus founded the organization Families Advocating for Campus Equality.
theatlantic By Emily Yoffe
