2016-2020: SYRACUSE SETTLEMENT Highlights How Inept Schools Are At Adjudicating Claims Of Sexual Assault.
Below is a case that really highlights how inept schools are at adjudicating claims of sexual assault.
On October 24, 2015, a young woman left the Orange Crate Bar in Syracuse, New York around 1:00 a.m. She later said a black man followed her out, and proceeded to sexually assault. A woman passing by grabbed ‘Jane’ and pulled her away from the man. Jane reported the incident to police, describing her alleged attacker as a “dark-skinned male” about 5’9” tall, and “heavy set with black dreadlock style hair.” Jane could not remember anything else as she was heavily intoxicated the night of the incident. Police took her report but could not locate the alleged attacker. Jane was shown a photo array but she could not identify anyone. The matter seemed to go away until January 2016, when Jane told Syracuse police she saw a person in a bar that resembled the man she believed attacked her.
In a telling sign, Jane told Syracuse police she didn’t want ‘John’ criminally charged and that she preferred to have Syracuse University’s Title IX office handle her claims. Had police handled the investigation, they would have likely discovered that John was not Jane’s attacker, but by going through the school process, where poorly trained bureaucrats believe just about every accusation for fear of being labeled rape apologists, John would likely be expelled for a crime evidence says he didn’t commit. No matter, though, Jane believed John was the man who assaulted her, so he needed to be punished.
Syracuse formerly opened an investigation into John. A letter informed John that he had been accused of sexually assaulting another Syracuse student. John was immediately placed on an interim suspension. John says Syracuse discouraged him from seeking advice from an advisor. He was issued a no contact order that placed restrictions on him making it difficult to investigate the charges against him… The university found John had likely sexually assaulted Jane and upheld his interim suspension.
The evidence used against John was the fact that he had also been at the same popular bar as Jane the night of the alleged incident and that Jane had identified him in that photo lineup after seeing him at another bar. John maintained his innocence and provided credible evidence he was not the attacker, yet the school went forward based on the accuser’s word. The university appeals board concluded John was “not completely credible” and claimed he didn’t give a factual statement regarding the incident. John, in his lawsuit, disputes the claim, saying he denied assaulting Jane and had provided Syracuse with evidence from his phone showing he was on his phone with friends at the time he was allegedly attacking Jane. The school found Jane credible despite different versions of the night in question and her admitted intoxication. Syracuse, according to John’s lawsuit, chose one of Jane’s version of events and stuck with it, going so far as to call conflicting statements in her police report “inaccurate.” John’s lawsuit concluded that Syracuse rejected his evidence, claiming the text messages he provided were not an “official phone record” and didn’t “support or refute whether the alleged incident occurred.”
This is not a case of two people who knew each other hooking up and regretting it, this is a case where one student says a stranger assaulted her, and the alleged stranger said it wasn’t him and provided phone evidence to support his claim. Jane didn’t testify at John’s hearing, so he couldn’t cross-examine her and the school hearing board couldn’t adequately “assess [her] credibility.” Even though the hearing board never even heard from Jane, they deemed her testimony “mostly credible” and ruled that John “more likely than not” assaulted Jane.
John was suspended. He sued Syracuse, which tried to dismiss the lawsuit. A judge denied their motion to dismiss, and on February 26, 2020 – more than four years after the alleged incident – John and Syracuse agreed to an undisclosed settlement, as reported by author and professor K.C. Johnson.
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