COURT Rulings & Settlements

CHRISTIAN STUDENT Regrets Sex Experiences, Accuses Male Of Assault. School Uses ‘Trauma-Informed’ Training To Find Him Guilty.

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CHRISTIAN STUDENT Regrets Sex Experiences, Accuses Male Of Assault. School Uses ‘Trauma-Informed’ Training To Find Him Guilty.

Two Syracuse University Christian students, each struggling with their sexual desires and faith, engage in sexual activity on three separate occasions. Each occasion proceeds the same way, yet the woman would later claim – after a professor suggest she do so – that the final encounter was sexual assault. Her story would then change and evolve over time, something the “trauma-informed” school officials claimed made her more credible, not less.

Syracuse investigated him using “trauma-informed” techniques. “Trauma-informed” techniques involve teaching campus investigators that evidence of lying is actually evidence of trauma, meaning there is absolutely no way an accused student can be found not responsible. As John wrote in his lawsuit, “Inconsistency in the alleged female victim’s account thereby becomes evidence that her testimony is truthful, because of alleged trauma,” while consistency in the accused male student’s account becomes “evidence that he is a premeditated and experienced sex offender.”

John was expelled from Syracuse for sexual assault. He sued, and Judge Brenda Sannes, an Obama appointee, denied Syracuse’s motion to dismiss John’s lawsuit. Sannes cited in her opinion the fact that Syracuse didn’t even provide John with a copy of RP’s accusations against him. What can now be seen as a big win for opponents of so-called trauma-informed investigations, Sannes cited Syracuse training as being deficient and leading to her allowing John’s lawsuit to move forward.

dailywire-Schow

Junk Science Behind Trauma Informed Investigations

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SETTLEMENT. VA Tech In Trouble w/Court Settles With Accused Male.

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SETTLEMENT. VA Tech In Trouble w/Court Settles With Accused Male.

College settlements with the wrongly accused take place more than you know. But 95% of the time settlement terms demand confidentiality, and insist that counsel remain silent. Luckily this is not the situation with Virginia Polytechnic Institute. 

For those interested in reading more about Virginia Polytechnic, here are two separate lawsuits filed by accused males, being railroaded by VA Tech.

Jack Doe v. VA Tech:  PhD STUDENT Sues Virginia Tech For Due Process Violations & Breach of Contract

James Doe v. VA Tech: Male Sues Virginia Tech for Discrimination & Violating Due Process Rights 

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RULING: Judge Approves Male’s Suit Claiming Carleton College Ignored Exculpatory Evidence In TIX Case

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RULING: Judge Approves Male’s Suit Claiming Carleton College Ignored Exculpatory Evidence In TIX Case

A federal judge recommended an expelled student’s lawsuit proceed against his college on claims of negligence in its sexual assault investigation of him. In a “report and recommendation” issued to U.S. District Judge Michael Davis last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Leo Brisbois found that Taariq Vanegas had “plausibly alleged” that Carleton College had “breached its duty of reasonable care” in the Title IX investigation. Vanegas sued Carleton College alleging that it hid exculpatory evidence from him. A Title IX official told Jane Doe that she wouldn’t be punished for underage drinking if she reported her sexual encounter with Vanegas as assault.

Judge Brisbois said Carleton may have “breached its duty of reasonable care” by “conducting an unreasonably rushed investigation and hearing” that led Dunnewold the investigator, and the panel to ignore evidence favorable to Vanegas. “Although a misconduct proceeding is not required to be flawless, the unreasonable failure to conduct a thorough investigation and/or the unreasonable failure to consider relevant evidence may in some circumstances amount to a breach of a university’s duty of reasonable care,” Brisbois wrote. That means Vanegas has also plausibly alleged that he incurred damages that were “proximately caused” by Carleton’s failure to provide reasonable care.

 Even while dismissing all but one of the student’s claims, the judge allowed Vanegas to replead all but one of those dismissed claims, saying he might be able to allege a “set of facts under which” the student could meet his threshold.

thecollegefix-Pease

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JUDGE SCOLDS UConn For Banning Witness Testimony That Could Undermine Rape Accuser

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JUDGE SCOLDS UConn For Banning Witness Testimony That Could Undermine Rape Accuser

Last week we reported on a federal judge’s approval of a temporary restraining order against the University of Connecticut for running an alleged sham trial against a student accused of rape. U.S. District Judge Michael Shea said the taxpayer-funded university deprived the student the opportunity to mount a “meaningful defense.”

The order was released just hours after a telephone status conference with the parties, including lawyers for “John Doe,” UConn and the state – and a newly released transcript shows Shea’s exasperation with the latter two. Even though John was seeking to change the status quo by returning to his graduating class, and thus would have to make “a clear showing or a substantial likelihood of success,” the judge indicated UConn had basically made his argument for him.

“I’ll put my cards on the table,” Judge Shea told Mary Kathryn Lenehan of the Attorney General’s Office:

I am troubled by aspects of this procedure, and in particular I think the thing that troubles me the most is the fact that the hearing body refused to hear from four of the plaintiff’s witnesses.

Indeed, UConn had blocked the testimony of other students in the car where “Jane Roe” first allegedly started “grinding” on John’s lap without asking for his consent. That matters because Jane denied “initiating any sexual contact” on John, raising a credibility problem for her other claim that John raped her later that night.

Shea noted that John’s reduced punishment – from expulsion to two-year suspension, assuming UConn agrees to readmit him – does not much change “the potential damage to his career prospects,” raising the due process requirements for his case:

When the state’s lawyer Lenehan tried to argue that John’s witnesses had to give in-person witness testimony, Shea cut her off and read from UConn’s own rules, which put no conditions on how witnesses provide their statements…It got worse from there. The state’s lawyer tried to argue the witnesses from the car “grinding” incident were irrelevant to the bedroom incident, and Lenehan appeared to be unaware that Jane had denied grinding on John at all.  Lenehan continued flailing, trying to argue that anything other than directly looking at Jane grinding on John’s lap rendered a witness irrelevant. Shea noted that Jane also denied inviting John “to come back into the car and to go to the dorm. These witnesses would testify to the contrary.”

The judge scolded Lenehan, representing the state of Connecticut, for not having “read the statements a little more carefully, frankly, if you’re going to kind of debate it with me … because you’ve got the facts wrong.” She eventually agreed to stop debating Shea, and he responded: “Yeah, please don’t.”

thecollegefix-Piper

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CALIFORNIA SUPREME Court Refuses To Review Occidental’s 2013 Expulsion of John Doe Whose Accuser Consented To Sex

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CALIFORNIA SUPREME Court Refuses To Review Occidental’s 2013 Expulsion of John Doe Whose Accuser Consented To Sex

In California, you can be expelled if your accuser says in writing that she consented to sex but later insists she could not give consent. The California Supreme Court refused to review an appeals court decision that upheld Occidental College’s expulsion of “John Doe” for having sex with an incapacitated “Jane Roe.” Barack Obama’s alma mater had to explain away Jane’s own text messages and her decision to return to John’s room after sending them. An adjudicator cited them as “conduct and statements that would indicate that she consented to sexual intercourse” with John, yet determined she was incapacitated when she wrote them and returned to his room.

The case drew national attention because an Occidental professor told a wavering Jane that John “fits the profile” of a campus rapist because of his good grades and good family. Sociologist Danielle Dirks left Occidental a year after John sued. Occidental also publicly posted a trove of documents that put itself in a bad light and didn’t realize they were public for months after. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education published them to show the “inadequacy of the current system” for adjudicating campus sexual misconduct. A judge refused to seal them.

Esquire published a feature on the case, saying the sexual encounter between two drunk students “quickly became a disaster” when it “collided with a panicked and pressured academic bureaucracy.”

Yet a California appeals court sided with the college in an August ruling, saying Jane’s texts and behavior with John were not necessarily exculpatory… John filed a petition for a writ of mandate under California law to overturn his expulsion. He argued the evidence didn’t back the finding, the proceeding lacked impartiality, the adjudicator “purposefully” failed to ask questions he deemed “critical” to his defense, and the hearing coordinator denied him “reasonable access to evidence.”

The appeals court determined the hearing was fair, as Occidental’s policy “complied with all the procedural requirements identified by California cases dealing with sexual misconduct disciplinary proceedings.” It dismissed John’s claim that the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute him was withheld from the hearing, saying it would not have changed the hearing result. The appeals judges said it was not “insufficient or unfair” to withhold information from John until five days before the hearing, and that it was irrelevant his counsel could not represent him at the hearing. The college’s refusal to ask 29 of John’s 38 questions for Jane was also considered proper by the court, saying the adjudicator has the discretion to leave out questions “that were inappropriate, irrelevant, or cumulative.” The appeals judges were not concerned about Jane’s texts showing she agreed to come back to John’s room, provided he had a condom, and that she made a plan with him to distract the friend guarding her door.

thecollegefix-Piper

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UCONN’S DISDAIN For Due Process Rights Evident In Hearing Transcript

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UCONN’S DISDAIN For Due Process Rights Evident In Hearing Transcript

Last week, I wrote about an unusually strong opinion from the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut finding that a University of Connecticut student accused of sexual misconduct had shown a “clear likelihood of success” on his claim that UConn violated his constitutional due process rights. 

Now, FIRE has obtained a transcript of the status conference that led to that opinion, and it sheds considerable light on what may have motivated U.S. District Judge Michael Shea to knock out a powerful 13-page opinion in defense of due process later that same day. 

As I explained last week, one of the critical issues in this case is that the university refused to hear from several of plaintiff’s witnesses who were prepared to testify about matters directly concerning the complainant’s credibility:

thefire.org-Harris

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BAD: Judge Dismisses Male’s Lawsuit Against WashingtonU St.Louis, After Expulsion.

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BAD: Judge Dismisses Male’s Lawsuit Against WashingtonU St.Louis, After Expulsion.

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against Washington University by a former student who was expelled after being found guilty of sexual misconduct by the University’s Title IX panel. (The accuser did not file with the police department.) John Doe, was expelled in November 2018 and sued the University in February 2019.

In his ruling, the judge concluded that there was no evidence that the University engaged in a “conspiracy to deprive him and other men of their civil rights in order to gain a competitive advantage among potential female students.” John Doe claimed that the University “permitted female students to interfere with [his] rights when it permitted his accusers to protest on campus…and other females called for the jobs of several Washington University administrators if they did not convict [him].” Doe alleged that the protests were “incited by his accusers and intended to prejudice [his] right to a fair trial,” claims which the judge found to be unsubstantiated.

studlife.com-McPhie

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FEDERAL JUDGE RULES: UConn Denied John Doe Due Process.

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FEDERAL JUDGE RULES: UConn Denied John Doe Due Process.

A federal judge has issued a temporary order requiring the University of Connecticut to reinstate a male student who had been banned from campus for two years amid a sexual misconduct investigation. John Doe said in a lawsuit that UConn denied him of his due process rights. John was TitleIX accused by Jane Roe of having non-consensual sex with her. John says the encounter was consensual and initiated by Jane.

A UConn investigator dismissed Doe’s account of events after a single interview and the school blocked him from enrolling in his final semester, according to the suit. As the disciplinary process continued, Doe was denied specifics of the complaint and not permitted to question any witnesses against him or present witnesses of his own.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shea in his ruling said the male student had shown that UConn’s procedures for investigating alleged misconduct and imposing discipline are so one-sided that he was denied an opportunity to present his side of events. “Despite the importance of credibility to the factual dispute, UConn’s disciplinary procedures hampered the plaintiff’s ability to present a meaningful defense on this issue.”

usnews.com-AP reason.com-Volokh thefire.org-Harris

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