CURRENT News
FORMER BAYLOR Professor Sues University, Claims Anti-Male Bias
A former Baylor University economics professor is suing the university, accusing officials there of mishandling sexual misconduct claims against him. The professor, who is identified in court documents as John Doe, resigned from the university last year amid an investigation into the professor’s relationship with a student. In the lawsuit, the professor acknowledges he had a sexual relationship with an undergraduate, but says officials were overly zealous in their handling of his case, driven by the recent sexual assault scandal at the Baptist university.
Lawyers for the professor filed the lawsuit last month in federal court in Waco. In court documents, the professor acknowledges he had a sexual relationship with the student, and claims the relationship was consensual. Court documents don’t state whether the student was enrolled in any class the professor taught or was under his supervision.
According to court documents, the professor and the student went on three dates and “engaged in one consensual sexual interaction” between November 2017 and January 2018. The relationship ended when the professor told the student he was looking for a long-term partner for marriage..The two resumed their relationship in April, and took a vacation together in May. During that vacation, the professor ended the relationship after he caught the student lying to him. The student had recently been evicted from her previous home, so the professor let her stay with him for a few days until her new lease began. In early June, the professor told the student again that he wanted to end their relationship.
After their relationship ended, the student contacted Baylor’s Title IX office, which handles sexual assault complaints. The professor claims the student made false allegations about their relationship, and the university’s Title IX coordinator encouraged her to file an official complaint. The professor contends that university officials showed anti-male bias before and during the investigation.
dallasobserver-S. Allen
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JURY FINDS Boston College Interfered in 2012 Hearing, Awards John Doe Damages
The lawsuit brought by a Boston College alumnus against the University for allegedly interfering in his 2012 disciplinary hearing over sexual assault accusations went to jury trial recently. A federal jury ruled in favor of the Boston College alumnus who had sued the University for improper interference in violation of fair process in his 2012 disciplinary hearing on Monday. The jury awarded the alumnus—referred to by the pseudonym “John Doe”—$102,426.50 in damages: $24,819.50 for tuition and fees for the semester he was suspended and $77,607 for one year of lost income as a result of his delayed graduation from BC.
In the months leading up to the trial, Casper ruled out the testimony of several witnesses who would have testified about whether BC violated Title IX, the role of the University’s general counsel in the disciplinary process, and Doe’s emotional state around the time of the disciplinary process, as well as in the years that followed. Although the jurors heard testimonies related to Doe’s claim that another student—identified in court as “JK”—committed the alleged sexual assault and the hearing process itself, such information was only used to establish background surrounding the case. Casper instructed the jury to consider only three questions: whether a contract—both explicit and implicit—existed in the student guide, whether there was a breach of contract, and whether Doe is owed damages.
The jury said that the plaintiff proved by a preponderance of evidence that the Dean of Students office improperly interfered with the hearings in two communications with the head of the board, and therefore breached its contract with Doe to provide basic fairness. The jury also said that Doe proved by a preponderance of evidence that the interference caused the board to find him responsible. The preponderance of evidence standard is based on whether evidence points to at least a 51 percent chance the breach of contract occurred.
Heights magazine bcheights.com/magazine -Martin, Baker, & Zhang bcheights– Jack Miller
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THE BROCK Turner Industry Begins. Book Deal For Emily Doe Who Outs Herself.
Excerpts from: Know the Truth: Chanel Miller by Tom Lallas
On September 5, 2019, a feeding frenzy erupted among the mainstream media, bloggers and others when articles were published regarding the imminent release of a new book about Chanel Miller, Know My Name. Miller, who was an intoxicated twenty-two (22) year old adult college graduate, and not a member of the Stanford community, met Brock Turner, a nineteen (19) year old Stanford freshman, in January 2015, at a Stanford Fraternity party, and the incident that occurred between them led to the prosecution and conviction of Turner for sexual assault, and a six (6) month jail sentence. Some media reports regarding the incident, criminal charges, trial, sentencing, and jail sentence have been distorted, inaccurate, malevolent, false, and untrue. On the eve of the release of Miller’s book, which will enable Miller to monetize the incident at Turner’s expense, and receive from a publisher what may possibly be a million dollars or more, the familiar admonition of an iconic crime detective television series, Lt. Joe Friday of Dragnet, is instructive: “Just the facts, ma’am”…This report provides facts in the Trial Record not disseminated (widely, or perhaps at all) by the mainstream media demonstrating that Turner was not guilty of criminal conduct in any of his interactions with Miller.
Miller.The Undisputed Truth: Miller concealed from, and did not disclose to Turner, at the KA Party or afterward, that Miller: (i) had a history of serious problems with alcohol; (ii) had a history of blacking out after drinking at parties, and elsewhere; (iii) had blacked out after drinking at parties prior to the KA Party on four (4) or five (5) or more occasions; (iv) consumed four (4) shots of whiskey and a glass of champagne at the Miller residence between 10:00 p.m. and 10:45 p.m. before going to the KA Party while Miller also drank straight vodka at the KA Party and shotgunned beers. Miller’s blackout history was critical information that Miller wrongfully concealed from Turner. Toxicology evidence confirms that Miller’s blood alcohol content, at the time of the incident, was between 24 and 25%. Expert testimony established at the Trial that a drinker in a blackout does not know she is in the blackout at that moment, and that a third party, Turner, with the drinker, would have no idea that the drinker is having a blackout…Dr. Kim Fromme is a nationally recognized expert on the effects of alcohol intoxication related to alcohol induced blackouts, sexual risk taking, and driving under the influence. Dr. Fromme described a blackout as a “period of amnesia during drinking in which the person is fully conscious and aware to be able to engage in all kinds of activities – walking, talking, driving a car, dancing, having sex, etc., they’re simply not just forming memories for those events.”
Consensual Sexual Conduct In Plain View by the Basketball Court: Contrary to published reports, when Turner and Miller were making out on the ground, and the incident occurred, they were not “behind a dumpster.” Instead, they were in plain view next to a concrete basketball court where they were eventually observed by two graduate students…Significantly, Turner’s DNA was not found on Miller’s underwear, but a laboratory examination revealed the presence of the DNA of another person on her underwear, indicating that her underwear retained traces of DNA from an unidentified third party, but not Turner.
Full Article: Know the Truth-Chanel Miller by Tom Lallas
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ANATOMY OF A Blackout. Why Are We Not Talking About The Campus Culture of Blackout Drunk?
In the war against campus sexual assault, why are we not talking about drinking? College presidents have long considered alcohol to be one of the biggest problems they face on campus. Alcohol is also involved in a great number of campus sexual assault cases. We find ourselves in a landscape where the key talking points address everything but alcohol. How we raise young boys. How accusers are treated in the media, courts, and interrogation rooms…In October 2013, when Slate contributor Emily Yoffe wrote an essay suggesting that women would lower their chances of being sexually assaulted if they drank less, the blowback was massive. A month later, Southern Methodist University student Kirby Wiley received a similar lashing when she wrote an op-ed for the college paper saying that women put themselves at risk by drinking too much. Epidemiologist Richard Grucza has tied the rise of women drinking with the rise of women in college—across Western democracies, the more affluent and educated a female, the more likely she is to drink. And yet. High-profile assault cases keep unfolding in the media, many of them under a foggy haze of booze.
…A blackout can mean the total erasure of an entire chunk of time from a person’s memory, an occurrence known as an en bloc blackout. Or they might just forget bits and pieces, in a fragmentary blackout, or a brownout, as some call it. These are more common. Even during a blackout, a drinker’s short-term memory is generally fine. She can carry on a conversation, though, like a human goldfish, she may quickly forget things and repeat herself. It’s episodic memory where alcohol gums up the works. These are the memories of events—what happened, but also where, when, and with whom. Alcohol impairs the encoding of these contextual memories, which happens in the hippocampus. “Your brain is sending information to the hippocampus, and it falls into a void, the hippocampus doesn’t tie it together, or it skips a little bit.”
How quickly one’s blood alcohol content rises is the biggest risk factor for a blackout. That means things that make you drunker faster—drinking liquor or drinking on an empty stomach—make you more likely to black out. You’re also more likely to black out if you’re a woman.
theatlantic-Antamony of Blackout texasmonthly-The Alcohol Blackout
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SETTLEMENT: UVA and Former Male Student Reach Agreement; Judge Dismisses Federal Case
A lawsuit from a former University of Virginia student who said he was denied his degree due to a pending Title IX sexual misconduct investigation has been dropped, according to court records. A U.S. district court judge dismissed the case on Sept. 11 after both sides reached an agreement, according to court documents.
The male student, John Doe, filed the lawsuit in June against members of UVa’s Board of Visitors, President Jim Ryan and two Title IX officials in June. He alleged that his constitutional rights have been violated during the university’s Title IX investigation.
dailyprogress-Staff
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STANFORD. Brock Turner. And The News Black Out.
It is my opinion that Brock Turner has been a pawn in a high stakes game for a #MeToo cause, and now it appears for significant monetary motivations as well. I believe it will become clear over the next many months that Brock Turner was wrongly convicted, and that he faced multiple due process injustices from the outset.
I realize these are bold statements to make but I come to these conclusions after:
- Researching court documents and reviewing facts,
- Following the trail of an endless harassment and mis-information campaign,
- Examining what Brock’s attorney did and did not do,
- Coming to a realization that the Santa Clara District Attorney’s office appears to be unethical and unprincipled,
- Reading about a pre-trial hearing in the judge’s chambers that set limits on what evidence could and couldn’t be heard, and learning how the 13th Motion in Limine took away Brock’s effective defense, to say nothing of the missing evidence, evidence that was withheld until the last minute, the undermining of Brock’s only expert witnesses and other actions and inactions before, during and after the trial.
Some surprising facts regarding Brock Turner, based on the evidence I have seen:
- Emily Doe never said she was raped and there was no evidence whatsoever of rape. But the DA and prosecutor intentionally kept the rape charges pending for a full nine months, (DNA lab results were finally disclosed nine months after the samples were collected) until just before the preliminary hearing, so the case could be characterized as a “rape case” and the media taglines ever since could (wrongfully) refer to it as “the Stanford rape case” and Brock as “the Stanford rapist.”
- Brock’s DNA was not found on Emily Doe’s underwear nor on her.
- Emily Doe says she has no memory. It increasingly appears she was in what medical authorities call a blackout state, and where a person in a blackout state appears to be functioning perfectly well to third parties (here, to Brock and the others at the party).
- Legal authorities thought Brock should not have been charged. Having been charged, the legal standard was that he must have known, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Emily Doe was incapacitated. But in a blackout state, there would be no such appearance to Brock, or anyone else for that matter. Brock Turner’s BAC was a .17, twice the legal limit. He himself was near blackout, which raises the question:
- A Stanford law professor has been engaged in an ongoing false information campaign against Brock.
- Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office distorted the case and may have engaged in other inappropriate actions.
- There is a Santa Clara news media blackout.
There are two sides to every story. For years the public has only been privy to one side of the story: the accuser’s side. She was Emily Doe, recently revealed to be Chanel Miller as part of Ms. Miller’s pending book tour. But there were always two people involved, Ms. Miller and Mr. Turner. Why aren’t we privy to Mr. Turner’s story? I think now is the time to take a deep dive into the untold story of a Stanford professor and the professor’s relationship with Ms. Miller and Ms. Miller’s family. And to look into the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office and the DA who wants to be the next State Attorney General.
My deep dive is only the beginning, but the evidence is starting to present a case showing that the Turner family was an unknowing pawn in a tangled political and #MeToo publicity storm, and now a plan to make a lot of money, all of which created a miscarriage of due process and injustice for a young 19-year old, Brock Turner.
In beginning my deep dive to understand, my journey began by reading the public documents that Santa Clara County Superior Court released. And from there I unearthed a great amount of information that was purposely kept from the public. (Remember the Santa Clara news blackout.) I’ve only begun to piece together the injustices and unimaginable torment that has been following the Turner family since 2015.
But from the documents I am reading, I believe that politics, money, greed, celebrity, book deals, movie deals, victim status, egos, news black outs, and campaign career moves have been at play from the very beginning. And a student new to Stanford on a scholarship from a middle-income family in Ohio named Brock Turner was a sacrificial lamb. And everyone at Stanford, in the Bay Area and nationwide stood back in silence, even when they knew the truth and the injustices that were taking place.
This is the first post in a series. These are my personal opinions.
-Alice True
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TITLE IX Professionals Warn Colleges To Be Wary of ‘Trauma-Informed’ Ideology
An organization that represents Title IX officials has a surprising recommendation for its members: Stop relying on unproven scientific claims. The Association of Title IX Administrators issued a position statement last month on “Trauma-Informed Training and the Neurobiology of Trauma,” warning that training for the field is going in an “unhealthy direction.” Many ATIXA members are involved in sexual-misconduct proceedings on college campuses, and their training materials may direct them to show bias in favor of accusers, the statement explains.
Brett Sokolow admitted that “due process was not a top ‘radar screen’” for ATIXA when the organization started in 2011, the same year the Obama administration released its “Dear Colleague” letter on campus sexual-misconduct investigations. ATIXA believed that due process was important but “we assumed members were getting solid due process training content elsewhere.”
While noting its statement could be “controversial,” ATIXA gives credit to journalist Emily Yoffe for sounding the alarm about trauma-informed training in The Atlantic two years ago. She said popular theories about the “neurobiology of trauma” were “junk science,” and while ATIXA doesn’t completely agree with Yoffe, “her points needed to be made.”…The Center for Prosecutor Integrity published a rebuttal written by two behavioral neuroscientists, Sujeeta Bhatt of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and Susan Brandon, formerly of Yale University’s psychology department.
“The impacts of trauma on memories and recall are widely variable,” the rebuttal reads: It is possible for trauma to cause vivid memories, no memories, distorted memories, or incorrect memories…we should avoid the use of information on the neurobiology of trauma also to substitute for showing empathy,” Brandon said. When neurobiology is used to explain inconsistencies and make “victims look more plausible,” she said, it creates another risk of bias: that investigators will expect “victims to exhibit certain symptoms and behaviors.”
thecollegefix-Lexi Lonasa
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A CAMPAIGN of Disinformation. Putting it in Perspective. Brock Turner
There is a critical need for a dialog about campus sex and allegations of sexual assault, including when exacerbated by alcohol. But that dialog needs to include a more careful examination of the issues for everyone involved. For third parties to so viciously wage the type of disinformation campaign that has happened in the Brock Turner case works against such a dialog, and we would urge everyone who is part of the Stanford and Bay Area communities and elsewhere to examine what actually happened, who has been waging this campaign of disinformation and what that should teach all of us going forward.
This summary is a composite of efforts by a number of alumni and other volunteers who had no preconceived notions about the case when we first heard about it. We do not represent Turner or his family or speak on their behalf. We were, however, startled by what seemed to be a concerted and even malicious campaign against Turner as well as the judge in the case, Judge Aaron Persky. That led to our obtaining all fifteen volumes of the trial transcript, many of the trial exhibits and other related materials. The records we obtained are available in the public record and could have been reviewed by media outlets in advance of their publishing the articles that raised our initial concerns. We also made inquiries of people on various sides of the issues concerning campus drinking, Title IX, allegations of sexual assault and proper media practices
Based on our review and as discussed more fully below, we have concluded that the facts do not support a finding of guilty, and Turner is actually innocent as a matter of law. He should never have been prosecuted for let alone convicted of the crimes he was charged with.
The Turner case also is showing a process that is similar to what occurred in the Duke/Lacrosse, University of Virginia/Rolling Stone and Stanford/Joe Lonsdale matters. In the Turner case, the false narrative is being orchestrated by third parties who have done this before, and where their prior campaigns likewise have often proved to be false. Here, the campaign apparently was started before and during the trial and has continued ever since, including against Judge Persky as well as against Turner.
Read the full summary- Putting It in Perspective
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TWO SETTLEMENTS, TWO COLLEGES: Tulane Settles And Yale Expunges Student’s Record.
TULANE
YALE. Following a months long legal battle with Daniel Tenreiro-Braschi ’19, who sued Yale after being disciplined for sexual misconduct, the University expunged his suspension from his academic record.
Although Tenreiro-Braschi and the University agreed to dismiss the lawsuit and bear their own costs in May 2018, the terms of their settlement were not disclosed to the public. Earlier this week, however, Tenreiro-Braschi sent the News a letter written by his residential college dean Nilakshi Parndigamage that reveals what may have been a part of the settlement. According to Tenreiro-Braschi, he received his diploma
yaledailynews-S. Cho & A. Steinkamp
14 Colleges that have settled 35 Documented TitleIX false accusations
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The scope of the trial had been limited significantly—per presiding District Court Judge Denise Casper’s instructions, jurors were to consider only whether administrators improperly interfered in the hearings through two key communications, violating the Student Code of Conduct and the implied promise of basic fairness.