Charges Dropped, Cleared by TIX, and Legislation supporting due process investigations
Third Amended Complaint.Doe v UOregon
As stated previously, settlement agreements are often hidden from the public. A big thanks to KC Johnson for the above information. Below you can find more settlements.-Alice
14 settlements 2 private colleges settle
A male Fairfield University student was effectively expelled from the school after a female student made conflicting sexual assault claims against him after the two broke up.
Background: John was preparing to graduate and go on to a graduate program when he and Jane started a physical relationship. Previously, Jane had invited John to sleep in her bed on three separate occasions. John had not wanted to enter a physical relationship with Jane prior because she had a boyfriend, but once she said the two had broken up, John and Jane engaged in undisputed consensual oral sex. On September 29, 2017 the two separately attended the President’s Ball at the university. Jane later invited John to a local bar with her friend. Jane’s account of the evening would change drastically depending on who she talked to and when. She and John went to his off-campus residence…He invited Jane into his bedroom and she accepted. After undressing, he asked Jane if she wanted to have sex and she verbally agreed, as she was already touching his genitals. After that night, Jane returned to the apartment to have sex with John several more times…On October 11, 2017, John texted Jane to let her know that he no longer wanted to pursue a relationship with her, sexual or otherwise. Jane went to the school health clinic for an STD test. Jane did not report any sexual misconduct. Months later, after she had accused John of sexual assault, she allegedly returned to the clinic to get them to falsify her records by claiming she had reported sexual misconduct.
Fairfield, like many other colleges and universities around the country, failed to adhere to its own policies during the hearing. Jane was allowed to break Fairfield policy during the hearing, but John was bound to it. Jane was allowed to directly ask questions of witnesses, and Jane’s advisor was allowed to provide a list of questions and directly address the hearing board. John’s advisor was not allowed to do the same. John was barred from asking questions. John couldn’t cross-examine Jane or any of the witnesses against him.
On March 9, 2018, John was found responsible for sexually assaulting Jane, but he was not expelled or suspended. Instead, he was barred from campus but allowed to continue his coursework from home. The school did not inform his professors of this and did not allow John to make accommodations for his ADHD, a disability the school knew about. Further, John was not allowed to enter campus to attend labs that required attendance. Because of Fairfield’s refusal to allow John to actually complete his coursework, he was effectively expelled, as he would end up failing many, if not all, his classes.
John appealed the decision and provided a statement from a new witness, which should have reopened the investigation. Fairfield President Mark Nemec refused John’s appeal without explanation and without interviewing the new witness, claiming in his denial that the “appeal did not provide new evidence or adequate evidence to substantiate an error in the proceedings.” John sued the school with the help of attorney Andrew Miltenberg. Earlier this month, the case was dismissed after both parties agreed to settle out of court.
dailywire– Ashe Schow
Marcus Knight—a student with autism, cerebral palsy, and learning disabilities—has prevailed in his lawsuit against Saddleback College. After being accused of sexual misconduct, Knight filed the lawsuit to clear his name.
Knight first came to national attention in 2018 after his attempts to make friends landed him in his college’s office for sexual misconduct (also known as a Title IX office). As a young man with autism, making friends has always been difficult. One female student reported him because she was uncomfortable with Knight asking for fist-bumps, one of the “safe ways” he was taught to make friends, his mother said. Another student claimed Knight was looking at her weird and following her around campus. And yet another woman complained that Knight had “over 300 photos” of her. (This was likely due to Knight’s cerebral palsy, which resulted in a motor tic as Knight attempted to press the “selfie” button on his phone with the woman, which was set to “burst mode”).
None of the three women who complained about Knight filed an official Title IX report. Yet, despite this, and the fact that none of the women testified against Knight, the school’s Title IX Officer Juan Avalos still slapped Knight’s transcript with two Title IX infractions. In the initial suit against Saddleback College, Knight’s lawyer Mark Hathaway argued that Title IX officer Dr. Juan Avalos made unlawful errors during the investigation (such as not giving Knight an opportunity to defend himself). One complainant, Melissa Gold, even declined to testify, saying she could care less. But last week Knight went to court. “The Court hereby concludes that the findings and sanctions issued by Respondents [Saddleback College and Juan Avalos] against [Marcus Knight] should be set aside.”
“We fight for colleges and universities to treat everyone fairly so students do not lose access to education” Mark Hathaway said. “Saddleback College and Dr. Avalos are required to comply with the judgment and correct their records or be held in contempt and fined or jailed. We fight for colleges to treat everyone fairly so students do not lose access to education” Hathaway added. According to Aurora Knight Saddleback has 30 days to remove the Title IX sanctions from her son’s record. “He was a great kid in high-school. No problems. Marcus just wants to be like everyone else.”
thepostmillennial-Toni Airaksinen
“We all need to recognize that falsely accused people are victims, too,” said Cassie Jaye, documentary filmmaker of The Red Pill. “Without due process we cannot take sides, but that is what’s happening, mainly driven by the mainstream media that is calling for public stoning of these people without due process taking place. I think we need to recognize that the falsely accused are victims, too.” Women should not be reflexively believed when they make allegations of sexual misconduct against men, advised Jaye.
breitbart.com By Robert Kraychik
A former University of Evansville student was acquitted of rape charges recently after a jury trial. After 25 minutes of deliberation, a Vanderburgh County jury returned a not guilty verdict in the trial of Trenton McCorkle, 23. He faced a potential sentence of 3-16 years.
”The jury reached the only possible verdict it could have reached. This case was a tragedy and a disgrace from the very beginning. The University of Evansville rushed to judgment and somehow managed to bring the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office along for the ride,” said Barry Blackard and Dennis Brinkmeyer, Trenton’s attorneys.
44news-Morris courierpress-Doyle
SOS sends prayers of support and encouragement to innocent Trenton.
A University of Southern California (USC) student was awarded $142,100 in attorney’s fees after the California Second District Court of Appeal found the student was “denied a fair hearing” after being accused of sexual assault and rape. The two met while attending a “paint party” during which participants threw cups of paint on each other. Multiple colors of paint were used, including red. One student later interviewed as a witness during John’s Title IX investigation said she had red paint on her body, including behind her ears, for days after the party.
John and Jane were both drinking that night and they returned to her apartment. (Jane was dating another student, “Andrew,” who was not at the party.) The morning after the encounter, Jane claimed to have found puddles of blood on her sheets, air mattress, carpet, rectum, and thighs. She also acknowledged she still had paint on her body and wore a dress to cover but preserve the marks. She had texted Andrew, the man she was dating, during the night and he picked her up from the rape treatment center the next day. At Jane’s apartment, at her direction, Andrew threw out the sheets and deflated the air mattress. Jane refused to report the encounter to police. She instead reported it to USC administrators but did not provide her clothing or medical records. The accused male John Doe was unable to independently test these items.
John was found responsible and expelled. He sued the school, but his lawsuit was dismissed. He appealed to the California Second District Court of Appeal and won. That decision found in part that John’s inability to cross-examine the witnesses and evidence against him denied him a fair hearing. The case was remanded to the Superior Court of California and John was awarded attorney’s fees totaling $142,100. In her ruling, Judge Mitchell Beckloff rejected USC’s claim that students are harmed by fair investigations because it makes it more difficult to remove dangerous students from their campus.
“In opposition, Respondent suggests the Court of Appeal decision actually harms three million students by making it more difficult for schools to expel students the school believes committed harmful conduct,” Beckloff wrote. “The court disagrees. Ensuring a fair adjudicatory process for those accused of serious misconduct is not a societal harm. Instead, it is a key component of ensuring overall trust in an adjudicatory process. The court also disagrees with Respondent’s contention the decision here benefitted only a tiny percentage of students within the state. All students benefit from Respondent following its own policies and procedures.”
dailywire.com– Ashe Schow
An Anderson High School student fabricated claims that her teacher sexually assaulted her, officials with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office say. A 13-year-old girl falsely claimed that a male teacher grabbed her right arm, unzipped her hoodie and grabbed her breasts, according to a police report. The student told school officials it happened inside the teacher’s classroom during a class break.
But following an investigation, officials with the Sheriff’s Office said there was no wrongdoing, and that the female student made up the entire incident. The falsely accused teacher is cleared to return to teaching after spending two and a half weeks on leave. “Although we’ve had a tough day, we’re all working through it,” Forest Hills Superintendent Scot Prebles said. “The repercussions of this do have long term impact.”
“We have a staff who is jittery right now, because this could be done on any day to any one of us,” Prebles said. “We’re also going to make sure that we are supporting our staff member. We have a staff member who has been hurt by an accusation. It was not an accurate accusation.
An easy way for federal agencies to get what they want, regardless of the laws on the books, is to issue “guidance” purporting to explain the law…”Think of guidance as an off-the-books way for the government to ignore commonly held understandings of fairness. It’s a shameless, unconstitutional scheme designed to skirt judicial review, avoid public scrutiny, and evade accountability”…Recall that the whole due process conundrum on campuses involving sexual assault is the result of a 2011 Department of Education “guidance” memo that pressured universities to lower the burden of proof in such cases. The threat of federal investigation, possible defunding – and perhaps most importantly, public shaming – was enough to convince colleges to make it easier to find accused students guilty. They banned cross-examination, lowered evidence standards and imposed double jeopardy on exonerated students. Was this authorized by law or regulation? Of course not, and a lawsuit targeting the “Dear Colleague” guidance was proceeding when the Trump administration rescinded its predecessor’s guidance. Now, the administration is going even further with a pair of executive orders issued Wednesday that would bar federal agencies from issuing “substantive guidance” – in other words, new rules outside a formal rulemaking.
The first order criticizes commonplace agency practices of evading the notice-and-comment provisions in the Administrative Procedure Act by issuing substantive
guidance…Even when accompanied by a disclaimer that it is non-binding [the Obama administration’s repeated defense of its “Dear Colleague” guidance], a guidance document issued by an agency may carry the implicit threat of enforcement action if the regulated public does not comply. Moreover, the public frequently has insufficient notice of guidance documents, which are not always published in the Federal Register or distributed to all regulated parties. The order instructs federal agencies to “treat guidance documents as non-binding both in law and in practice,” include public input in formulating guidance, and make the documents “readily available to the public”
The second order bars federal agencies from pursuing “a civil administrative enforcement action or adjudication absent prior public notice of both the enforcing agency’s jurisdiction over particular conduct and the legal standards applicable to that conduct.” It notes that the Freedom of Information Act amended the Administrative Procedure Act to better protect Americans from “the inherently arbitrary nature of unpublished ad hoc determinations.” The Freedom of Information Act also generally prohibits an agency from adversely affecting a person with a rule or policy that is not so published, except to the extent that the person has actual and timely notice of the terms of the rule or policy.
There is, of course, a proper role for a regulatory bureaucracy in a democratic republic. But empowering it to operate largely unbound by the traditional checks and balances represents a very real danger. The president’s orders are welcome and long overdue.
thecollegefix– Greg Piper reviewjournal-Editorial
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
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.