MUST Reads

INNOCENT. Alex Heineman Was Cleared Of Rape. Judge Apologized. Girl Lied. So Why Is Alex Being Threatened/Attacked?

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INNOCENT. Alex Heineman Was Cleared Of Rape. Judge Apologized. Girl Lied. So Why Is Alex Being Threatened/Attacked?

When Alex Heineman was 16 years old, he stole off into the woods behind the Hudson YMCA with Sierrah Parmeter, a girl he liked.

Alex had learning disabilities, his home was a disaster. His mother had him young. His biological father was a nonfactor, but his stepfather hated the sight of him. Sierrah was another poor kid from a broken home, born to a meth-addicted mother who abandoned her in infancy. They were similar that way, and shared an on-again, off-again attraction… Discreetly, they followed the bike path through the woods. They kissed. He left a conspicuous hickey on her neck. Then they returned to the YMCA and parted ways. Forty minutes later, the girl’s biological father told police that his daughter had been assaulted.

Alex was soon charged with second-degree sexual assault, a felony punishable by 20 years in prison. Alex’s mother urged him to follow his public defender’s advice to plead guilty to a lesser charge of third-degree sexual assault. Alex’s conviction triggered a cascade of collateral consequences that derailed his life. “I felt horrible about that,” she says now. “Maybe we should have done more. Maybe we could have done something different.” Alex dropped out of school, registered as a sex offender, and was ordered to undergo treatment.  He made no progress in treatment. In the world of correctional therapy, an unrepentant sex offender lacks the self-awareness required for reform—a Catch 22 for the wrongfully convicted.  No one believed him when he protested his innocence. Once separated from family, he deteriorated rapidly. 

…”I was like, ‘Screw this, no one cares about me.’ Alex fought with other inmates and tried to kill himself half a dozen times. On his 18th birthday, Alex was released to a halfway house. His roommates were grown men in their 30s who scared him. 

…In June 2019, a woman who volunteered as a mentor for disadvantaged youth called the Hudson Police Department to report 18-year-old Sierrah Parmeter might have falsely accused Alex Heineman of rape. According to police reports, Sierrah told the mentor she had sex with a boy who wasn’t her boyfriend, so she was planning to accuse him of rape in order to save her relationship. The mentor thought of the Hudson incident two years prior and asked Sierrah if it had really happened as she claimed. Sierrah admitted it wasn’t a true story. The mentor then informed Sierrah’s grandmother. The grandmother consulted Sierrah’s social worker about what to do. The social worker said let it “lie.” The mentor could not.

Hudson Police interviewed Sierrah Parmeter. According to the report, she said she and Alex had been planning to have sex when they went for a walk in the woods on May 5, 2017. They made out. He started giving her a hickey, and at one point stuck his hand down her pants. She told him to stop, so he did and walked away. She said he never pushed her.

The following month, the St. Croix County District Attorney’s Office moved to vacate Alex Heineman’s sexual assault conviction due to actual innocence. Circuit Court Judge Scott Needham apologized. At last, Alex Heineman was scrubbed from the sex offender registry. It didn’t matter that he’d been cleared in court. In Hudson, Alex couldn’t shake the reputation of a sex offender. The town became a prison. People called him from blocked numbers and sent him hate mail from fake Facebook accounts. He deleted his social media. Still strangers came to the door. “Alex was treated terribly by obviously people in the public and frankly by law enforcement officers,” Hudson Police Sgt. Glen Hartman says. 

While the local news broadcast his charges, no one ever bothered to report his exoneration. Exoneration alone cannot fix all the harm that stems from miscarriage of justice. The consequences—social ostracism, job loss, public housing denial—are virtually infinite. Judges are often willing to clear a record if the district attorney agrees to it.  But prosecutors are all different. 

In March, Sierrah Parmeter was charged with two counts of misdemeanor defamation and one count of obstructing an officer. Alex Heineman, now considered the victim, was invited to attend her first hearing. He brought his mother to help manage the anxiety.  “Imagine you have a bear in front of you. Your whole body’s shaking and you can’t move. You can’t even look at the person. All that fear comes down your body. That’s what it felt like,” Alex recalls.

“If she hadn’t lied, I never would have had to go through any of this. I could have had a normal life. I could have been in college by now. I haven’t even graduated high school because I’ve been in the system so long. Alex gets rejected everywhere he applies for work. College is an illusory dream. His best shot is to get a GED and learn a trade. But it’s hard to feel motivated to do anything in a world full of closed doors.

citypages.com-Susan Du

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THE MEDIA Had a Formula for Reporting Sexual Misconduct. Then Joe Biden Was Accused.

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THE MEDIA Had a Formula for Reporting Sexual Misconduct. Then Joe Biden Was Accused.

For nearly three weeks after it surfaced, Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden was ignored or downplayed in the media. An analysis shows that she’s been covered unlike any other accuser in the #Me Too era…

A Deafening Silence

The mainstream media silence around Reade was abruptly broken on Sunday, when the New York Times reported on her allegation, leading to a flood of stories from other mainstream outlets.

The Standard Last Year

MSNBC’s silence particularly stands out…It’s difficult to comport the lack of Reade’s coverage with how the stories of other accusers of powerful men have been treated in the media.

The NY Times Weighs In

The treatment of Reade’s story by the New York Times, the first major paper to even acknowledge the existence of Reade or her allegation, is particularly difficult to square with its coverage of other accusers.

Doubt From Unexpected Quarters

While most outlets chose to simply ignore Reade, others took a different tack: playing down or even attempting to discredit her allegation. In an added twist, it’s some of the most vocal forums of liberal feminism who took on this task.

The Wages of Silence

It’s fair to say that Tara Reade has been treated unlike any high-profile accuser of the past three years. While previous accusers of powerful men were widely covered in mainstream print, digital, and TV media, only a handful of outlets trickled out stories on Reade’s allegation. While widespread coverage greeted past accusers almost instantly, it has taken nearly three weeks for Reade’s mere existence to be acknowledged by a single major newspaper. jacobinmag.com-Marcetic 

More Articles:

Joe Biden’s Double Standard city-journal.org-KC Johnson

The Media Floodgates Finally Open On Biden Sexual Assault Allegation  vanityfair.com-Ecarma

Joe Biden Sexual Assault Accuser Tara Reade Files Criminal Complaint newsweek.com-Palmer

Why Are the Mainstream Media Ignoring Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Accusation Against Joe Biden? reason.com-Soave

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ATTORNEY’S READ If You Are TitleIXed. Attorney Suspended For Failure To Disclose.

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ATTORNEY’S READ If You Are TitleIXed. Attorney Suspended For Failure To Disclose.

An attorney who failed to disclose in his bar exam application complaints made against him has been suspended from the practice of law effective immediately. In In the Matter of: Iurie Cuciuc, 19S-DI-267, justices found Iurie Cuciuc violated Professional Conduct Rule when he failed to disclose a fact necessary to correct a misapprehension known by the person to have arisen in a bar admission matter.

In his bar exam application, Cuciuc answered “no” to questions asking, “Have you ever been a party in a civil court case or proceeding?” and “Have you ever had a complaint or other action initiated against you in any administrative forum?” The order says Cuciuc also acknowledged in his application his affirmative obligation to notify the Board of Law Examiners of any events between his application and bar admission that would cause any of the answers on his application to change.

After he submitted his application and took the bar exam, but before he was admitted to the Indiana bar, Cuciuc was the subject of a civil protective order proceeding filed in Marion Superior Court as well as a Title IX complaint filed with the McKinney School of Law. Cuciuc failed to supplement his bar application to include information about the protective order and Title IX proceedings, the order says.

If Cuciuc wishes to seek reinstatement, he will have to show clear and convincing evidence of his remorse, rehabilitation, and fitness to practice law. The costs of the proceedings are assessed against him.

theindianalawyer.com-Stancombe

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TITLE IX RULINGS: Can The “Single Investigator” Model Ever Be Fundamentally Fair?

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TITLE IX RULINGS: Can The “Single Investigator” Model Ever Be Fundamentally Fair?

At oral argument in Doe v. University of Sciences before the Third Circuit, an issue that gets only tangential consideration was front and center: Can the schools using the “single investigator” model for Title IX sexual determinations suffice as a fundamentally fair method? KC Johnson provides the background to the case… In the Sciences case, two sorority sisters filed Title IX claims alleging that the accused student had sexually assaulted them (in different incidents, both of which occurred many months before the reports). The first accuser appears to have persuaded the second accuser to file. Although the University of the Sciences promises fairness in its investigations, it employs a single-investigator model; the same person handled both allegations. After interviewing the parties, she returned a guilty finding; Doe appealed but was expelled halfway through his senior year.

From the outset, the deck is stacked. It doesn’t have to be, but consider the qualifications of people who seek the job of Title IX investigator. They tend to be people deeply involved with and sensitive to sexual misconduct against women on campus, usually with long histories of activism and proven dedication to the elimination of sexual misconduct against women. Their perception of the problem that guides their investigation is grounded in an ideological belief that precludes any fair assessment of the facts. They are dedicated to finding the facts, aggregating and presenting them in such a way as to assure the only “correct” outcome: guilt. These Title IX investigators interview the accuser and accused, together with those witnesses they deem relevant. They gather evidence they deem relevant. They pursue avenues they deem relevant. If they deem only that which proves guilt to be relevant, then they ignore witnesses and evidence that don’t. It’s left entirely in their hands. When the only evidence presented is evidence of guilt, the outcome isn’t a mystery. When the entirety of a process is placed in the hands of one person, who then presents conclusions based only on the evidence that supports the conclusion and omits all the evidence that shows it to be baseless or biased, it easily creates the appearance of fairness without any of the substance. Add to this the sort of person hired to play the role of Title IX investigator and the problem is abundantly clear.

While most arguments about the single investigator model tend to revolve around the mandates of due process and fundamental fairness, whether under the Constitution, or express or implied contractual terms, few cases directly confront the inherent impropriety of making one individual “judge, jury and executioner.” There should be no question that the inquisitorial model, no matter how one characterizes the virtues of the inquisitor, invariably fails to provide the accused with a fair process. 

simplejustice.us-Greenfield

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RULING. Syracuse Must Turn Over Advisor Records That May Demonstrate University Bias Against Male

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RULING. Syracuse Must Turn Over Advisor Records That May Demonstrate University Bias Against Male

At Syracuse University, counselors on the counseling center’s Sexual and Relationship Violence Response Team play a dual role: they can provide therapy to a student who may have been sexually assaulted, while also serving as that student’s advisor in campus disciplinary proceedings. 

Attorneys for John Doe, a student suing Syracuse University for expelling him after an allegedly unfair disciplinary proceeding, believe that the complainant’s advisor, Tekhara Watson — a member of the Sexual and Relationship Violence Response Team — may have pressured her to file a university Title IX complaint even after she chose not to pursue the matter with police. Doe’s attorneys believe this information may be critical to proving their case that Syracuse’s treatment of Doe was biased and unfair, and they requested it be turned over as part of discovery in the case. Last week, a federal magistrate judge agreed, ordering that a limited number of “stringently redacted” records be turned over to Doe and his lawyers.

The order came after the judge conducted an in camera review of the documents and determined that “portions of Ms. Watson’s notes are relevant to plaintiff’s theories that Syracuse University’s disciplinary proceedings were procedurally unfair and biased against male students.” Syracuse, by its own admission, maintains a process in which a counselor’s role as a therapist can be “intertwined” with his or her role as an advocate in campus judicial proceedings. Were that not the case, Doe and his attorneys would not have been seeking her records.

Far from being a “broad” decision that suddenly makes therapy records fair game for accused-student plaintiffs and their attorneys, this is a narrow ruling based specifically on Syracuse’s choice to intertwine the roles of therapist and procedural advocate in sexual misconduct cases. Moreover, the judge followed a very thorough process, ordering a redacted production only after privately reviewing the documents and determining that they were so relevant to Doe’s claims of bias that the interests of justice demanded they be turned over.

thefire.org-Harris

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GOOD NEWS For Male Grad. Federal Judge Reverses Ruling. Gender Bias Claim Against University of New Mexico Moves Forward

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GOOD NEWS For Male Grad. Federal Judge Reverses Ruling. Gender Bias Claim Against University of New Mexico Moves Forward

A fourth-year doctoral candidate was wrapping up his dissertation when he became the subject of a sexual misconduct investigation rife with gender bias and lacking in due process. Last month U.S. District Judge James Browning refused to dismiss Title IX and 14th Amendment claims by “J. Lee” against the University of New Mexico for depriving him a degree.

Judge Browning’s 127 page ruling said UNM “prioritized administrative efficiency over a rigorous fact-finding process” and left the accused student, J.Lee, with “no meaningful opportunity to be heard.” It was a reversal of fortunes for the university, which initially convinced Browning to dismiss Lee’s gender bias claim. The judge “amended” that order from last summer in his ruling last month, citing “recent opinions from [federal] Courts of Appeals” and his own “more intense study” of the issue. Browning cited a 2019 ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against Purdue University that helped shape his reversal on Lee’s Title IX claim. While the judge said the Obama administration’s notorious 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter on campus sexual assault was not enough “standing alone” to show UNM’s anti-male bias, it is “one piece of the puzzle” in Lee’s favor. Other alleged puzzle pieces that may signal of anti-male bias: the hostile attitude toward Lee from the university and individual defendants, how UNM disregarded its own internal procedures, its acceptance of the “allegedly illogical, contradictory, and inconsistent account” by his accuser “C.H.,” and its decision to ignore evidence “exculpating” the accused student.

For instance, Student Conduct Officer Megan Chibanga told Lee that he couldn’t present evidence at the sanctions hearing or challenge the probable-cause finding. Under the impression that nothing new was to come up, Lee was blindsided when Chibanga asked him questions about underaged drinking – a charge mentioned in neither the preliminary nor final determination. The drinking violation eventually factored into his expulsion. Under due process, the university must “allow Lee to fully argue any new issues, such as underaged drinking, that were raised at his sanctioning hearing and later constituted part of his expulsion’s justification,” Browning ruled. The judge also noted that the university treats accused students better in cases not involving alleged sexual misconduct, providing them an “evidentiary hearing.” This raises questions about the fairness of Lee’s proceeding…Browning said the university’s actions present “significant risks of erroneous deprivation” to Lee. He was deprived a “meaningful opportunity to present” his response to the drinking allegations because he was not given notice of them, and denying him the opportunity to bring new evidence “appears to conflict” with the university’s procedures, according to the judge.

The university is facing other due process lawsuits, by a suspended professor and another accused student, filed less than a week apart in January.

thecollegefix.com-Pease

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GREAT NEWS: TITLE IX Regulations Supporting Due Process Are Final. Hopefully Published Soon.

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GREAT NEWS: TITLE IX Regulations Supporting Due Process Are Final. Hopefully Published Soon.

The federal Office of Management and Budget has officially concluded its review of the draft Title IX regulations, reports SAVE. Readers should be aware that over the years, SAVE has been hard at work developing plans to support implementation of the new regulations.  SAVE created new pages on their website supporting these efforts, and accused students will find helpful information at this page: Lawsuits by accused students.

And from Title IX For All: “We have recently learned that Betsy DeVos’ long-anticipated Title IX regulations have cleared the Office of Management and Budget, meaning virtually nothing is standing in the way of their publication.”

Title IX For All also reports: “We can now confirm that over six hundred lawsuits have been filed in behalf of students (and some school personnel) accused of Title IX-related offenses. 

Nearly half of all the lawsuits in our tally – 47.5% – have been filed in a mere five states: California (18%), New York (12%), Ohio (7.5%), Pennsylvania (5.5%), and Massachusetts (4.5%). The UC and CSU systems in particular have been pummeled by a high amount of litigation via writs of mandate, while in New York the SUNY system, Columbia, and Cornell, among others, have faced a disproportionate number of lawsuits.

Two litigation powerhouses – Andrew Miltenberg and his team at Nesenoff & Miltenberg and Mark Hathaway and Jenna Parker of Hathaway Parker – have litigated ~25% of the total number of lawsuits. The rest have been litigated by a spread of 610 attorneys representing plaintiffs and 744 attorneys representing schools and school personnel. Regarding court and judge data, we have seen litigation in 192 courts (86 federal courts and 106 state courts), with 622 judges (429 male and 193 female) presiding over litigation.

On average, 120 lawsuits have been filed each year from 2017-2019. We have seen an anticipated decline in recent filings due to COVID-19. With the imminent publication of DeVos’ Title IX regulations, however, we believe the 2021 spring semester will start a new, steeper ramp upward that will exceed the 2017-2019 yearly averages in terms of lawsuit filings.

A BIG thank you to Title IX For All and SAVE- Stop Abusive and Violent Environments- for their dedicated and impactful work,  Alice. 

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JOE BIDEN And Tara Reade. “Believe All Women” Biden Says. OK Then, Why Don’t You Believe Tara? Why is MeToo Silencing Her?

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JOE BIDEN And Tara Reade. “Believe All Women” Biden Says. OK Then, Why Don’t You Believe Tara? Why is MeToo Silencing Her?

When it comes to #MeToo sexual misconduct issues, former Vice President Joe Biden, has made it no secret where he stands: automatically believe women.  “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real,” said Biden during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

As vice president, Biden played an important role to compel colleges and universities to take sexual violence more seriously—and to adopt policies that limited the due process rights and presumption of innocence for  accused students. In recent years, his rhetoric has been in lockstep with #MeToo activists. Despite his public pronunciations on the subject of never touching women without their explicit verbal consent, Biden has previously faced accusations that he was too handsy with people. But now the former vice president is facing a much more serious accusation of sexual assault, from a former staffer named Tara Reade.

Reade describes herself as a “California-based victim rights advocate and activist” in her interview with the journalist Katie Halper.  Reade says she worked for Biden in the early 1990s and asserts that she was unambiguously assaulted by him in 1993. According to Reade, he began kissing her without her permission, pushed her against a wall, reached under her skirt, and penetrated her with his fingers. “He said ‘come on man, I heard you liked me.” “For me, it was like, everything shattered. I looked up to him, he was this champion of women’s rights. I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was surreal.”

Reade had already complained to her bosses about sexual harassment in Biden’s office—but had shared the more serious accusation against Biden with a few close confidants. She tried to talk to a supervisor about what had happened, but was shut her down. She filled out an official form detailing her assault. As detailed in an Intercept piece, she reached out to Time’s Up, a project of the National Women’s Law Center that provides support to  #MeToo victims. Eventually Reade learned that no assistance from Time’s Up could be provided because the person she was accusing, Biden, was a candidate for federal office.

The public relations firm that works on behalf of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund is SKDKnickerbocker, whose managing director, Anita Dunn, is the top adviser to Biden’s presidential campaign. The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund is set up as a 501(c)3 nonprofit housed within the National Women’s Law Center. It was launched in December 2017 and was the most successful GoFundMe, raising more than $24 million. The group has committed more than $10 million toward funding cases. 

It seems unlikely the Reade accusation can sink Biden’s candidacy, but whether Democratic primary voters and the mainstream media are willing to air it out as they did Kavanaugh’s will tell us a lot about what “believe all women” actually means.

reason.com-Soave nationalreview-Harsanyi theintercept-Grim

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IN TITLE IX SEX Cases, Cross-Examination Is Now On The Table

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IN TITLE IX SEX Cases, Cross-Examination Is Now On The Table

For years, under Title IX, a student charged with sexual assault was not permitted to face their accusers and cross-examine them. The rationale by feminists was that confronting the accuser was equivalent to another sexual assault. Recently I was prompted to look at the current Title IX policies of all 40 four-year public universities in the Sixth Circuit. Many public universities in the circuit have implemented Baum however, almost 25 percent of the public universities in the circuit do not comply with Baum. 

Implementing Baum

  • Twenty public universities in Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, and Kentucky comply with Baum.
  • Five schools comply with Baum but do so grudgingly. Of these five, the Eastern Michigan policy stands out.
  • Three schools allow cross-examination, but their approach (depending on the facts of the case) might violate Baum

Amidst this reluctant embrace of Baum, one university stands out. Ohio University allows cross-examination with the maximum amount of choice, by either the accused student or his advisor. Ohio is the only university in the four states of the Sixth Circuit to implement Baum in a manner that ensures the accused student has the most meaningful opportunity to defend himself.

Limiting Cross-Examination

  • Five universities purport to allow cross-examination but place such significant restrictions on what can be asked or even whether a hearing will occur that they effectively nullify the right.

Defying Baum

  • Nine universities violate Baum by using procedures that have a hearing, but only with submitted questions to the panel chair (who can ask them or modify them at all) for some or all witnesses.

So, what’s the bottom line? Many universities in the Sixth Circuit have implemented Baum without apparent difficulty. The only significant pushback among schools compliant with Baum has come at the University of Michigan, and there, the resistance has focused on the university’s refusal to adopt a compromise (questioning by lawyers) that would be preferred by both sides.

Perhaps previewing Brett Sokolow’s prediction that universities should find “clever workarounds” of the sections of the proposed Title IX regulations that provide live hearings and cross-examination, several universities have developed restrictions on the right to cross-examine.

mindingthecampus-KC Johnson

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RULING: UMICH Officials Can Be Held Personally Liable For Violating Accused Rights

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RULING: UMICH Officials Can Be Held Personally Liable For Violating Accused Rights

The University of Michigan’s refusal to recognize an accused student’s “clearly established due process rights” led a federal judge to deny its administrators “qualified immunity” in the student’s lawsuit. Senior U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow went much further, declaring the school’s 2018 Title IX policy unconstitutional and an element of the “interim” policy that replaced it unconstitutional. “John Doe” sued the taxpayer-funded institution in 2018 because it placed an “indefinite hold” on his transcript and degree after a female student accused him of sexual misconduct. It also withheld “any form of hearing or cross examination,” per its policy that year.

Months later, in a different lawsuit against UMich known as Baum, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered public universities in its jurisdiction to allow cross-examination and live hearings when credibility is an issue in Title IX proceedings. But a lower profile 6th Circuit ruling against the University of Cincinnati in 2017 had already established that public universities must provide “some kind of hearing” for a student to “share his version of events” in disputes that are dependent on credibility.

UMich’s argument that John’s due process rights were not violated because no sanctions or findings of guilt were levied against him was flatly rejected. “Plaintiff’s injury lies in the deprivation of one of the most basic due process rights—the hearing itself,” Tarnow wrote, granting John summary judgment on his due process claim. His denial of qualified immunity leaves eight officials potentially liable as individuals, including Pamela Heatlie, who was quietly removed as senior director of the Office for Institutional Equity after the Baum ruling, and Robert Sellers, the very well paid chief diversity officer. Also affected: Provost Martin Philbert, named in a similar lawsuit by an accused professor; Office of Student Conflict Resolution Director Erik Wessel; Dean of Students Laura Blake Jones; now-retired Vice President of Student Life E. Royster Harper; OIE investigator Suzanne McFadden; and Registrar Paul Robinson. (Tarnow’s impatience with the university has been public knowledge for months. Last summer the judge blasted UMich for hiring three firms even before trial and fighting his order for President Mark Schlissel  to appear at a settlement conference.)

On the other hand, the judge dismissed John’s state and federal gender discrimination claims. The accused student “failed to show a plausible inference of intentional gender discrimination,” since his Title IX proceeding is still pending and “no outcome has occurred.” Because federal courts are hesitant to decide novel issues of state law, including John’s sex discrimination claim, Tarnow dismissed those as well. “The University may proceed with its disciplinary proceedings” against John, so long as it includes “a live hearing, in person or via video communication, with the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses” and his accuser, the judge said.

thecollegefix-Ellington

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