Don’t worry mom, but I’m on suicide watch
This is my own story of what happened when the phone rang late one night.
..”don’t worry Mom, I’m fine but I’ve been taken out of my dorm room and moved elsewhere…. A girl and I had sex a few weeks ago, … she filed a complaint against me…. She agreed to have sex, I have it in writing,… I don’t know why she filed. Also Mom, I’m on suicide watch.”
That’s how my family’s nightmare began.
Initially I wanted to run and be on campus with him. He was a first year student. Who did he know that could be his protector against such an unfounded lie from this college girl?
Well I slowly learned over the months, that the college would do nothing to help my son through their Kafkaesque college investigation and hearing process. But the college would do everything and more, to help the girl in all ways possible, at all times. When we asked to see what the charges were, or other pertinent questions we were met with no comment, or you have to figure that out for yourself. Thankfully, we had an attorney who communicated with the college. Often he didn’t succeed any better than we did in obtaining information about the upcoming hearing, but we could commiserate together at the brazenness and arrogance of the college. In the months leading up to the hearing, I was thinking, this is my 18 year old son and this is how you treat one of your finest and brightest students? How dare you. You trample on his rights, your treat him as dangerous, and act as if he’s guilty before the college hearing even takes place? Before you review the evidence? Shame on you!
I think this was my biggest faux pas. I believed that the college, as an educational institution teaching truth and justice, would do the right thing. Act in a fair and impartial manner, as one would do in a court of law. I actually assumed they would look at the facts, and based on those facts, find my son innocent. I was naive. I didn’t know that the college had already pre-determined that my son was guilty, right at the moment the girl filed her complaint.
So it didn’t matter that a criminal investigation cleared my son, or that the police looked at the evidence and didn’t press charges or that witnesses offered to testify for my son. It really didn’t matter what evidence we had to prove his innocence, because the adjudicator refused to allow most of my son’s evidence into the college hearing. But what did matter at the college hearing was that the girl had as many staff around her as she needed to keep her upright and hold her hand. So that during the daylong hearing, she and her female friends could unleash their hatred at my son for his alleged assault and spew their fear-based, anti-male words at my son. He most certainly got a hysterical feminist tongue lashing from the staff, and also from the pitiful weak minded wounded girls (includes one of her witnesses.) Of course my son was shaken up. Who wants to be trapped in a room with girls yelling vicious lies at you for seven hours?
And of course, he must sit still, listen and take it. No rebuttal.
It is an unimaginable process that these college hearings engage in. Many of my son’s rights were denied. He didn’t have the right to review the evidence, or to question the witnesses, little cross examination was allowed, and he was denied his due process rights. Basically, this was not a fair and impartial college hearing; also his attorney wasn’t allowed in the hearing room; but of course college staff were permitted in the hearing room to sit and coddle the girl. And most of the staff supporting her had law degrees. Many constitutional rights were denied to my son. These are horrific college hearings. They’ll never be exposed properly. But in time I do hope reason and fairness will win and college boys will have their constitutional rights upheld in the future.
When the finding of guilt was emailed to my son, we were shocked. His friends were in disbelief. The sly adjudicator twisted words and logic into a pretzel, and found my loving, generous, handsome and kind-hearted son guilty. This injustice was very hard to take, and my son’s education, and successful future, has faltered because of this girl’s false accusation. She continues her education in college, very much in la-la land, insulated by neo-feminists, and wrapped in her own lie and label.
Today we continue to be in legal proceedings with the college, where their goal is to delay proceedings, and run us into the ground financially. But when you have an innocent son, nothing stops a mother from fighting for truth and justice.
– Mother of a falsely accused son,
Still fighting, having filed a lawsuit against the college for violating his rights three years ago
