DUE PROCESS Group Kicks Off Campaign to Expose Flaws of ‘Start by Believing’
Plaintiffs in due-process lawsuits against colleges for biased Title IX proceedings are rarely named. They tend to proceed under a pseudonym such as John Doe. As a result, it has been challenging for advocates of due process to personalize the issue for the nation’s students, parents and lawmakers, who have the power to impose statewide rules on disciplinary adjudications. Now one due-process group is seeking to personalize the issue of kangaroo courts that railroad students accused of sexual misconduct. Stop Abusive and Violent Environments published a Change.org petition to convince U.S. Attorney General William Barr to revoke Justice Department funding to “Start by Believing” programs, which have thus far received nearly $9 million in federal grants.
SAVE’s petition highlights the case of Matt Rolph, who was cleared of sex crimes by a jury in 2014 but ruled a rapist by Hobart College months earlier. The college “decided to make an example of him” by conducting a fake investigation, SAVE writes in the Change.org petition. It didn’t record interviews, review “innocence-proving text messages” sent by his accuser, obtain records supporting the accuser’s “claim of medical problems caused by the incident,” or “resolve inconsistencies among witness statements.” The jury exonerated him in less than a day, and a court let his Title IX claims go forward against the college in 2017. But Rolph is “just one of the many thousands of Americans who have been victimized by “victim-centered’ investigations,” SAVE writes:
“Start By Believing” tells investigators to investigate cases from an “initial presumption” of guilt, to slant their report to “corroborate the victim’s account,” and to even make sure the sexual encounter does “not look like a consensual sexual experience.” A longer web resource on Start by Believing explains how the techniques used in biased investigations are contrary to “long-established investigative ethical codes,” ignore the well-documented bias against men in the criminal justice system, and amount to “near-religious teaching,” in the words of a Harvard law professor.
thecollegefix -Greg Piper
