Fortunately, it’s not a huge number of such victims yet. But this is the kind of crap by overreaching activists (edit: I am removing the term leftists that I originally used here as it just smears an entire group) on campus that hurts general progressive causes in this area. When the Stanford swim team bastard initially got away lightly on rape charges, we had so much outrage here about that guy. Good for us. But then when a guy is victimized, I never see a diary on our sites about how we need to fix the situation for this victim. It’s like our priorities are one sided. It’s always about the evil white guy getting away with it.
Well, this latest incident has a black athlete falsely accused of sexually assaulting his white girlfriend and here is a new twist to the story — she has always asserted that she was never assaulted or raped by this guy and even slept with him and proactively kept sending him messages of support once the investigation began!!!! So who are the villains of this piece? The administrator and some idiot fellow trainer/student in the alleged victim’s training program took it upon themselves to declare that she was assaulted.
Neal's case is unique in that Doe, the alleged victim never made a complaint, and denied that Neal had done anything deserving of punishment.
Instead, a third party—who was an acquaintance of Doe's—made the complaint. This person, a female student and trainer, spotted a hickey on Doe's neck and surmised that she had been assaulted by Neal. Doe texted Neal to let him know he was likely to be questioned by university officials.
At the time, Neal had no idea his life was about to be made a living hell. In fact, he was worried Doe would be in trouble—for dating an athlete. When he went to meet up with Doe, he assumed he was going to "console" her.
"What happened then was she just seemed very visibly upset so my immediate reaction was that she probably got kicked out of the athletic training program," Neal says.
Instead, Doe began to explain to Neal that the other trainer had suggested to Dr. Richard Clark—director of the athletic training program—that Doe might have been assaulted by Neal. Clark immediately informed his wife, who was a CSU-Pueblo faculty member, and Wilson.
Doe attempted to put an end to the matter at once: Neal recorded her making the definitive statement, "I'm fine and I wasn't raped" to university officials. But no one cared. In the eyes of the university, it was not Doe's place to determine whether she was a victim of sexual assault—that was Wilson's job.
He got railroaded by the university in the ensuing investigation where he was given no semi reasonable opportunity to defend himself.
"It wasn't actually a hearing at all," says Neal. "I was allowed to have legal counsel there if I wanted to, but the legal counsel wasn't allowed to counsel."
This meeting represented Neal's first opportunity to read the report and take stock of the charges against him, and the university's evidence. He was not allowed to make a copy of the report—all he could do was try his best to commit it to memory.
Note that the report was not an exact transcript of Wilson's conversations with relevant witnesses: it was merely Wilson's recollection and summarization of those conversations. According to Neal, it contained numerous factual errors. For instance, the report cited the Clarks as claiming that Doe did not consent to sex with Neal. Neal says that's a clear mistake: Doe did not consent to unprotected sex, but enthusiastically agreed to have sex with Neal after he put on a condom.
On December 18, DeLuna informed Neal that he would be suspended for sexual misconduct until Doe finished school. Neal's lawsuit alleges that DeLuna's decision contained further errors: it referred to Doe as the complainant, even though Doe never made any complaint against Neal.
The aftermath:
In the months that followed, it was difficult for Neal not to succumb to depression. He made several attempts to transfer schools, but was denied admission every time. His status as a sexual misconduct violator killed his chances.
He became a nutrition specialist at GNC, and draws strength from his grandmother, who reminds him to "control the controllables." He's currently watching his friends prepare to graduate and pursue opportunities that are no longer available to him.
There are other issues. Neal, like so many male students disciplined as a result of Title IX investigations, is an athlete of color. And Doe, like so many alleged victims, is a white woman. Could racism have been a factor here? Neal doesn't want to believe so—he hates to "assume the race card"—but finds it hard to ignore.
What do the courts have to say about it?
a magistrate ruled just last week that his pending lawsuit against CSU-Pueblo should not be dismissed. Neal has filed suit against the university and its board of regents, as well as the federal Education Department. His lawsuit argues that CSU-Pueblo violated his due process rights, in part because of Title IX guidance from the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights.
The magistrate was not persuaded that OCR was to blame for Neal's situation and recommended dismissing his complaint against the feds. But the magistrate left room for him to amend this aspect of his lawsuit, and left intact his due process case against CSU-Pueblo.
I think progressives needs to be more active in defending these kind of cases too so we get more traction when the fratboys and other male jerks assault female students and get away with it. We can’t let a small subset of overzealous activists from our side of the spectrum misrepresent what constitutes real balanced justice. We certainly want to make sure real cases of sexual assault are given their due attention. But let’s not make a mockery of the system with these kind of policies.
For those interested, here is another outrageous case of a guy’s student life being destroyed by the system and some crazy activist created rules.
Male student had evidence he was the victim of sexual assault, not the perpetrator. His college didn't care.
On the night of February 4-5, 2012, Doe and female student "Sandra Jones" began kissing each other in a common area. They then moved to Jones' dorm room. Jones' roommate, who was not there at the time, was in a relationship with Doe.
A sexual encounter began. Doe was blackout-drunk at the time, and later had no memory of what transpired. Jones had been drinking but was merely buzzed. She started to perform oral sex on Doe—what happened next is disputed. Jones would eventually characterize the encounter in several different ways: initially maintaining that it was ill-advised but consensual, later claiming that it began consensual but became nonconsensual, and ultimately describing herself as an unwilling participant.
Doe had no idea what happened but later asserted that he would never engage in sexual activity with someone who hadn't consented.
After the encounter ended, Doe went back to his own dorm room and passed out. Jones texted a residential advisor and confessed that she had not been "an innocent bystander". She also texted another male student and invited him over for sex. In subsequent text messages to the residential advisor, Jones complained that this second male student had to be badgered into having sex with her.
The villain of this piece is some flaky self centered woman with obvious issues who has the audacity to frame herself as the victim when she was the aggressor.
Months later, Jones wrote an essay about the encounter for a student publication. "It began consensually, but evolved into something that was decidedly not," she wrote.
You need evenhanded non reactionary people to serve as arbiters of justice in a campus environment. Instead, the real victim of this story approached the wrong person thinking she would be a well intentioned person.
He approached a student identified as "LR" in the lawsuit. LR worked at the student publication and had edited Jones' essay. LR also served on Amherst's Special Oversight Committee on Sexual Misconduct. According to the lawsuit, Doe "explained that while he still had no memory of his interaction with Jones, he hoped to get some guidance on what he could do to make amends to Jones."
LR told him to seek counselling and continuing avoiding Jones. LR also treated this encounter as a sort of admission of wrongdoing on Doe's part. LR reported Doe to Amherst's Title IX team, and informed Jones that she would testify on Jones' behalf if any complaint was made.
Even Amherst’s own lawyer didn’t support what this idiot LR was claiming on behalf of Sandra Jones.
Amherst hired a lawyer, Allyson Kurker, to investigate the dispute. Intriguingly, this investigator wasn't persuaded by LR's assertion that Doe had confessed, and wrote in a report "LR's testimony… conflicted with the testimony of others."
The text messages Jones sent on the night of February 4-5 would have also conflicted with her own assertions about what happened. But these text messages were never reviewed by Amherst officials. Doe was found responsible for sexual misconduct and expelled.
Weeks later, having learned about the text messages that might have acquitted him, Doe asked the college to re-litigate the matter. Amherst refused
It is in litigation and the guy has a chance to win in court. I hope he does. Read the link for the rest of the story.
I think it ‘s important for us on the left to give importance to such topics so that we get more credibility when we fight the good fight on behalf of the many real female victims of violence and rape.
