Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is making life a lot easier for campus rapists across the country, and back at home in Michigan, the private Christian high school she attended is way ahead of her. Holland Christian High School faces a lawsuit over its handling of the rape of a 15-year-old girl by her 17-year-old boyfriend, both students at the school at the time of the rape.
The rapist has since referred in a text message to “the way that I’ve raped you” and has pleaded guilty to a third-degree criminal sexual conduct charge. But when Michelle Hoffman complained to the school and asked it to investigate and to protect her daughter from contact with her rapist, Holland Christian’s principal called it “underage sex” and said the school was “not taking sides.” The school did take sides, though—the rapist’s side.
The school refused to keep the two students apart, leading to frequent encounters in which “He kept in proximity to her and made sure she was aware it.” The school expressed total lack of concern for the victim’s ability to get the most out of her education, but sent teachers to the rapist’s home to tutor him after he was barred from attending classes, a move that came from a judge, not from the school. When he was sentenced, teachers wrote letters in his support, not in his victim’s. Because the rapist was just such a “good kid.”
The Hoffman family is suing Holland Christian High School for failing to follow Title IX guidelines, which it’s subject to even as a private school because it gets federal money through the National School Lunch Program. The suit argues that the school was in violation even of DeVos’ lax standards for handling campus sexual harassment and assault—and the case is a good window into where DeVos is coming from on the issue. This is just how bad DeVos demands rape and harassment be before any action at all is possible, and it’s revealing of just how much torment she thinks victims should go through before they have any chance at justice.