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Top Legal Organization About To Adopt Dangerous ‘Affirmative Consent’ Resolution That Defines All Sex As Rape Unless Otherwise Proven

The wording changes from state to state and from school to school, but it all boils down to narrowly defining consent in such a way that it is impossible for anyone to actually have – and prove – consensual sex. These policies inevitably shift the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused, meaning the accused has to provethey obtained consent for an encounter that they saw at the time as consensual.

Proponents of the policies have never said how accused persons would be able to defend themselves from an accusation under “affirmative consent.” Without video evidence that one obtained consent throughout every physical and sexual interaction, the accused would have no way to defend themselves. Even that would be risky, since someone who claims they were too drunk to consent to sex could also say they were too drunk to consent to being recorded. Given how much weight an accusation holds in today’s “believe all women” society, a case of he said/she said would most likely default in favor of the accuser.

Legal groups, law professors, and attorneys were critical of the “affirmative consent” standard, yet schools and states adopted it anyway.

In 2015, the American Law Institute at its annual meeting debated the standardahead of what was supposed to be a vote on adopting a new section of the model penal code. The criticism against the standard outweighed the support, and the vote was delayed. A year later, ALI again attempted to hold a vote on a revised draft, yet further criticism delayed the vote again. In 2017, opposition precluded the group from adopting the standard once again. The draft was not included in ALI’s agenda in 2018.

But now the American Bar Association (ABA) appears to be picking up where ALI failed. At their annual meeting this week, the ABA will vote on a resolution that would urge state legislatures to adopt “affirmative consent” as the criminal definition of consent. Here’s the resolution:

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges legislatures and courts to define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances, and to reject any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal burden of verbal or physical resistance.

As Samantha Harris of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education noted, the resolution essentially makes “sex presumptively nonconsensual unless and until someone can produce evidence of consent.” This pushes the burden of proof onto the accused, who likely believed they had consensual sex and therefore did not need to keep documentation to prove it.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers condemned the ABA’s resolution for this very reason.

The NACDL also opposed ALI’s efforts, which are cited in the ABA’s resolution.

It is only sexual assault where the burden of proof has been flipped in recent years. No other crime requires the defense to prove a negative.

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Title IX a Sticking Point in Talks Over New Higher Ed Law

For the past two years, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate education committee, has set ambitious goals for producing new landmark higher ed legislation.

But lawmakers never came close to reaching an agreement on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act last year. And as the August recess begins this week, there’s little sign of a deal coming together soon.

One of the biggest sticking points in negotiations, according to several individuals with knowledge of discussions, is addressing how colleges should handle complaints of sexual misconduct on campus. Specifically, members of the committee are discussing how language addressing live hearings for campus proceedings and cross-examination rights for accused students should figure into a bill. Federal guidance under the Obama administration discouraged cross-examination of complainants, but a proposal from the Trump administration would require colleges to allow it.

The issue has been among the most explosive pieces of the debate over federal policy on campus sexual assault. And how Congress should address it through legislation has become one of the most troubling parts of negotiations over a new HEA law.

A Democratic committee aide acknowledged that campus sexual misconduct is one of the biggest challenges to reaching a deal on HEA reauthorization. The aide said the focus of Washington senator Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the education committee, was finding creating a fair process that wouldn’t re-traumatize survivors.

“Any proposal, any solution that has the potential to re-traumatize survivors is not something she’s going to support,” the aide said.

That could mean a number of options involving live hearings, although the aide acknowledged that Title IX is one of the areas where Republicans and Democrats are furthest apart.

Looming over those talks are federal regulations on campus handling of sexual misconduct that are expected to be finalized by the Trump administration later this fall. Recent court rulings, meanwhile, have faulted colleges for not following due process standards in Title IX proceedings.

A proposed rule released by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last year would require that colleges allow students, through an advocate, to cross-examine their accusers. Ensuring accused students have an opportunity to question the allegations made against them has been a top priority of many due process champions. Advocates for sexual assault survivors, though, argue that cross-examination could discourage complainants from coming forward. And college groups have warnedthat imposing a requirement for live hearings for all misconduct cases would create a quasi-legal system on campuses and create a “cottage industry” of student advisers to assist in those hearings.

A ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found last year that colleges must allow students accused of sexual assault, or their representatives, the chance to question their accusers. Some survivor advocates argue that other court rulings are clear that students accused of misconduct don’t have the right to a process modeled on the criminal justice system. But the ruling has added impetus to groups arguing for more due process protections.

Alexander’s office didn’t comment on the HEA discussions. But he made due process requirements, including cross-examination, a chief focus of a hearing on campus sexual misconduct policies in April.

Title IX isn’t the only major challenge for negotiators. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have indicated they’re eager to add new accountability standards for colleges. What those look like is far from settled, though. Alexander has proposed holding all higher ed programs to the same loan repayment standards. Democrats like Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy have argued for rules that account for the low-income populations served by colleges.

Negotiators will also have to settle how a new higher ed law will address college affordability. Murray said earlier this year she wanted a new law to include a state-federal partnership to boost funding for higher ed institutions.

But individuals plugged in to HEA discussions say Title IX could be the biggest obstacle for a deal. In a move that appeared to signal the difficulties surrounding the issue, Alexander and Murray earlier this summer formed a bipartisan Title IX working group, a development first reported by Bloomberg Government.

Shiwali Patel, senior counsel for education at the National Women’s Law Center, said the group has serious concerns about HEA legislation mandating a single process for all campuses to resolve complaints of sexual misconduct.

“These aren’t courtrooms,” she said. “How are schools going to ensure there are meaningful protections against inappropriate or victim-blaming questions?”

Patel said live hearings on misconduct allegations can be conducted properly with certain safeguards. Some, for example, have argued that allowing a third party to ask questions — as allowed in the proposed regulations — could address fears of re-traumatizing survivors. But Patel said not all colleges have the resources or capacity to effectively hold live hearings.

The Obama administration told colleges in federal guidance that they could opt to use a single-investigator model for Title IX cases, in which one official interviews both parties involved and collects other evidence before either making a decision about the alleged misconduct or presenting findings to a panel of campus officials. The proposed DeVos rule would ban that model and mandate live hearings.

Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, one of the biggest proponents of cross-examination rights for accused students, said lawmakers will have to reckon with recent court rulings on due process issues.

“Courts have been recognizing the importance of more procedural protections than has been the norm on college campuses,” he said.

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American Bar Association mulls campus sex rules for criminal code

‘Disastrous for due process’ if resolution passes

 

On college campuses, accused students often must prove they obtained “affirmative consent” from their partners before and throughout sexual activity. In a few states, it’s the law for college students.

The American Bar Association, which sets academic standards for law schools and recommends legislation, is deciding whether it should be the law for everyone.

Criminal lawyers and advocates of due process are urging the ABA to reject a resolution that they say would flip the burden of proof from the government to the accused in criminal cases.

Mandating affirmative consent would functionally mean the end of the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, they argue, by requiring the accused to testify of their innocence.

Resolution 114 is under consideration by the ABA House of Delegates at its annual meetingin San Francisco this week. It would urge legislatures and courts to “define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact.”

MORELawyers object to attempt to quietly redefine sexual assault

It would further provide that “consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances.” The resolution asks courts to instruct juries that an alleged victim did not consent simply because that person “did not resist, verbally or physically, to a specific act.”

Neither the resolution nor the accompanying report define “sexual contact.” The vagueness of the definition could empower the government to prosecute defendants for failing to get explicit permission from their spouses before adjusting sexual positions, even if the spouse physically cooperates, for example.

“Given the ABA’s reputation and influence, it would be disastrous for due process if this resolution were to pass,” Samantha Harris, vice president for procedural advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, wrote in a blog post Monday.

Opponents of the resolution have history on their side: Another prominent legal group voted down a similar resolution three years ago.

Cites heavily disputed theories of neurobiological response

While affirmative consent is a popular concept on campus and is often promoted in mandatory sexual-consent training, it is hard to define in a legal sense.

Like other definitions, the resolution and report devised by the ABA’s Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence affirms that consent can be conveyed through actions as well as words. But the furthest the report goes to specify actions that demonstrate consent is to cite two vague state criminal definitions.

In Wisconsin, consent can be shown through “overt actions” that indicate “a freely given agreement to have sexual intercourse or sexual contact.” California’s code requires “positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will.”

Due process lawsuits stemming from Title IX adjudications often explain at length how an accuser showed consent through overt actions or positive cooperation, but later disputed that the encounter was consensual throughout.

MOREMemory, neuroscience experts warn of junk science in Title IX training

The report suggests that without affirmative consent in the criminal law, potential victims will be required to physically fight their aggressors in order to demonstrate their lack of consent.

It cites heavily disputed theories, sometimes compared to the “repressed memory” movement, that victims may seize up during sexual assault, physically unable to vocalize or demonstrate their lack of consent. The report approvingly cites Michigan State University psychologist Rebecca Campbell as an expert in the “neurobiology of trauma as it relates to sexual violence.” Campbell is not a neuroscientist.

“A history of sexual violence, and of the status of women as the sexual property of men, still informs the law governing sexual assault, and that should stop,” concludes the report, written by the chair of the commission, Mark Schickman, and the chair of the ABA’s Criminal Justice Section, Lucian Dervan. “The proposed definition is a step in that direction.”

Cynthia P Garrett@cgarrett101

ABA’s proposed definition of consent, which “reject[s] any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal burden of verbal or physical resistance,” will require an accused to prove consent & dispense with the need to show bad intent.
From @NACDL:

https://blog.simplejustice.us/2019/08/04/aba-resolves-youre-guilty-of-rape/ 

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Guilty ‘merely upon evidence of a sex act with nothing more’

Among the groups opposing the resolution is the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which says it would prove an offense occurred “merely upon evidence of a sex act with nothing more.”

The resolution shifts the burden of proof to the accused for each act, undefined, within a larger sexual encounter, and “assumes guilt in the absence of any evidence regarding consent,” the association wrote last month.

“This radical change in the law would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and
Fourteenth Amendments and the Presumption of Innocence,” the group argues. “The resolution will often force the defendant to testify in order to present evidence that consent was expressed.”

More technically, the ABA resolution would turn sexual assault into a “strict liability” crime that ignores “the mental state of the accused,” putting it out of whack with criminal liability in general.

The association accuses the ABA report authors of misrepresenting the American Law Institute’s consideration of the affirmative consent standard for its “model penal code” in 2016.

MORE‘Victim-centered’ investigations create new victims

To justify its own proposal, the ABA commission cites the ALI proposal at length, saying only that the ALI version is “not yet final.”

The association retorted that “it is final as far as affirmative consent goes – the concept was rejected in a landslide vote” by ALI members, an elite group that includes professors, attorneys, judges and other legal professionals.

The ALI instead adopted a broader definition of consent that includes “willingness” – rather than the contractual “assent” – and says it can be “inferred from behavior,” including “inaction.”

The ABA resolution would “impose novel social legislation designed to dictate social mores” into criminal law, according to the association. It “seeks to impose uncommon requirements in the volatile area of human sexual relations.”

The group also questioned the science proffered by the ABA, saying that “tonic immobility or tonic collapse” is associated with a “traumatic event” such as a “brutal rape with force. The vast majority of consent cases do not include such traumatic events.”

‘This gibberish resolution will result in the conviction of innocent men’

Criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield was less restrained in his opposition to the ABA resolution.

“ALI’s proposal to change the model penal code failed, largely because not everyone there has shit for brains,” he wrote in a blog post. He mocked the House of Delegates as “consisting of the last three full-paying members and lots of third-wave-feminist academics.”

The point of the resolution is “turning law on its head and assuring that any ‘survivor,’ any woman who accuses a man of rape, will prevail,” Greenfield wrote:

Her accusation will be believed. He will be defenseless. She will get her vengeance and he will be punished. …

There’s no reason to remind the ABA that this gibberish resolution will result in the conviction of innocent men. That’s just the price of believing the woman, and they are totally willing to pay that price with other, innocent men’s lives.

The resolution makes all sexual activity “presumptively nonconsensual,” according to FIRE’s Harris. She asks ABA members to consider how affirmative consent has worked on campus, pointing to FIRE’s man-on-the-street interviews with students (below).

MOREALI draft said disabled people can’t consent to sex

“As high as the stakes are on campus — where students found responsible face the loss of educational and job opportunities as well as permanent stigma — they are higher still in the criminal context, where those found guilty face imprisonment,” Harris wrote.

The president of the due-process group Stop Abusive and Violent Environments seems more sanguine about the prospects of defeating the resolution, or at least mitigating its impact.

“You may recall that from 2014 to 2016, many state legislatures considered affirmative consent bills – almost all of which we succeeded in defeating,” Ed Bartlett told The College Fixin an email.

His group maintains a through resources page on the dangers of affirmative consent. The concept makes it easy for accusers to “retroactively revoke consent” by claiming they consented to one but not another act, but at its core, affirmative consent simply “infantilizes women.”

MORELaw prof suggests kangaroo courts look at home, work relationships

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American Bar Association must reject guilty-until-proven-innocent affirmative consent resolution

In just a few days, the American Bar Association will consider whether to adopt a resolution urging state legislatures to adopt a criminal-law definition of consent similar to the “affirmative consent” standard increasingly popular on college campuses. Given the ABA’s reputation and influence, it would be disastrous for due process if this resolution were to pass.

Here is the resolution (emphasis added):

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges legislatures and courts to define consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances, and to reject any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal burden of verbal or physical resistance.

By making sex presumptively nonconsensual unless and until someone can produce evidence of consent, affirmative consent standards effectively shift the burden of proof to accused parties to prove themselves innocent. For this reason (among others), the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers vigorously opposed the resolution in a statement issued on July 25. NACDL writes:

NACDL opposes ABA Resolution 114 because it shifts the burden of proof by requiring an accused person to prove affirmative consent to each sexual act rather than requiring the prosecution to prove lack of consent. The resolution assumes guilt in the absence of any evidence regarding consent. This radical change in the law would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Presumption of Innocence.

The NACDL also points out that this definition would necessarily undermine the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, since “[t]he resolution will often force the defendant to testify in order to present evidence that consent was expressed.”

Three years ago, the prestigious American Law Institute considered revising its influential Model Penal Code to include an affirmative consent standard. The ALI’s membership overwhelmingly rejected that proposal. The proposed ABA resolution glosses right over that fact, noting simply that “the ALI revision of the [Model Penal Code] is not yet final” — despite the fact that, as the NACDL notes, “it is final as far as affirmative consent goes — the concept was rejected in a landslide vote.”

Affirmative consent standards are already common in campus disciplinary proceedings. On campus, not only has affirmative consent proven confusing, but the state of due process and fair procedure is so bad that over the past eight years, more than 500 accused students have filed lawsuits alleging that they were not afforded even the most basic procedural protections before being found responsible for sexual misconduct. As high as the stakes are on campus — where students found responsible face the loss of educational and job opportunities as well as permanent stigma — they are higher still in the criminal context, where those found guilty face imprisonment.

We hope that the ABA’s House of Delegates will reject this resolution as a grave threat to the due process rights of those accused of one of society’s most serious crimes. FIRE will keep you updated on this developing story.

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ABA Resolves You’re Guilty of Rape

After all, anything that negatively impacted the feelings of women trumped every other concept for which they were ready to man the barricades. A rationalization was that sexual assault had become an “epidemic.” Of course, it became an “epidemic” because the woke eliminated any definition and turned it into “rape is whatever a woman feels it is, whenever she feels it, for good reason, bad reason or no reason.”

It brought a tear to my eye to realize just how horribly fragile and incapable these poor vulnerable and oppressed women were to be utterly incapable of anything from personal responsibility for any choice they made in their life to saying “no.” Or, if they said “yes,” to living with their decision rather than manufacturing excuses the next day, or next year, for why “yes” means whatever the woman wants it to mean.

ALI’s proposal to change the model penal code failed, largely because not everyone there has shit for brains. It’s not that they aren’t still trying to proselytize the heretics, who must hate women since why else would anyone be principled, and they may get there yet.

In the meantime, the ABA apparently shared my concern for the marginalized and has taken up the cause where ALI failed. Resolution 114 will be put to their House of Delegates at its Annual Meeting, consisting of the last three full-paying members and lots of third-wave-feminist academics.

COMMISSION ON DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SECTION
CIVIL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE SECTION
REPORT TO THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES
RESOLUTION

1 RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges legislatures and courts to define
2 consent in sexual assault cases as the assent of a person who is competent to give
3 consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to
4 provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the
5 circumstances, and to reject any requirement that sexual assault victims have a legal
6 burden of verbal or physical resistance.

What this accomplishes, among other problems, is the flipping of the burden of proof from accuser to accused. If a person says “I did not ‘assent’,” or “I was not competent to ‘assent’,” it then becomes the defendant’s burden to prove the negative.

As they did with the ALI attempt to change the model penal code to eliminate the burden of proof, inter alia, the NACDL opposes this resolution, noting the two most obvious failings,* which I quote at length.

1. Burden-Shifting in Violation of Due Process and Presumption of Innocence:NACDL opposes ABA Resolution 114 because it shifts the burden of proof by requiring an accused person to prove affirmative consent to each sexual act rather than requiring the prosecution to prove lack of consent. The resolution assumes guilt in the absence of any evidence regarding consent. This radical change in the law would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Presumption of Innocence. It offends fundamental and well-established notions of justice. Specifically, Resolution 114 urges legislatures to re-define consent as “the assent of a person who is competent to give consent to engage in a specific act of sexual penetration, oral sex, or sexual contact, to provide that consent is expressed by words or action in the context of all the circumstances . . .” The phrase “expressed by words or action” shifts the burden entirely to the accused. Under Resolution 114 the offense is proven merely upon evidence of a sex act with nothing more. This approach violates the “bedrock and axiomatic and elementary principle whose enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law” – the presumption of innocence. See In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 363. As a corollary the provision also guts the accused’s Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. The resolution will often force the defendant to testify in order to present evidence that consent was expressed.

2. Strict Criminal Liability: In flipping the burden of proof the resolution essentially renders sexual assault statutes to be strict liability crimes that focus only the victim and disregard the mental state of the accused. Criminal liability should rarely be based upon an act without considering the mental state of the accused. See Elonis v. United States, 575 US ____, 135 S.Ct. 2001 (2015). The affirmative consent doctrine focuses on the actions and mental state of the complainant without regard for the mental state of the accused.

In a weird way, this is a silly exercise. There is no sentient lawyer who is unaware of why this shift is fundamentally wrong, unconstitutional and contrary to the most fundamental precepts of American jurisprudence. That’s not the point. It’s not as if the ABA isn’t aware, as the proponents of similar nonsense at ALI were aware. They don’t care.

The NACDL is hardly a conservative organization, and is replete with lawyers finely attuned to the demands of social justice. so its opposition here isn’t a product of some misogynistic right-wing conspiracy. The proponents of affirmative consent aren’t necessarily stupid or clueless, but deliberate in their goal of turning law on its head and assuring that any “survivor,” any woman who accuses a man of rape, will prevail. Her accusation will be believed. He will be defenseless. She will get her vengeance and he will be punished.

More to the point, the proponents of this end game will persist in their effort to push the law beyond reason to accomplish their ends. Where ALI fails, the ABA expects to succeed. And given the nature of the few remaining people at the ABA, they very well might.

There’s no reason to remind the ABA that this gibberish resolution will result in the conviction of innocent men. That’s just the price of believing the woman, and they are totally willing to pay that price with other, innocent men’s lives.

Much as I appreciate the NACDL’s efforts to prevent this insanity from undermining constitutional rights, if only when it comes to sexual assault but not for crimes involving less loved victims or hated perpetrators, there is no reasoning involved here. The ABA has chosen its favorite, and will happily undermine law to achieve it. They know. They just don’t give a damn.

*The NACDL offers six points, only the first two of which are set forth here.

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Former Va. governor Doug Wilder contests finding of sexual harassment investigation

Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder, outside the capitol in Richmond in 2015. (Timothy C. Wright for The Washington Post)

July 23

Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder has formally contested the finding of an investigator hired by Virginia Commonwealth University who concluded that he kissed a 20-year-old student without her consent.

The 88-year-old Democrat, who is a distinguished professor at the university’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government, accused the VCU office overseeing the investigation of “underlying bias.”

He said the reasoning of Jody Shipper, an outside attorney and investigator with expertise in federal civil rights law, is “unsound, biased and violates due process.”

He made the accusations in a 15-page document posted on his website and social media accounts Tuesday and submitted to VCU last week in response to Shipper’s findings.

Shipper found Wilder responsible for “non-consensual sexual contact” for kissing Sydney Black in 2017, according to a two-page summary of the investigation’s findings.

Black was a student and worked as an assistant at the Wilder School at the time of the incident. The report cleared Wilder of three other charges that were based on Black’s complaint: sexual exploitation, sex- or gender-based discrimination, and retaliation.

Because Wilder is contesting the finding of the investigator, the VCU Review Panel is expected to hold a hearing to determine whether the probe was conducted properly.

University spokesman Michael Porter declined to comment on the findings of the investigation or release Shipper’s full 262-page report, but he defended the university’s approach to allegations of sexual misconduct.

“VCU takes seriously any allegations of misconduct and all parties’ rights to a fair and impartial process that provides a full opportunity to be heard,” he said in a statement.

Black’s attorney, Jason V. Wolfrey, said he requested an extension to give Black until Aug. 2 to submit her response to Wilder’s document. Black believes Shipper was impartial, he said.

“She just wants it to be over,” he said. “She’s upset, but she’s also fired up a little now.”

The grandson of slaves, Wilder became the nation’s first elected African American governor and served from 1990 to 1994.

Black filed a complaint with VCU in December 2018, alleging that Wilder kissed her and made other overtures, including suggestions that she could live at his country house and join him on trips.

His first extensive public comments about the investigation, the document posted on Wilder’s website said Black’s “allegations are false, lack credibility and reflect glaring inconsistencies.”

It said she may have invented the story “to reap a financial reward from a respected, high-profile faculty member who might be more concerned with the appearance of impropriety [than] with the underlying truth.”

“While disappointed in the External Investigator’s findings and with growing concerns about the impartiality of the overall process, Wilder remains confident that the truth will [come] out,” the document said.

Wolfrey, Black’s attorney, said she never asked Wilder for money or to pay her bills and has no plans to file a lawsuit. She has asked VCU to forgive about $4,000 in tuition debt incurred after she filed the complaint and withdrew from classes, he said.

Much of the dispute stems from events on Feb. 16, 2017, when Wilder and Black dined together at the Boathouse, a riverfront restaurant in Richmond to celebrate her 20th birthday.

Black said Wilder invited her to dinner; Wilder said that dining together was “at best a mutual decision.”

Black has said Wilder bought her vodka martinis, knowing she was underage. Wilder denied that he intended to make her vulnerable to his advances. He also denied inviting her to spend a weekend with him in Atlanta.

Wilder pointed to inconsistencies between Black’s statements to Shipper and records and other interviews that he said were detailed in Shipper’s report.

Black said they went to his condo after dinner, where Wilder kissed her and touched her leg. But Wilder said Shipper’s report indicated Black told her roommate that Wilder merely tried to kiss her without mentioning the leg touch.

The roommate said Black told her about the incident only after the investigation began, Wilder said, quoting the report, but Black said she told the roommate the same night.

Black said she told her mother that Wilder tried to touch her leg but did not mention actual touching or a kiss, he said, citing the report.

Wilder also takes issue with the report’s description of phone calls between him and Black after the dinner.

He said Shipper concluded that he wouldn’t have called Black after the dinner “if there had not been some kind of precipitating event he felt required further discussion.”

Wilder said he would call Black only after she called or texted him asking for a call in return.

Wilder said the “deliberate and calculated” omission of these details about the nature and frequency of the calls is “indicative of bias and constitutes a gross violation of due process.”

Black has said Wilder invited her to his country home in Charles City, Va., to apologize for the kiss, but he said he allowed her to visit only “with the belief that doing so was merely a hospitable gesture.”

Although Black has said she “felt scared” to be alone with Wilder after he kissed her, Wilder said, “notwithstanding these claims,” she drove more than an hour to the home, knowing they would be alone.

“This is hardly the behavior of a young woman who had been previously sexually assaulted by the person she was meeting and of whom she claimed she was ‘scared,’ ” he said.

Wilder said Shipper relied on the “very same inconsistencies and behaviors” to find other allegations unfounded.

“No reasonable unbiased External Investigator, without a pre-existing agenda, armed with this information, would conclude that it was more likely than not that Wilder kissed Complainant and touched her leg,” the posting on his website said.

He asked what steps were taken to make sure VCU employees overseeing the investigation treated him fairly after a previous case in which Wilder accused a prominent VCU dean of harassing Wilder’s assistant, Angelica Bega.

Wilder also noted that Black reported the incident to the Richmond Police Department, which he said determined the allegations were unfounded. A police spokesman confirmed no charges were filed.

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Ex-UMBC baseball players, part of national trend, turning tables on sexual assault accuser in court

Ex-UMBC baseball players, part of national trend, turning tables on sexual assault accuser in court
Three former UMBC baseball players have filed a defamation suit against a woman who accused them of sexual assault. (Jen Rynda / Baltimore Sun Media Group)

Three former baseball players from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County are suing a woman who accused them of sexual assault, part of a growing trend of male students facing sexual assault claims taking their female accusers to court.

The defamation, malicious prosecution, abuse of process and invasion of privacy claims were filed recently in response to a civil lawsuit the woman brought against the men in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

Defamation claims are the new legal tool for men to clear their name and get their accuser to drop sexual assault complaints, according to legal experts. The defamation cases usually end in settlements.

“Over the last three and half years, there’s been far more legal action brought by men charged by the institution with a sexual assault violation,” said Saunie Schuster, a lawyer who advises a range of colleges and co-founded the Association of Title IX Administrators. “The trend was for them to file an action against the institution for due process, but along the way, we started seeing them not just going to file action against the institution, but also civil actions against the victims.”

Schuster said her group has seen about a dozen defamation challenges over the last couple of years across the country and several more threats of such cases.

Defamation claims are difficult to track because most are filed in state courts. United Educators, an insurer that covers more than 1,000 schools and universities across the country, found that alleged perpetrators added victims as defendants to lawsuits against schools, or sued them separately, in 15% of claims filed by members between 2011 and 2015, the latest data published by the insurer.

The rise in defamation suits follows a surge in reports of student-on-student sexual harassment under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded schools.

Before, 2011, Title IX was rarely enforced and largely ignored because of a strict standard of proof, according to K.C. Johnson, a professor at Brooklyn College and expert on due process in college sexual assault cases.

But changes triggered during the Obama Administration swung the pendulum to the other side, Johnson said.

The guidance switched to a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, meaning the incident was more likely than not to have occurred. It also made it more difficult for the defendants to access all evidence against them and to cross-examine the accusers.

Sexual assaults on and off campus reported to college authorities across the country more than doubled at Maryland schools, according to U.S. Department of Education data, mirroring a national trend.

Critics of the Obama Title IX guidance said it favored accusers and made it more difficult to defend oneself.

Eric Rosenberg, an Ohio defense attorney, has filed 20 lawsuits against universities in Maryland and across the country on behalf of men accused in campus sexual assault cases. He said he has also filed a defamation suit against the accused woman along with almost every due process case.

“Without defamation, the accused can’t put it behind them,” Rosenberg said. “It’s only through defamation cases that people stop spreading the rumors and students can move on academically and professionally.”

He said even if students win their due process cases against the universities and get their discipline records expunged, the cases can follow them. For example, many licensing boards and graduate schools still require disclosure of all school disciplinary cases. The women may continue to post on social media or elsewhere about the case.

And many men found themselves accused and then expelled from schools — their academic and professional careers over, Rosenberg said.

Due process lawsuits filed against schools have shot up from about once a year between 1994 and 2011 on average to about once a week over the last two years, Brooklyn College’s Johnson said.

The vast majority of those cases were male students accused of sexual assault seeking recourse in the courts because of what they deem an unfair process in the schools, said Johnson, who tracks the federal cases in a database.

Michelle Daugherty Siri, a lawyer with the Towson-based Women’s Law Center, and other advocates are concerned defamation suits could have a “chilling effect” on women who have been assaulted pursuing justice.

Fewer than half of rapes or sexual assaults are reported to police, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Fear of reprisal and getting the offender in trouble are two of the top reasons victims give for not reporting.

In the Baltimore County case, the woman, then a Towson University student, accused the three men of raping her in 2017. The woman, another female Towson student and the men were drinking before going to an apartment. There, everyone engaged in sexual acts, according to police records and court documents.

The men told the police the women engaged in consensual sex with them, according to detectives’ notes. The women told police the next morning they had blacked or passed out and were sexually assaulted.

The Baltimore Sun generally does not name victims of alleged sexual assault.

After the Baltimore County state’s attorney’s office declined to charge the men, the Towson woman applied for criminal charges directly with a commissioner of a Maryland district court.

The charges were ultimately dismissed, and are now on appeal, but the charges put the men’s names in Maryland’s public judiciary database as defendants in rape cases.

The lawyer who represents the men, Ronald L. Schwartz, did not make the plaintiffs available for interviews.

The men allege in their complaint that the woman and her lawyer, Rig Baldwin, made “misstatements of fact” in her court application for criminal charges against the men, including that the men had spiked the woman’s drink and forced sex without her consent.

“It’s only through defamation cases that people stop spreading the rumors and students can move on academically and professionally.”

The men claim they have suffered “emotional distress, death threats, public approbation, special and consequential damages” as a result of the accusations.

Schwartz told The Baltimore Sun that there is “absolutely no evidence” that the men spiked the women’s drinks, as the woman’s lawsuit alleges, or that the women were incapacitated.

Baldwin told The Sun the allegations of defamation and malicious prosecution against him and his client are “ridiculous.”

Last fall, the Department of Education proposed new Title IX rules governing schools’ reaction to sexual assault and harassment.

The rules would improve defendants’ access to evidence and the right to cross-examination.

The proposed rules include estimates of millions in potential cost savings forschools because schools would no longer have to investigate informal complaints, those that occurred off campus, and those outside campus-sanctioned events or activities.

The rules have gone through a public comment process, drawing more than 120,000 comments through February of this year, and are not expected to be finalized for several more months.

Baltimore Sun data reporter Christine Zhang contributed to this story.

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Appeals court rebukes Purdue for hiding evidence from accused student, likely anti-male bias

‘Alcohol isn’t the cause of campus sexual assault. Men are’

 

Purdue University didn’t bother reviewing an investigative report before judging an accused student responsible for sexually assaulting another student. It didn’t show him the report, either.

The public university didn’t even require his accuser to submit written testimony for a hearing she skipped.

Adjudicators judged “Jane Roe” more credible without “John Doe” being able to question her motivations for accusing him, including possible retaliation for reporting her attempted suicide.

This was too much for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but not because John has a “protected property interest” in his education that requires Purdue to provide minimal due process protections.

Rather, the “fundamentally unfair” proceeding by Purdue led the U.S. Navy to oust the accused student from its ROTC program, meaning he couldn’t pursue a career in his chosen field. And John has a “protected liberty interest” in his career, the 7th Circuit ruled Friday. It remanded John’s lawsuit to the trial court that had dismissed it.

The opinion by Judge Amy Coney Barrett is the second by a short-list candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court to mandate a certain level of due process in campus sexual assault proceedings.

Judge Amul Thapar wrote the 6th Circuit decision last fall that required public universities to let accused students or their “agents” cross-examine their accusers in live hearings.

The 7th Circuit’s precedents forced it to take a different route to find fault with Purdue’s procedures. Unlike some other appellate courts, it does not recognize a protected property interest in education.

“Do the alleged facts, if true, raise a plausible inference that the university discriminated against John ‘on the basis of sex’?” Barrett wrote for the unanimous court, dismissing other appeals courts that have used “formal doctrinal tests to identify general bias in the context of university discipline.”

The three judges agreed that John had met his threshold to sue under both the 14th Amendment and Title IX. In particular, they faulted Purdue office that shared an article on Facebook that blamed men as a group for sexual assault.

Purdue provided a statement Monday to The College Fix that said it “understand[s] and respect[s] the appellate court’s decision, recognizing that it was bound by legal procedure to accept each of John Doe’s allegations as true.”

Spokesperson Tim Doty said the university “stands ready to now answer those allegations and looks forward to the opportunity to present its evidence.”

MORE6th Circuit says Title IX trials should be more like ‘My Cousin Vinny’

No factual basis for credibility finding

Jane is John’s ex-girlfriend and a fellow ROTC cadet. They had consensual sex 15-20 times starting in the fall of 2015, according to Barrett’s summary of John’s suit.

But she displayed mental health problems during their courtship, and attempted suicide in front of him that December. They stopped having sex after that, and Doe reported the suicide attempt to a university advisor.

Jane expressed animosity toward John for reporting her, and soon after started dating someone else.

When Sexual Assault Awareness Month came in April, Purdue’s Center for Advocacy, Response and Education sponsored events on the issue and shared articles on the subject. One of them came from The Washington Post: “Alcohol isn’t the cause of campus sexual assault. Men are.”

That same month, Jane reported John to the university for allegedly groping her without consent that November. He also went through her dresser without permission, visited her dorm unannounced and “lost his temper in front of her,” she claimed.

Similarly to an expelled student’s allegations against Yale University, which settled his lawsuit on the eve of a jury trial, John claimed that Purdue opened an investigation even though Jane didn’t file a formal complaint.

Katherine Sermersheim, dean of students and Title IX coordinator, informed him of Jane’s allegations in a letter. Soon after he was suspended by his ROTC program and “barred from eating in his usual dining hall because Jane used it.”

John wrote a letter denying all of Jane’s allegations from the jump. The only possibly nonconsensual behavior he admitted to was touching Jane’s knee while she slept after witnessing her suicide attempt.

After she found him responsible and John appealed the decision, Sermersheim was ordered to provide the “factual basis” for the finding. She claimed that he placed his hand “above her knee … and moved it up to her ‘crotch’ areas” and also digitally penetrated her.

The only evidence the dean proffered was that she found Jane but not John “a credible witness” by a preponderance of evidence.

Purdue violated student’s due process by withholding evidence, 7th Circuit rules by The College Fix on Scribd

Withheld report falsely claimed he had confessed

John provided an abundance of evidence that he considered “inconsistent” with Jane’s accusations, including her texts to him over the holidays. She also sent his family “homemade Christmas cookies” and invited him to her room when school started in January.

“He also provided details suggesting that Jane was troubled and emotionally unstable, which he thought might explain her false accusations,” according to Barrett’s summary. He turned over some “friendly” texts and provided a list of more than 30 “integrity” witnesses.

Sermersheim refused to give John a copy of the investigative report ahead of the Advisory Committee on Equity hearing, which would make a recommendation to her. This was in keeping with Purdue’s procedures at the time.

It was only because a Navy ROTC representative showed him a redacted copy of the report, “moments before” the hearing, that John saw it was factually incorrect and one-sided. It falsely claimed he had confessed to Jane’s claims and omitted his “description of Jane’s suicide attempt.”

John claimed that two members of the hearing panel admitted they didn’t read the investigative report, while another asked “accusatory questions that assumed his guilt.” They refused to let him provide witnesses including his roommate, who claimed he was in the room when John allegedly groped Jane.

Because Purdue suspended John for a year and made his return contingent on “bystander intervention training,” he “involuntarily resigned” from the ROTC program under its “zero tolerance” practice.

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Barrett’s opinion distinguished John’s claims from other cases where plaintiffs “spill[ed] the beans” about their punishment and then blamed defendants for ruining their reputations.

“Purdue, not John, revealed to the Navy that it had found him guilty of sexual violence, and John had a legal obligation to authorize the disclosure,” she wrote. The university also changed his status after finding him “guilty of a sexual offense,” meaning he has “adequately alleged that Purdue deprived him of a liberty interest.”

The procedures that Purdue provided are not even good enough in a high-school context, the Supreme Court shortlister continued. Because he was suspended for “sexual violence rather than academic failure … for an academic year rather than a few days,” he was entitled to not only notice but evidence.

This failure was “itself sufficient to render the process fundamentally unfair,” Barrett said.

The hearing also appeared to be a “sham” because two of the three panelists judged him guilty without reading the investigative report, the judge said. It was also “unclear, to say the least, how Sermersheim and the committee could have evaluated Jane’s credibility” without speaking to her or even receiving a statement she wrote herself, “much less a sworn statement.”

It ignored “specific impeachment evidence” from John, including Jane’s texts and “continued romantic relationship” with him and the testimony of both parties’ roommates. This was “fundamentally unfair” to John, the opinion concludes.

It’s here that Barrett parts ways with the 6th Circuit, refusing to determine whether due process requires cross-examination of the accuser. “[W]e need not address this issue” because John has already met his pleading burden on “procedural deficiencies,” she wrote in a footnote.

MORE6th Circuit requires cross-examination in campus rape cases

‘Pressure on the university’ by Obama admin ‘was far from abstract’

Also parting ways with other circuits, Barrett said she didn’t need to use a particular theory of “general bias” to analyze John’s Title IX claim. She specifically noted two recent additions from 6th Circuit sexual misconduct cases: “deliberate indifference” and “archaic assumptions.”

John blamed Purdue’s action on the Department of Education’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter that threatened the federal funding of colleges that didn’t lower their standards for finding sexual misconduct.

This showed that “Purdue had a financial motive for discriminating against males in sexual assault investigations,” Barrett summarized. She noted Purdue was under two investigations by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights when Jane accused John.

This showed that “the pressure on the university to demonstrate compliance was far from abstract,” and “may have been particularly acute for Sermersheim,” the Title IX coordinator who also chaired the hearing.

But the Dear Colleague letter was not enough for Barrett. What pushed John’s claims over the line was the decision to credit Jane “without directly hearing from her” in a purely “he said/she said” situation:

Sermersheim’s explanation for her decision (offered only after her supervisor required her to give a reason) was a cursory statement that she found Jane credible and John not credible. Her basis for believing Jane is perplexing, given that she never talked to Jane.

MOREAnti-male Title IX case against Columbia will proceed

Barrett notes that another Title IX coordinator, CARE Director Monica Soto Bloom, provided the only account of Jane’s claims in a letter that Bloom herself wrote. Sermersheim “apparently gave significant weight” to Bloom’s letter.

The three hearing panelists were “biased in favor of Jane and against John” as made clear by his allegations, the judge continued. They showed hostility to him “despite their lack of familiarity with the details of the case,” further suggesting that “Jane’s allegation was all they needed to hear to make their decision. “

The Facebook post by CARE during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, when John was disciplined, adds further evidence that “Sermersheim and her advisors chose to believe Jane because she is a woman and disbelieve John because he is a man,” the opinion reads:

To be sure, John may face problems of proof, and the factfinder might not buy the inferences that he’s selling. But his claim should have made it past the pleading stage …

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Administrators shielded for ‘all but the most egregious constitutional violations’

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education gave qualified praise to the decision in a legal analysis Monday, noting its limitations.

Samantha Harris, vice president for procedural advocacy, pointed out that the 7th Circuit does not recognize a “stand-alone property interest in an education at a state university,” making the ruling less applicable to situations unlike John’s.

The ruling shows how difficult it is for students to find justice in the courts, she said, citing Barrett’s rejection of personal liability for several administrators.

In order for John to get monetary damages from them, he must show he had a “clearly established” right to procedural due process in the proceeding, according to Barrett.

MOREPurdue incident shows why comedians should skip colleges

The 7th Circuit has “never applied” the rule in John’s case – his liberty interest – to a university, the judge wrote, so the officials couldn’t have known that their actions violated the 14th Amendment. John also lacks standing to demand injunctive relief, since he hasn’t said he wants to return to Purdue:

What John really seeks to do is champion the rights of other men at Purdue who might be investigated for sexual misconduct using the flawed procedures that he describes in his complaint. That is a no-go …

The 7th Circuit both provided a “narrow view of the circumstances under which public universities owe due process to their students” and shielded administrators from liability for “all but the most egregious constitutional violations,” Harris wrote in FIRE’s analysis.

“The decision is both a victory for the accused student and a reminder that the courts are an imperfect vehicle for students seeking redress after being subjected to unfair campus disciplinary procedures,” she said.

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Anderson Cooper cuts to commercial after Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll calls rape ‘sexy’

Cooper had asked writer E. Jean Carroll, 75, if she felt like she was a victim. During a discussion of her allegations with the CNN host, Carroll maintained that there was nothing “sexual” about her alleged rape in the dressing room of a New York department store.

“I was not thrown on the ground and ravaged,” Carroll said, denying that she was a victim. “The word rape carries so many sexual connotations. This was not sexual. It just hurt.”

Chief Political Correspondent Byron York on the expanded Washington Examiner magazine
Carroll described the alleged event between Trump and her as a “fight” rather than “rape.” Cooper responded by saying that most people would likely think of rape as a violent assault, to which Carroll responded that she thinks most people find rape “sexy.”

She said: “I think most people think of rape as being sexy. They think of the fantasies.”

Clearly uncomfortable, Cooper swiftly cut in and said they would take a quick break.

Carroll’s interview with Cooper comes after she accused the president Friday of sexually assaulting her in either 1995 or 1996.

The accusation was published in New York Magazine as an early excerpt release of her book, coming out July 2, titled What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.

Trump, 73, has denied the allegation on multiple occasions, saying on Monday that “she’s not my type.”

Carroll, who was Miss Cheerleader USA in 1964, claimed the incident took place in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room while she was about to try on lingerie. She said Trump pinned her against a wall, pulled down her tights and penetrated her with his penis.

Trump said in an interview: “Totally lying. I don’t know anything about her. I know nothing about this woman. I know nothing about her. She is — it’s just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that.”

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Senators Seek to Break Sexual Assault Impasse on Education Bill

Senators Seek to Break Sexual Assault Impasse on Education Bill

  • Bipartisan group looks to balance accuser, accused rights
  • Congress, Education Department working separately

By Emily Wilkins | June 27, 2019 11:02AM ET | Bloomberg Government

A group of eight senators is working to tackle one of the most contentious issues in higher education—when and how colleges need to respond to allegations of sexual assault.

Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) brought the group together in a quest to resolve potentially the biggest remaining obstacle to a bipartisan reauthorization of federal higher education programs.

“We’re all looking for the same thing: an environment that encourages reporting when there is a problem and a process that gets at the truth and is fair to the person bringing a claim and fair to he person who is accused,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the working group.

Murray and Alexander are members of the group, as well as Republicans Tim Scott (S.C.), Susan Collins (Maine), and Richard Burr (N.C.), and Democrats Kaine, Maggie Hassan (N.H.), and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.).