It’s in our moral and constitutional DNA that we take extraordinary pains to safeguard the rights of the accused, even when it means letting the guilty go free. But we also believe in justice, and the fact is that sexual assault is a brutal reality of modern campus life, abetted in too many instances by a culture of binge drinking.
.. Another girl at my college had reported a rape and had been forced to sit through peer mediation with her rapist. I didn’t want to go through that. I was a strong, tough girl. The prospect of losing a case seemed worse to me than the prospect of sucking it up and moving on.
.. It seems to me that conservatives and mainstream liberals have abdicated concern about sexual assault to the far left. It’s an astounding moral blind spot, and frankly it breaks my heart.
.. In an era where I had to choose between voting for a man who had bragged about sexual assault or a woman who had enabled a husband accused of it, in an era where we can’t even convict Bill Cosby of sexual assault
.. the general public still has to be convinced that rape and sexual harassment are real problems. It’s easy to believe there’s an epidemic of false accusations, but not that there’s too much sexual assault.
.. I know in my bones that Brock Turner got convicted only because he assaulted that girl in public. If it had happened like it had happened to me, in an empty house, with no one to see — if there had been no photos — that boy would have walked away with nothing at all. He would have been as unscathed as the one who raped me.
.. so many of the conservative men in my life won’t listen to me on this argument until I tell them my story. So here I am. I was raped. He got away with it, because I didn’t know enough to do everything right and because I was a “bad victim.” I had been drinking. I had no witnesses. There was nothing the law could do for me.
The DeVos Guidance Speech
The Education Secretary takes on Obama’s assault on campus due process.
The Obama Education Department’s response was to circumvent Congress and neglect normal executive-branch rule-making procedures mandated in the Administrative Procedure Act, such as soliciting public comment. Instead, it simply jammed the policy through by sending out a “Dear Colleague” letter, including an explicit threat that noncomplying schools could lose federal funding.
Mrs. DeVos’s speech is a meticulous deconstruction of the damage done when progressive activists like those who populated the Obama Administration believe their ends justify whatever legal and administrative obliteration it takes.
Can Taylor Swift Lead America Out of the Campus Title IX Wars?
Denver radio personality named David Mueller. At issue is a brief encounter in June 2013. Mueller and his girlfriend took a picture with Swift after a concert. Swift said that Mueller groped her by putting his hand on her behind.
.. Incredibly — and in spite of the awkward pictorial evidence — Mueller sued Swift, attempting to hold her responsible for his lost salary and other business opportunities. Rather than settle the case quietly, Swift did something unusual. She countersued — asking for only $1 in damages — and demanded a jury trial.
.. Swift is showing America — in the most public way possible — that when it comes to adjudicating claims of sexual assault, the choice isn’t a binary one between criminal prosecution and campus kangaroo courts. There’s a third option: civil litigation.
.. Accused students are often denied any substantial legal assistance, access to witnesses, full information about the charges against them, the power to conduct legal discovery, and the ability to effectively question their accusers.
.. completely ignore standard rules of evidence.
.. Civil litigation requires plaintiffs to prove their case only by a “preponderance of the evidence.” Moreover, a plaintiff runs her own case. She can choose to file, she can choose her lawyers, and she can choose to settle. Courts also have far more power than campus tribunals. Unlike a campus court, they can issue injunctions and order defendants to pay compensatory and monetary damages.
.. At the same time, however, the accused enjoys the full array of due-process rights. He can use a lawyer. He has a right to see the evidence against him, a right to question witnesses, and a right confront his accuser. Oh, and the case goes before an impartial judge and a jury of his peers, not an ideologically stacked tribunal of social-justice warriors. The civil-litigation system corrects all the due-process flaws of campus kangaroo courts while also granting the accuser far more power to seek justice for wrongdoing.
.. when the court case is over, the university could take action based on the results — results obtained through the use of full and appropriate due process.
.. There’s simply no way to easily, cheaply, and justly adjudicate sexual-misconduct claims. And there’s certainly no way to painlessly try these cases. It took bravery for Swift to make her claims. But bravery can be contagious ..