David Jesse

Detroit Free Press

She stood in front of Olds Hall on Michigan State University's campus, shaking as she tried to marshal her courage.

She was about to go inside and tell an investigator about how a professor had groomed her during her time at the East Lansing university, turning a mentoring relationship into one of sex.

For 117 days in late 2015 and early 2016, "Kate" (whose real name is being withheld to protect her identity) awaited a ruling — wondering whether she would be believed.

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The wait was agonizing. Kate lost weight. She had her now-fiancé call investigators for updates because she was too scared to do it. It was horrible, she said, the worst four months of her life.

But Kate's case isn't unusual. Across Michigan — and, in fact, the nation — hundreds of college students have found themselves in similar situations: standing in front of administrative officers, shaken and confused, to report a sexual assault.

However, when they do report it — and many of them don’t — the process for getting justice can be just as troubling as the crime itself.

In Michigan, the responsibility for trying to figure out whether the allegations are true falls on fewer than 50 investigators spread out across the state’s 15 public universities.

Many are lawyers with experience in employment law matters. Almost an equal amount have higher education student life administration backgrounds. And a few are professors. But none are seasoned sex crimes investigators.

Numerous cases across the state have exposed a flawed and inconsistent system of on-campus justice for how Michigan's public universities respond to claims of sexual assault, with campuses taking widely differing approaches. And victims and the accused are often left hanging.

“These offices are not equipped for this significant of an investigation,” said attorney Deb Gordon, who has represented clients in sexual assault investigations at several Michigan universities. “You have both sides (the accuser and the accused) who at the end of the day aren’t happy with how the investigation is run.

“You are asking someone who is, most often, poorly trained to investigate these matters. (The investigators) are not attuned to all the nuances.”

There's a lot riding on the outcome for those filing the complaint and those who are accused by someone of a sexual assault.

Their fates — both their academic careers and their lives moving forward — are in the hands of a staff member who is tasked with figuring out what exactly happened. That means the three Michigan State football players accused of sexual assault and the alleged victim are waiting for an investigator to figure out whether the accusation is true or not. Dozens of women who have accused Dr. Larry Nassar of sexual assault during his time at Michigan State are waiting for answers, as are accusers and the accused at each of the state's public universities.

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Universities have no choice in investigating. In a “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011, the federal government told colleges and universities that as part of Title IX, universities had to treat sexual assault and harassment as forms of gender discrimination and they had to investigate those claims and take action. It also told them to use a lower burden of proof than the criminal justice system uses.

But universities in Michigan and across the nation have done a poor job with the investigations, according to those who accuse, those who are accused and experts. The root cause, those involved in the system in one way or another say, is simple: The explosion in publicity around the topic and the push from the Obama-era administration for universities to step up investigations or face federal investigations themselves have universities dealing with topics they don't have expertise in.

How the process works

Michigan State University, for example, requires staff to call police immediately upon receiving a report of a sexual assault, but the University of Michigan leaves the question of police involvement to the survivors.

Then there is the question of punishment. Someone charged with rape through the criminal justice system can face jail or prison time and a lifetime on a public sexual offender registry, while an accused student taken through the university administrative process may be ordered to write a 500-word essay or, at worst, be expelled.

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The lack of a centralized policy reflects the lack of a consensus among experts — and survivors — about how best to address the rising wave of sexual assault and rape on campus. And federal regulations largely permit individual universities to determine how they handle the incidents, leading to a fragmented system critics say is often more concerned about protecting a school's reputation than the survivor.

Michigan has no state law demanding the police be called when a sexual assault is reported by a college student. Michigan's universities claim the constitutional autonomy given to them in the state constitution means the state Legislature cannot dictate to them how to handle issues on their campus.

However, thanks to a federal law, the universities have to report annually the number of sexual assaults reported to them.

If students don't feel like their investigation was handled correctly, they can file a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights.

The investigation

In her freshmen year, Kate met a professor with whom she really clicked. She sent him a letter about how much she enjoyed his class. He followed up with an e-mail — and then, six weeks later, she was in his office at the church he pastored on Valentine’s Day, where he gave the student a bottle of champagne, she told the Free Press.

“I was very flattered by the attention,” she recalled in an interview with the Free Press, adding that he appealed to her emotions in a way no one else in her life ever had.

The relationship grew — she took six classes from him during her time at MSU and for a while he was her landlord. He also occasionally bought her groceries and helped her buy an airline ticket for her study abroad program. He also regularly drove her to classes.

As time went on, the two had a sexual relationship.

It wasn’t until after she graduated that she realized, with the help of her now-fiancé, that the professor was grooming her for sex.

Then, on Nov. 13, 2015, she filed a complaint with MSU’s Office of Institutional Equity under Title IX. It took the university 117 days to issue its report, despite its policy saying it had to be done in 60 days. There is no statute of limitations on filing a complaint. Recently at Michigan State, women are coming forth to file complaints against Dr. Larry Nassar in incidents that are decades old.

“There was no explanation of why it went beyond 60 days,” she said. “It was agonizing. I lost 15 pounds in those three months. I still get anxious when I see the acronym OIE or when I get an e-mail with the subject line ‘meeting request’ because that was how the e-mails from (the investigator) always came.

“The worst day of my life was when I had to go in and read the draft report. I was sitting there shaking and crying as I read. The investigator kept asking me if I had somewhere safe to go when I was done.”

The investigator was “very, very neutral,” Kate said. “It was very daunting.”

MSU ultimately determined that the student and professor didn’t have a sexual relationship — despite the student submitting graphic text messages from the professor about having sex with her.

“I just thought, ‘What did I just go through all this for?” the student told the Free Press.

However, MSU’s academic human resources office did its own investigation of the professor and fired him, the student said, adding she was very happy with how that office ran the investigation.

Meg, another MSU student, understands the long wait.

She waited 219 days for the investigation into her complaint of sexual abuse to wind up.

She had gone to MSU’s OIE to file a complaint against a graduate student who was a teaching assistant in one of her classes. She said what she thought was a friendly relationship turned into a sexual abusive relationship coupled with aggressive stalking through sexually abusive texts.

Meg eventually sought a personal protective order against the teaching assistant — one he unsuccessfully fought in court. The evidence presented by Meg led to a tongue-lashing of her attacker by a judge, especially after the judge learned Meg’s attacker had been convicted the prior year of breaking and entering into another female MSU graduate student’s apartment. The attacker had treated that female graduate student the same way he reportedly treated Meg. He continued to attend MSU as a graduate student and work as a teaching assistant, even after pleading guilty to breaking and entering into the first woman’s apartment.

“Sir, I believe that this person here, (Meg), feels harassed, dominated, controlled and threatened by you,” 30th Circuit Judge Richard Garcia said on Dec. 5, 2014, according to a transcript of the proceeding. “That was the design, from your standpoint. You have succeeded in that ...

“So when you push someone, and when you try to take someone on your journey, once you get past a certain point, there’s a lot of danger involved. And the danger is that you might get convicted of breaking into someone’s house, and you might take someone far beyond where they’d like to go and they come to court and say, hey, I need protection from this guy, this is dangerous. So this is where you find yourself, sir.

“So my strong recommendation to you is, you find another outlet for your fantasies.”

Meg's PPO request was upheld.

Hostile environment

Meg and the other MSU graduate student had filed their complaints against their attacker with MSU's Office of Institutional Equity. In both cases, MSU found that the teacher had violated policy by creating a hostile environment for the women. MSU gave him probation in Meg’s case and then expelled him for the violation in the second case.

But then Denise Maybank, MSU’s vice president for student affairs and services, reduced the expulsion to a suspension until Dec. 18, 2017.

“While your conduct was inexcusable, the recommended sanction of dismissal is not commensurate to your conduct violation,” she wrote.

During the 219 days it took to investigate Meg’s case — an investigation that came at the same time the federal government was investigating MSU for mishandling sexual assault cases — she was repeatedly frustrated by investigators.

“I felt like they were really investigating me,” Meg said. “They didn’t believe me. They kept delaying. They didn’t interview all my witnesses. It constantly felt like I was under the microscope and not him.”

Meg's case was also investigated by the Michigan State University police department, which has a specialized sexual assault unit. The detective handling her investigation, Andrea Beasinger, was great, Meg said,

"She really had an understanding of what I was going through," Meg said. "She really listened to me and was very responsive and let me know what was going on."

The prosecutor declined to bring charges in the case.

Michigan State — like every other Michigan public university — cites federal student privacy law and declines to talk about any aspect of specific cases.

These MSU students’ cases illustrate the complexity of what investigators are being asked to look at.

It all boils down to one thing, said Saundra Schuster, partner at the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management and co-founder and advisory board member of the Association of Title IX Administrators, the leading training organization for sexual assault investigators.

“What separates Title IX investigations from others is, frankly, sex,” she said. “It is really different from a police investigation. We are not building a case. We are trying to create a 3D picture of what went on — and that can be very hard to do.”

The investigators

When Katherine Lasher applied to become an investigator at Central Michigan University in 2012, she touted her experience as an attorney, according to her cover letter and resume.

“I have extensive experience in advising and defending business clients, including local universities, relating to employment matters, such as affirmative action, discrimination, investigation practices and protocol, and collective bargaining,” she wrote in her application for the job, officially listed as assistant director Civil Rights & Institutional Equity.

Both documents were included in Lasher’s personnel file, which the Free Press obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Free Press sent similar requests to all of the state’s public universities and received copies of the personnel files of all non-police staff members who investigate sexual assaults.

“It was just a natural progression for me,” Lasher, who is now the university’s Title IX officer and executive director of the school’s Office of Civil Rights and Institutional Equity, told the Free Press. "I had a lot of good experience in investigating and familiarity in keeping information confidential. A lot of the skills I developed as a lawyer I use (in this job)."

Many Title IX investigators across the state are attorneys, the Free Press found. Hiring lawyers to run these investigations is a trend nationwide. However, Schuster said being a lawyer isn’t enough by itself to be a good investigator.

“My concern is that schools are thinking that just because you are a lawyer, you possess a special skill for this,” she said. “Very few attorneys are trained in sex assault investigations. They know how to talk to clients and represent clients and their viewpoints, but in these investigations they aren’t representing anyone. You can’t take a side.”

Not all investigators are lawyers.

At Ferris State University, Kevin Carmody touted his experience as a student life administrator when he applied in 2014 to be the university’s Title IX coordinator. His cover letter noted he had training from the National Association of College and University Attorneys in conducting investigations.

Ferris declined to make Carmody available for an interview.

At Michigan State University, Jayne Schuiteman is an associate professor for the Center for Gender in Global Context and currently teaches gender studies courses for the center, in addition to her work as an investigator.

Gordon is representing a client who was accused of sexual assault at MSU and Schuiteman investigated the case.

“She brings her overlay in,” Gordon said. “Investigators should not be holding other positions.”

MSU said there was no issue with Schuiteman holding another position.

“Our investigators come from myriad and diverse backgrounds, and we have the utmost confidence in each of their abilities to fairly and efficiently investigate cases brought to our Office of Institutional Equity,” MSU spokesman Jason Cody said. “Additionally, all of our investigators are trained annually in a number of areas, including maintaining neutrality.”

Lasher now hires investigators for Central Michigan. She isn’t necessarily looking for an attorney.

“They need to know the neurobiology of trauma,” she said. “They also need experience with Title IX investigations. In 2012, it would be unusual to find certified Title IX candidates. Now they all are.”

Schuster’s group offers that training, which several Michigan universities have sent their staff to.

The two-day initial level training focuses on what federal law is, how to find documentary evidence, who to talk to in the course of the investigation and how to strategize during the investigation.

“We train investigators how to address credibility concerns,” she said. “Everything is evidence, but not all evidence carries the same weight.”

They also spend a lot of time talking about how trauma affects people.

The group also offers second-level and third-level training, each of which dives deeper and deeper into complex cases.

And that’s what these cases are, said Barbara Neiss-May, executive director of Safehouse Center in Ann Arbor.

“Investigating sexual assault is considered one of the most difficult investigations anyone can do,” she said. “It requires a lot of training.

“Survivors often don’t remember things clearly, so it can be very difficult to investigate. A skilled investigator will be able to put the pieces back together.

“Having a poorly trained investigator can have a real impact on a survivor. Their inexperience comes flooding out and the survivor says, ‘I’m not talking.’”

Meg saw that firsthand. Several months into the investigation of her complaint, she got a call from a MSU investigator.

“She said, ‘Do you still believe you were raped?’ I was stunned. It was like they didn’t know how to run an investigation or what to ask. You can be technically qualified for a job and not be the right person."

The impact

Poorly trained investigators can cause issues for those filing the complaint, those accused and even the university.

Four women have sued MSU in federal court over the handling of their cases. A federal investigation into MSU found all sorts of issues with how it handled these cases. Grand Valley State University and the University of Michigan are under federal investigation. Gordon represented a male student who sued U-M over its handling of a case accusing him, a case that was settled.

A false accusation can ruin a life, Gordon noted.

“Everything (is on the line). The rest of your life. This is a very significant thing. I don’t think (the investigators) understand it.”

And for those who were assaulted? It changes their lives.

"With respect to moving on with my life it has definitely made me very hesitant to trust other people and it has made me feel even more vulnerable to exploitation," Kate said. "I think that it made me distrust my own story — was I making a big deal out of nothing? If I benefited from my relationship with him in any small capacity whatsoever, was it wrong of me to report him? By reporting him did I hurt innocent people? Does that make me an ungrateful, malicious monster?

"I think that I still just avoid so many things that remind me of those four months. I mean, I will walk out of my way so as to not go anywhere near Olds Hall. I truly never want to walk into that building ever again."

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj