Ashe Schow reports at the Washington Examiner:

The number of lawsuits filed by students accused of campus sexual assault increased dramatically after the Education Department issued new guidance on how schools should tackle the issue.

Further, the percentage of lawsuits filed by either party involved in an accusation shifted heavily toward the accused, according to a report fom Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, an organization trying to reform the way schools handle accusations.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011 that severely limited an accused student’s ability to defend himself while threatening to remove funding from schools that did not toughen up on campus sexual assault. In the wake of the letter, accused students have been expelled at what appears to be an alarming rate — for he said/she said situations that look less like sexual assault and more like regretted hookups — all in an effort for schools to show they are tough on the issue to avoid a loss of funding or a federal investigation.

The SAVE report found that accusations increased drastically after OCR issued its guidance. United Educators, which ensures about 1,000 colleges and universities across the country, received 262 claims of campus sexual assault between 2006 and 2010 [i.e., an average of 52 a year] — prior to the OCR guidance. Those claims increased to 78 in 2011 and 73 in 2012. And in 2013, the claims doubled to a whopping 154.

At the same time, lawsuits from students accused who had been wrongly expelled or punished also increased. Just after the OCR guidance was issued, in 2012, just one student filed a lawsuit (that we know of). In 2013 that number increased to 10 and continues to rise. In 2014, 34 accused students filed lawsuits, in 2015, the number peaked at 53. So far in 2016, 24 students have filed lawsuits.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Ashe Schow’s phrase, “he said/she said situations that look less like sexual assault and more like regretted hookups,” is an apt description of the typical case outlined in the more than 100 lawsuits filed by male college and university students who say they were falsely accused. Most of these cases involve alcohol. According to a 1996 study, “90% of all acquaintance rapes involve alcohol.” A 2009 report based on a survey of more than 5,000 students stated: “Most sexual assaults occurred after women voluntarily consumed alcohol” — about 80%. Feminists have had tremendous success in convincing college girls that (a) it’s OK to get drunk and have sex, however (b) if they later have any regrets about getting drunk and having sex, this means they were victims of rape.

This was made clear at Washington and Lee University, where a lawsuit alleged that a school official whose job involved investigating sexual assault “recently had given a talk on campus about ‘regret equals rape,’ or the argument that what first passes for a consensual sexual experience later can be called a rape by a woman who has second thoughts.” The university settled that case out of court, and thus avoided a trial that would have exposed the witch-hunt climate of sexual paranoia that feminists have created on campuses all across the country.

Discussing a case at Brown University, I explained this problem:

Feminists who claim there is a “campus rape epidemic” have been dismissive of concerns about false accusations and due process. Feminists contend that false accusations of rape are so rare that this possibility can be ignored, and the question of why women sometimes do lie about rape is treated dismissively. After a high-profile claim of gang-rape at the University of Virginia was exposed as a hoax, Janet Bloomfield examined the motives behind such false accusations: “12 Women Who Lied About Being Raped And Why They Did It.” Despite these concerns, however, states have passed laws and universities have implemented policies based on so-called “affirmative consent” doctrine which effectively makes it impossible for an accused student to prove his innocence. The mere accusation of sexual misconduct is now regarded as tantamount to proof of guilt . . .

Drunk people often do things they later regret, and there is a lot of drinking and sex on college campuses. The “rape culture” hysteria is about making male students 100% responsible for sexual activity, which means female students have 0% responsibility for their own behavior. “Empowerment” thus becomes a feminist synonym for irresponsibility.

Illinois AG uses debunked statistics and propaganda to push new law on campus sexual assault: https://t.co/fiYWPNkqe7 — Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) August 30, 2016

Illinois Joins Growing List of States in Which College Sex Is Basically Illegal. @AceofSpadesHQ https://t.co/W6KuriGpfm — The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) August 31, 2016









Share this: Share

Twitter

Facebook



Reddit



Comments