Lawsuit alleges 'culture of silence' in ISU Greek community around sexual assault

Grant Rodgers | The Des Moines Register

Iowa State University officials failed to stop members of the college's Greek community from harassing and alienating a sorority member after she reported being sexually assaulted at a fraternity house in January 2015, violating the federal gender equity law meant to shield students from such discrimination, according to a lawsuit.

It claims that Greek students referred to the now-former student as "the girl that got raped" and that she was subjected to comments like, "Nobody get near (her) or she'll call the cops and claim rape."

The school's director of Greek affairs eventually stopped responding to the woman's emails about these incidents, despite assuring her at least once that something would be done about the retaliation she felt, according to the lawsuit.

The retaliatory behavior was particularly aggressive because other Greek members blamed her for getting the fraternity where the assault happened — a "well-known 'party house'" — shut down, according to the suit.

The fraternity is not identified by name in the lawsuit. But the university's Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter house on Lynn Avenue was closed in August 2015, in part because of a reported rape that matches the month and year of the assault described in the former student's lawsuit.

Tom Newkirk, a Des Moines attorney representing the student, said he believes universities nationwide are still struggling to reckon with implicit biases that lead students and college administrators alike to cast blame on a woman for her own attack. Women who do come forward are too often met with "judgy" questions from administrators and even friends about what they were wearing, whether they were drinking and other factors that serve to cast the blame for an assault away from the perpetrator, he said.

Those problems are then exacerbated by the unique familial aspects of the fraternity and sorority system, to which 16.5 percent of ISU's more than 30,000 undergraduate students belong, Newkirk said. In his client's case, several of her own sorority sisters accused her of lying about the assault and asserted that the fraternity brother she accused "would never have done that," according to the lawsuit.

“When someone within that system is accused, the forces rally around that person and that’s what creates the slut-shaming,” said Newkirk, who recently helped win a $6.5 million settlement from the University of Iowa after jurors found school officials engaged in gender discrimination in the firing of a top athletics official. "All of these individuals look at this young man and say, 'I know he’s not a rapist.'"

The Register is withholding the name of the plaintiff, who declined through Newkirk to speak with a reporter, because it typically does not identify victims in sexual assault cases.

The Minnesota resident first enrolled at ISU in the fall 2014 semester. She dropped out after the fall 2015 semester because "her sorority would not support her, the Greek community banded together to isolate her and her academic performance suffered as a result of the hostile educational environment," according to the lawsuit.

The alleged assailant is not named as a defendant in the case, nor is he mentioned by name in the 17-page pleading. Michael Norton, university counsel for the school, said college officials could not comment because of the ongoing litigation. Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Greek Affairs Billy Boulden was out of the office on Wednesday, according to a woman who answered the department phone.

The lawsuit was filed in Polk County District Court in March, but was moved to federal court in Des Moines at the urging of the school earlier this month. In a brief filed on behalf of the university Monday, Assistant Iowa Attorney General William Pearson wrote that the defendants "vigorously dispute many of (the) plaintiff’s allegations."

According to the lawsuit, the woman went through a rape kit examination at a hospital the day after the assault and made reports to the Ames Police Department, the college's Title IX coordinator and the Office of Equal Opportunity. However, the college was unable to find evidence necessary to hold the fraternity member responsible for the assault after he hired an attorney and refused requests to be interviewed, according to the lawsuit.

The closure of the university's Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter followed an interim suspension that began Jan. 21, 2015, the same month that the woman was assaulted, according to the Iowa State Daily. The fraternity has 215 chapters across the country with approximately 13,500 undergraduate members.

A police investigation found evidence of an assault, but criminal charges were not immediately filed, according to the Register's archives.

The woman did get a no-contact order against the accused issued by the school, but she would still see him "almost daily" at the library, CyRide buses and elsewhere, according to the lawsuit. The alleged assailant "would stare her down and intimidate her," the lawsuit said. Additionally, after the woman reported the assault, the risk manager of the assailant's fraternity sent out an email to all of the chapter members encouraging them not to interact with her at social events or in class.

The humiliation and shaming bled into the college's annual Greek Week, when fellow sorority and fraternity members refused to compete in traditional games when they were paired with or scheduled to compete against the woman, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges the woman reported her concerns to Boulden, who said the retaliation would be addressed but ultimately quit responding to her emails.

Additionally, the lawsuit claims that the dean of students' office failed to tell the woman's professors that she needed academic accommodations while she dealt with the ongoing traumas of the assault and retaliation.

The lawsuit, which names the university and the Iowa Board of Regents as defendants, alleges that officials' inaction "fosters a pervasive culture of silence within the Greek community regarding issues of sexual assault and violence." The school violated the federal Title IX law by failing to address harassment and discrimination that became so problematic that the woman was unable to have equal access to educational opportunities, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages for the former student's emotional distress, as well as punitive damages that are typically used to punish the behavior of a defendant and deter others in the future.

The Ames campus is home to 64 different Greek chapters, according to its Office of Greek Affairs.