Editor's note: The following article was written by a sexual assault victim, reflecting on her experience with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's process for handling cases like hers. While her identity is known to the Times Union, our practice is generally not to identify sexual assault victims.

I am an RPI honors student who was stalked, choked and sexually assaulted by a fellow student last September. This was the most terrifying event of my life. It still haunts my dreams.

In an effort to protect other potential victims as well as for my own mental health and safety, I filed a Title IX complaint with the school, and after nine long months of investigation, culminating in a seven-hour hearing, I won. Thinking the ordeal was finally over, I was shocked to discover, through an RPI Reddit post in June, that my private ordeal was now the subject of a Times Union article in which my assailant, in true looking-glass fashion, was now alleging in a federal lawsuit that he was the victim of anti-male bias. The lawsuit and accompanying newspaper article forced me to relive the pain I experienced, and allowed the assailant, known in the article as "John Doe," to violate me all over again.

The article states that "(John Doe) was found by a school disciplinary panel to have groped, choked, and improperly kissed a female student in September." John Doe denies these charges, when, in fact, these were not even the charges he was facing. The school disciplinary panel actually found him guilty of the complaints I brought against him, which included stalking me, choking me, lying to get me alone, pinning me down on his bed, trying to rape me, and, when he found out I was on my period, holding me down so that he could "get off" on me through his clothes. Only when he was finished was I allowed to leave.

John Doe will have the public believe that he was treated unfairly during the process of the investigation and hearing. In fact, we were treated equally. The investigation was thorough: It began in September and culminated in a hearing in April, with a final decision and subsequent appeal, which was denied, in May.

Contrary to his claims, both he and I were unable to know the identities of various witnesses. He suggests that his sister was not allowed to testify, preventing him from having a potential exculpatory witness. In fact, the hearing officers went to great lengths during an almost seven-hour hearing to make sure she was able to testify, and we actually waited an hour so that his sister, who was out of town, could testify by phone. However, if anything, his sister contradicted his claims, furthering the evidence of his duplicitous nature.

Rape on college campuses is an epidemic. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college, and 63.3 percent of men at one university, who self-reported acts qualifying as rape or attempted rape, admitted to committing repeated rapes.

John Doe's claim that the system is biased toward females, and against males, defies logic. In fact, women on campus are still woefully reluctant to report sexual assaults, and if they do, many are unable to proceed past the initial investigatory stage. The Title IX process is arduous and many victims are either too fearful to report their assault, or lack the supporting evidence to prove their case. John Doe's prior victim did not report her rape, and, as a result, he was free to assault me the following year.

This is the sad reality for women on campus, where one in five women will be sexually assaulted. The cost of education is high and, tragically, for women, even higher.