Fourandsixty / Wikimedia Commons / Via commons.wikimedia.org Howard University

Howard University failed to swiftly handle sexual assault reports, leading to at least one assailant raping on campus again, a federal lawsuit claims. What's more, the Washington, DC school refused to provide the help that suicidal rape victims requested and let an accused rapist who was an RA have access to a key to his alleged victim’s dorm room, according to the complaint filed Wednesday. The university's handling of the sexual assault cases pushed two of the plaintiffs, referred to in the suit as Jane Does 1 through 5, to leave Howard's campus due to concerns about safety and their mental health. “If my case was handled the way it was supposed to be handled,” Jane Doe 2 told BuzzFeed News, echoing the allegations in the complaint, then Jane Doe 1 “would've never met her assailant. He would've been dismissed." Doe 1 and Doe 2 say in the suit they were raped by the same male student — who allegedly transferred to Howard after being accused of sexual misconduct at UCLA — but the university didn't act until one of the women went public in March 2016 in a series of tweets, which prompted a campus protest. After the tweets appeared, the civil complaint states, Howard’s Dean of Student Affairs told her, "You embarrassed your family by doing that." Doe 1 says in the suit she was also fired as a resident assistant after reporting her rape, while Doe 2 says the university took away her financial aid and threatened to refer her debt to a collection agency. The lawsuit also accuses Candi Smiley, the Howard official in charge of dealing with sexual assault cases, of going weeks or months without responding to emails and phone calls from alleged rape victims and their advocates. Multiple officials in the complaint are similarly accused of not returning phone calls or emails from women checking for updates on their investigations, asking for counseling, or requesting extensions for class assignments as they dealt with their cases. However, the complaint only names Howard University as a defendant. The university and officials mentioned in the suit did not comment on the lawsuit on Wednesday. A Howard spokesperson said it is university policy to not comment on pending litigation. Jane Doe 5 was just a month away from graduation when she reported to the city police and the university in April 2015 that a fellow student assaulted her, the complaint states. She did not feel safe at Howard anymore and asked to finish her credits at another campus. According to the suit, it took Howard official a month to reply: She needed to provide a police report to show "that this incident happened" before they would decide. An administrator then told Doe 5 to go ahead and take those classes that summer, the complaint claims, but after she completed her courses, the university took seven months to confirm it would count her credits and let her graduate.

"You have black men and women applying and going to HBCUs, believing that they're going to be safe, but they're only thinking honestly about racism."

"This is an egregious case," said Linda M. Correia, the DC-based attorney representing the five plaintiffs. "These young women are living on a campus where they have reached out for help from the school, and the passage of time is just compounding the harm that they feel. They should feel safe on their campus, safe in their classrooms, in their dorms, and Howard has not ensured that they do feel safe." The federal lawsuit touches on a number of key criticisms of how colleges handle sexual assault reports. However, experts briefed on the allegations say there's an added sense of betrayal for Howard students that these allegations come out of such a prominent historically black college, or HBCU. "I think that's the travesty: that you have black women and men applying and going to HBCUs, believing that they're going to be safe, but they're only thinking honestly about racism," said Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and filmmaker whose documentary NO! focused on black female rape survivors. Simmons noted that HBCUs have seen a spike in enrollment in recent years, amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and racial turmoil at predominantly white institutions, or PWIs. "It's unfortunate they are applying, trying to escape the other forms of violence on PWIs and still confronted with this form of violence," Simmons told BuzzFeed News. "This notion that an HBCU is a safe space in terms of race — it is a safe space, but until they incorporate anti-rape work, it is not a safe space on gender-based violence." Among the more than 100 HBCUs, Howard is considered one of the most elite, sometimes referred to as the "Mecca" of black education because of how many African-American PhDs, lawyers, and prominent graduates it has produced. But like many of its HBCU peers, it has struggled financially over the past several years, due to funding declines, its troubled hospital, changes to a type of federal financial aid that many students use, and — some critics argue — leadership problems. Trying to address its dire finances, Howard laid off hundreds in recent years, resulting in censure by faculty and trustees. The financial issues at HBCUs create major roadblocks in addressing sexual assault, a team working with the US Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women recently found. HBCUs need more counseling staff and advocates focusing on sexual violence, the team concluded, and more training for faculty and staff about how to deal with these issues — and improvements like those aren’t free. Still, Howard has received over $1 million in the past decade from the US Department of Justice specifically to address sexual assault. The DOJ money requires grantees to make key improvements, including training campus officials about how best to respond to rape reports. Howard has promoted resources it says it offers victims of assault and has prevention programs meant to help stop abuse in the first place. But according to the federal lawsuit, the university is falling far short when cases crop up in real life.

"When both people involved are students, the men are always treated with a level of protection that the women are not."

When Doe 1 reported her assault to Smiley, Howard’s Title IX Coordinator, on Feb. 28, 2016, according to the suit, her goal was to not see her assailant in her classes or living space. Smiley said they couldn't remove him from her classes until an investigation was complete, the complaint states. Despite several calls for updates on the investigation, according to the suit, Doe 1 didn't hear from Smiley again for a month, except for once in March when Smiley asked Doe 1 if she was talking about her rape report in text messages with her friends. Several days after Smiley asked Doe 1 this, the legal filing says the university fired Doe 1 from her RA position. Doe 1 decided to vent about how the university was treating her on Twitter, starting what the lawsuit describes as a "Twitter storm" on March 21st, outing the alleged assailant, and remarking "this is why people don't say nothing. they wanna avoid all this unnecessary bullshit." Dozens of students offered support for Doe 1, and around 100 students protested on campus on March 22, 2016 in response to her tweets.

Dozens of @HowardU student protestors now blocking 4th Street chanting "no means no" @wusa9