Education official apologizes to victims of sexual violence

WASHINGTON » The Education Department’s top civil rights official’s “flippant” remarks are raising questions about the government’s commitment to fighting campus sexual violence, even as she issued her second apology in as many days for attributing 90 percent of sexual assault claims to both parties being drunk.

Candice Jackson, assistant secretary for civil rights, told victims of sexual assault meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday that she was sorry for her remarks.

“As much as I appreciate apologies, which are difficult, unfortunately, there’s no way to take it back. It’s out there,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, who attended the meeting and relayed Jackson’s apology Thursday. “What’s extremely impor- tant now is that they do the hard work to counter those sorts of rape myths. They need to explicitly reject them.”

DeVos also met Thursday with people who say they were falsely accused and disciplined and representatives of colleges and universities to talk about the impact of stepped-up ef- forts by the Obama administration to enforce the law known as Title IX as it relates to sexual assault.

“We can’t go back to the days when allegations were swept under the rug,” DeVos said at the meeting. “And I acknowledge there was a time when women were essentially dismissed. That is not acceptable. It’s clear that there are failings in this process. A system without due process protections ultimately serves no one in the end.”

The lawyer for a college football player who says he was falsely accused of sexual assault says DeVos sees federal rules on enforcement as unfair and in need of change.

Kerry Sutton was in the room with DeVos on Thursday when six people told “gut- wrenching” stories about being falsely accused of sexual violence on campus. “They made the point that we’re not saying that sexual assault victims don’t have important rights,” she told The Associated Press. “We’re just saying that the system has to be fair.”

Sutton represents University of North Carolina football player Allen Artis, who was charged last year with misdemeanor sexual battery and assault on a female. He was suspended from football but has since been reinstated. He has said the encounter was consensual.