#MeToo inspires wave of old misconduct reports to colleges

BOSTON — For 35 years, Ruth D’Eredita tried to dismiss her former professor’s behavior — the way he touched her, groped her and kissed her. But last year, as dozens of women came forward to share similar encounters with powerful men, she started to see her memories differently.

“It made me look at that incident and say, no, it was wrong,” said D’Eredita, a 1984 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, a women’s school in Massachusetts. “I went there with a heart full of passion, eager for scholarship, just to throw myself into it, and this man looked at me as a potential sexual partner.”

She’s now among a wave of women inspired by the #MeToo movement to report past sexual misconduct to their colleges, breaking sometimes decades of silence in an attempt to acknowledge the wrongdoing, close old wounds and, in some cases, seek justice.

The reports from deep in the past have also raised big questions about how to investigate such cases and how to usher them through newer discipline systems built upon updated ideas about right and wrong.

In many ways, schools say, they face the same frustrations that arose in last month’s Senate hearing over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting another teenager in the mid-1980s. Memories fade. No one agrees. Witnesses stay quiet.