Students sue Santa Clara University over sex assault cases
Plaintiffs say new hurdles could drive sex crime victims to silence
SANTACLARA>> Two students suing Santa Clara University, alleging the school failed to protect them from classmates who had sexually assaulted them, say their frustrations in seeking accountability risk becoming commonplace under reworked federal rules on collegiate sexual misconduct response.
The women say they were marginalized by investigations into their assault claims, against male students who either acknowledged having or were determined to have had nonconsensual sex with them, according to the lawsuit.
“My case specifically highlights that even if they do find the person responsible, they still have room to choose not to punish them,” one co-plaintiff said in an interview. “It’s frightening and needs to change.”
The women — whose names are withheld in the lawsuit and by this news organization because they are sexual assault victims — say recent changes to Title IX instituted by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will discourage other college sex assault and harassment victims like them from speaking out.
“With these policy changes in place, there’s no point” in reporting, the first plaintiff said. “From a victim’s standpoint, there is no point in going through the emotional trauma of coming forward and trying to seek justice for yourself. You’re already starting at a disadvantage.”
Administrators at Santa Clara University declined to discuss the suit, which was last filed in mid-May and seeks unspecified damages. In lieu of a comment, a spokesperson for the university provided an excerpt of an email sent to the campus after the Title IX changes, from President Kevin O’Brien and Title IX coordinator Belinda Guthrie.
“We want to assure you of our commitment to create and maintain a safe, supportive, and responsive environment for all members of our community,” the email reads. “We want to reaffirm our Jesuit commitment to cura personalis (Latin for “care for the whole person”) and continue to build above that baseline, creating and sustaining an environment free from discrimination, harassment and sexual violence.”
The Sigma Chi fraternity national office, a secondary defendant in the lawsuit, did not respond to a request for comment. The men accused by the plaintiffs are listed as defendants but are not being identified by this news organization because they were never arrested or charged with any crimes.
In the lawsuit, the first plaintiff states she attended a spring 2018 formal in South Lake Tahoe with a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. During the getaway, she says in the suit, as she and her date slept in separate beds in a hotel room, he went over to her bed, undressed
her and proceeded to have sex with her, as she lay frozen in fear.
The woman and at least one of the man’s fraternity brothers later met with the accused student, and the lawsuit asserts he “admitted that he never had consent but that he thought that was the direction things were going that night,” and that he “showed no emotion or remorse and did not apologize.”
This plaintiff states that a Title IX investigation concluded her claims were un
substantiated and a subsequent no-contact order was not actively enforced.
The second plaintiff states that in February 2019, before attending a party held by a university-affiliated group, she drank alcohol in a dorm room with some female friends and a man accompanying them.
According to the lawsuit, she “blacked out” shortly after arriving at the party and her friends scrambled to get her back to her room. Instead, the woman states, the man carried her to his dorm room and had sex with her while she was unconscious.
The woman later learned that her friends’ concern
prompted campus security officers to go to the room, where they found her sleeping on the bed, and the man nearby. The suit says that “campus security took no steps to assess” either of the students.
She says in the lawsuit that she later went to the hospital for a sexual assault medical exam, which confirmed abrasions to her vagina and assorted bruising on her body, and gave a statement to Santa Clara police.
This plaintiff states that she asked for a no-contact order and for accommodations to ensure she had no interaction with her attacker, but that instead, she
was the one dropped from a class they shared. She also says the male student violated the no-contact order by having a private investigator try to reach her.
According to the lawsuit, an ensuing Title IX investigation in that case concluded the sex was nonconsensual.
The suit states that the university’s Sexual and Gender Based Misconduct Board “concluded that there was a preponderance of evidence
that (the co-plaintiff) was incapacitated and incapable of giving consent and that (the defendant) knew or should have known this. However, the Board did not find that the incident constituted a sexual harassment violation.”
The issue of “preponderance of evidence” reference touches on one of the most significant changes made in May by DeVos to Title IX rules on sexual misconduct investigations. This majority-of-evidence
standard under the Obama administration was replaced by a higher “clear and convincing” standard, akin to the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard in criminal trials.
DeVos called the Obama rule a “failed approach,” and said the policy shift “recognizes we can continue to combat sexual misconduct without abandoning our core values of fairness, presumption of innocence and due process.”