Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Claire N. Kaplan" <>]

Rape Case Highlights Inadequacy of Yale Sex Assault Policy

6/24/2003 - A federal judge dismissed on April 30 charges of breach of 
contract, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress made 
by a former student who claims she was raped while at Yale, but her charges 
of defamation and inadequate protection from harassment will go to trial. 
The plaintiff's lawyer, Robert Berke, believes that Yale violated Title IX 
in the way it handled the alleged assault. "Once an educational 
establishment is aware of a potential problem, they have an obligation to 
protect students from harassment," Berke told the Yale Daily News. "Yale 
didn't do that." University officials have declined to discuss the case, 
the News reported.

The Yale Women's Center has been advocating for reforms of Yale's sexual 
assault policy for over four years, including establishing offender 
profiling in order to aid victims pressing charges, but these reforms have 
been rejected by university administrators, according to the Yale Herald. 
Madhumita Lahiri, the Yale Women's Center director of political activism, 
said that the administration has argued there is no need for reform because 
of the low incidence of sexual assault, but there are indications that rape 
and sexual assault are underreported, according to the Herald. Though the 
October 2002 University Report on Campus Security shows only one incident 
of sexual assault in 2001 and two each in 2000 and 1999, the New Haven Rape 
Crisis Center received six calls from Yale students between September 2002 
and January 2003, the Herald reports.

Berke expects the trial to begin sometime in the next few months, and said 
he is optimistic about the outcome, the News reports. Patrick Noonan, who 
represents Yale in the matter, said he expects Yale to win the lawsuit 
because he believes it adequately followed its procedures for protecting 
students from sexual assault. "Even if she was raped, that wasn't Yale's 
fault," said Noonan, according to the News.

This story came from the Feminist Majority Foundation, www.feminist.org.



Claire N. Kaplan
Coordinator, UVA Sexual Assault Education Office
Doctoral Candidate, Curry School of Education
UVA Women's Center  *  P.O. Box 800588 *  Charlottesville VA  *  22908-0588
434-982-2774 (V/TTY)    434-982-2901 (Fax)

http://sexualassault.virginia.edu

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