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

be mindful of the fact that mediation or restorative justice-based ideas will 
likely provoke legal action under Title IX which prohibits such resolutions 
for the most serious sexual assaults, such as rape.

also -- i would suggest taking a very restrained approach toward restorative 
justice before adopting any of its policies for something as serious as 
sexual assault.  Many critics of restroative justice see the idea as a 
decriminalization model, designed to subjugate the nature of the harm endured 
by women as a class.  This critique is bassed largely on the idea that the 
philosophy is typically not applied to thiings like, robbery, larceny or 
other crimes against men's wealth/property.  It may well be an appropriate 
idea for first time youthful offenders of relatively minor crimes -- but as 
applied to violence against women, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing.  I say 
this because its popularity just happened to start growing just as women 
finally got the criminal justice system to apprecate that private harm is a 
public problem.  Restorative justice diminishes the public nature of private 
violence by allowing the system to treat interpersonal violence as something 
other; something less worthy of public resources than theft and property 
crimes.  thus -- while it has superficial appeal, it is politically insulting 
to women as a class -- and activists will likely raise all sorts of 
challenges to schools who adopt RJ policies and procedures by arguing, among 
other things, that it violates Title IX to apply such an idea 
disproportionately to gender-based harm if the same rules do not apply with 
equal force to other types of crimes, including hate crimes perpetarted 
against certain classes of students.

It is also worth noting that RJ is often promoted as a way to make the victim 
whole -- and this is a worthy goal -- but there is no reason the victim 
cannot achieve the same benefits of restorative justice in terms of 
compensation and confrontation if the harm is treated as a serious 
infraction.  She can still confront him in a criminal or school setting -- 
she can sue for damages if she wants to  -- so the idea that she should trade 
on her right to have the crime against her treated as an offense equal in 
seriousness to other types of crimes -- and accept a kind of second class 
citizen status -- is - in my opinion - unconscionable.  

the ussct called rape the most serious harm to the self short of murder -- 
but we sometimes treat it like shoplifting -- and restorative justice 
principles validate this maltreatment.

wendy murphy