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

["Abby Tassel" <>]

Once again, my experience has been that using the possibility of a civil law
suit on behalf of the victim to insure compliance is a false premise.   I
don't know the actual number of civil suits that have been filed in these
circumstances (does anyone?  This would be a great project!) but certainly
perpetrators are much more likely to sue/retain an attorney than are
victims, so we have institutions who are much more worried about the lawsuit
from the perp.  "Investigations" proceed accordingly. I'm sure they can be
shown to be "unbiased", but this is within a system that questions women's
reasons for reporting, literally (still) what women wear, how they led him
on, etc.  

College's have a huge incentive to not find their professors guilty of
sexual harassment.  The stakes are high as are the unofficial standards of
evidence.  

To connect this to Wendy's latest, wouldn't it be great to have attorneys to
represent victims all the time!  Ahhh, I hope I live to see the day.
Abby

-----Original Message-----
From: S. Daniel Carter 
[mailto:]
 
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 1:35 PM
To: Abby Tassel; 

Subject: Re: SAPC Digest, Vol 575, Issue 1 - restorative
justice/mediationpolilcies

Believe me we understand your frustration but I'm just not sure who you mean
by "someone from outside" or how it would be possible to officially involve
someone who could be truly independent while in anyway acting on behalf of
the school or being under contract to them. In addition there are several
critical logistical issues, not the least of which is sharing information
about the victim with an outsider and even the accused whose records would
be protected by FERPA.

Under Title IX institutions have the legal obligation to conduct an
educated, unbiased investigation into every complaint of sexual harassment
and assault. They may have an incentive in not finding a violation, which
would lead to further action and possibly resistance from the accused up to
a lawsuit from them but they've also got a heavy incentive to be fair or
they may face Title IX action up to and including a civil lawsuit from the
victim.

They do not have a Clery Act incentive not to find a violation, all good
faith reports of sexual assault have to be included in statistics no matter
what the student judicial or other grievance process results in. Only a
sworn law enforcement investigation may "unfound" a report and only then can
it be excluded from the statistics.

********************************
S. Daniel Carter
Senior Vice President
Security On Campus, Inc.
http://www.securityoncampus.org/
e-mail:

on 8/10/06 8:55 AM, Abby Tassel at 

wrote:

> It would make more sense to me to have someone from outside of the
> institution do an investigation.  The institution has an enormous interest
> in finding no violation.  It is like having an alleged criminal
investigate
> himself! In addition, the people who are doing the investigations do not
> necessarily have a depth of understanding about the issues so can expect
> stereotypical victim behavior (or assume nothing has happened) and depend
on
> societal myths of why someone would report, etc.
> Abby






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