Jury Awards $100,000 to Boston College Student Accused of Sexual Assault
“jury found the private nonprofit institution mishandled sexual assault allegations against him”
The money probably provides little comfort but at least it’s something.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Jury Sides With Student Accused of Sexual Assault
A former Boston College student has won more than $100,000 from his alma mater after a federal jury found the private nonprofit institution mishandled sexual assault allegations against him.
The case is significant in that it is the first sex assault lawsuit against a university to reach a jury trial since 2011, when the Obama administration rewrote the rules for how college officials should investigate and arbitrate sexual violence on campuses.
Some activists who believe the Obama rules lacked due process for accused students have seized on the Boston College ruling as validation that these campus proceedings are unfair and potentially ruinous of the college and professional careers of those accused.
“The jury’s clear verdict here suggests that, as with so many situations involving both free speech and due process, universities are unable to defend in public what they try to do in private,” said Samantha Harris, vice president of policy research at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties watchdog in academe.
The lawsuit stems from an episode that happened seven years ago. John Doe, as he is known in court filings, was a senior at the university in 2012 and on assignment for the student newspaper, The Heights, covering an event on a cruise ship sponsored by a university-sanctioned student group.
According to Doe’s original lawsuit, there were more than 600 people on the ship, and the event was crowded. As Doe made his way across a dance floor on one of the decks, a female student, referred to as AB in court documents, turned around and began screaming at Doe. AB reported later that someone had digitally penetrated her anus with at least two fingers.
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Comments
Don’t you hate it when you are just standing there, and in a flash while simply walking by, someone has digitally penetrated your anus with two fingers, without skipping a beat?
100,000 is ridiculously low…look at how much sexual assault complaints warrant against universities. A false accusation that ruins someone’s professional prospects should generate far more.
The college didn’t make the false accusation. This was not a suit for defamation but for breach of contract; the jury found that the college did break the contract, so it gave him the damage he suffered from that breach, i.e. a semester’s tuition and the loss he sustained by having his legal career start a year later than it should have.
The college was the hammer that put a big dent in his future prospects, and there were other lawsuit components that were unjustly thrown out. By the way, his law career starting later is probably not the only damage he will encounter, so justice is unlikely to be fully served here.
There were huge holes in her story and exonerating evidence if you’ve followed it closely enough, so they are 100% to blame for his troubles. BC was caving to pressure from the girl’s lawyer family to sue from the other side. Obama era regs are also to blame for this, but that is unfortunately not actionable.
someone had digitally penetrated her anus with at least two fingers.
If she can’t tell the difference between two, three and four, it’s probably not her first time.
One more reason to live in the analog world. Oh wait, that appears to have its own set of problems.
Yah, as an old coot functioning in my analog reality, I get digitally manipulated all the time. How soon do you become ColonelWood?
This report seems to omit any and all details of what the University did, and of what the University allegedly did wrong!
It broke its contract with the plaintiff by suspending him in violation of its own internal rules.
Thanks, Milhouse. The excerpt from Inside Higher Ed gave no details, not even that the accused was suspended.