Categories
Abuse Shelter Department of Justice DOGE Press Release

DOGE Alert: Corruption and Fraud on Steroids at the Dept. of Justice

PRESS RELEASE

Robert Thompson: 301-801-0608

Email: info@saveservices.org

DOGE Alert: Corruption and Fraud on Steroids at the Dept. of Justice

WASHINGTON / February 19, 2025 – Last September the Department of Justice announced the award of $690 million in grants by its Office on Violence Against Women (1) . Unfortunately, much of this money likely will end up being spent for unapproved purposes, or even lining the pockets of shelter managers.

The Department of Justice Audit Division conducts ongoing reviews of grantees that receive funds under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) (2). A summary of the audits conducted 2013 to 2017 identified $14.7 million spent for unsupported or unallowable expenditures. Out of 47 grantees, 72% were found to be “Generally Non-Compliant,” which means the agency failed to meet minimum standards across a broad range of indicators (3).

These alarming findings apparently were ignored by DOJ officials.

The following year, the Washington Post published, “Mice in the Couches, Mold on the Walls,” which documented long-standing problems at a Maryland abuse shelter. The shelter’s sanitary conditions had deteriorated to the point that one shelter resident declared, “It was a living hell.” (4)

Once again, the lessons of the Washington Post article fell on deaf ears.

in 2023, Tiffany Carr, former head of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, was arrested for defrauding the state of $3.4 million, perversely diverting grant monies that were intended to support domestic violence shelters across the state (5).

In addition, VAWA funds are widely used to lobby state and local governments. This is a violation of the Federal Anti-Lobbying Act, which prohibits the use of federally-appropriated money for lobbying purposes. For example, the Nebraska Domestic Violence Coalition has been one of the most active groups lobbying state lawmakers. The group’s direct and indirect lobbying expenses were far in excess of their non-VAWA revenues.

These are not isolated incidents. Over the years, the corruption that pervades the domestic violence industry has been documented in disturbing detail (6, 7, 8).

Over the past many years, billions of dollars of taxpayer funds have been used for unlawful or unauthorized purposes, or lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. To end the VAWA “Culture of Corruption,” DOGE auditors need to mandate the following procedures:

  1. Require higher levels of managerial and financial expertise among grant applicants.
  2. Mandate that VAWA grant recipients base their programs on scientific research, not “gender ideology.”
  3. Assure that all persons, male and female, receive assistance on a non-discriminatory basis.
  4. In the event of a failed audit, DOJ managers should identify alternative agencies to provide services.

SAVE – Stop Abusive and Violent Environments – is a 501(c)3 organization working to assure due process, fairness, and equal opportunities for men.

Links:

  1. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-more-690-million-violence-against-women-act-funding
  2. https://oig.justice.gov/reports/ovw-ext.htm
  3. https://endtodv.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/VAWA-Audits-2013-2017.xlsx
  4. https://wapo.st/2Hhx4RP
  5. https://www.maryellenklas.com/tiffany-carr-and-the-dv-coalition/
  6. https://endtodv.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Accountability-and-Oversight.pdf
  7. https://endtodv.org/2018/04/24/catastrophic-failure-the-violence-against-women-act-and-following-the-money/
  8. https://www.saveservices.org/2024/03/continued-culture-of-corruption-at-domestic-abuse-shelters/
Categories
Department of Justice Domestic Violence Law Enforcement Press Release

DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Stabbed Her Husband, Then Engaged in a Five-Year Cover-Up

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Stabbed Her Husband, Then Engaged in a Five-Year Cover-Up

WASHINGTON / May 2, 2024 – The Centers for Disease Control reports that more men than women are victims of domestic violence. Each year, 6.5 million men, compared to 5.7 million women, fall prey to intimate partner aggression (1).

Consistent with these findings, a new report reveals a high-level female official at the U.S. Department of Justice attacked her husband, evaded prosecution, and sought to remove the incident from the public record.

A recent Daily Signal exposé reveals the following (2):

  1. On July 4, 2006, Kristen Clarke attacked her husband, Reginald Avery, slicing his finger to the bone. Maryland police arrested Clarke that night. A criminal case against Clarke was initiated in the District Court of Maryland.
  2. On Oct. 17, 2006, a Maryland state attorney entered a request of “nolle prosequi,” effectively dismissing the charge without a trial.
  3. On January 10, 2008, Clarke obtained an “Order for Expungement of Police and Court Records” for the arrest, thereby obscuring the incident from the public record.
  4. On January 7, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden nominated Clarke to serve as the head of the Department of Justice’s high-profile Civil Rights Division.
  5. During her April 21 confirmation hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton asked nominee Clarke, “Since becoming a legal adult, have you ever been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person?” Clarke dishonestly answered, “No.”

The weakening and dissolution of the nuclear family has long been a central objective of Marxist activists (3). Accordingly, feminists have created numerous domestic violence myths that are designed to divert attention from the reality of female-initiated violence (4).

For example, Gloria Steinem famously claimed that “Patriarchy requires violence, or the subliminal threat of violence, in order to maintain itself” (5). Such falsehoods have served to frighten women and vilify men, eventually undermining the institution of marriage.

Basic notions of fairness and justice have been compromised, as well. Even though a majority of abuse perpetrators are female, the Department of Justice reports that inexplicably, 81% of intimate partner violence arrestees are male (6).

Indeed, female-perpetrated violence is a hidden epidemic in our society (7). Last week, the media reported on a Kansas mother who cut off the head of her 6-year-old son (8). One week before that, an Arizona woman pled guilty to poisoning her husband by pouring bleach into his coffee (9).

SAVE urges lawmakers to undertake a thorough re-evaluation of the domestic violence laws within their jurisdiction, to assure these policies are based on principles of science and justice, not Marxist ideology. And chivalrous judges and law enforcement personnel need to stop giving female abusers a free pass.

Links:

  1. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs/nisvsreportonipv_2022.pdf Tables 9 and 11.
  2. https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/30/exclusive-dojs-kristen-clarke-testified-she-was-never-arrested-court-records-and-text-messages-indicate-she-was/amp/
  3. https://www.simplypsychology.org/marxist-feminism.html
  4. https://endtodv.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Thirty-Years-of-DV-Half-Truths-Falsehoods-and-Lies.pdf
  5. https://libquotes.com/gloria-steinem/quote/lbg2a6f
  6. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvs.pdf , Table 5.9.
  7. https://www.saveservices.org/2023/11/mentoo-documentary-exposes-inconvenient-truths-about-domestic-violence/
  8. https://leoaffairs.com/kansas-mother-who-chopped-off-her-sons-head-while-singing-will-be-tried-in-court/
  9. https://nypost.com/2024/04/10/us-news/melody-felicano-johnson-pleads-guilty-to-poisoning-air-force-husband-coffee-maker/
Categories
Department of Justice Investigations Law & Justice Law Enforcement Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Start By Believing Trauma Informed

EVAWI Announces End of DOJ Funding for ‘Start By Believing’

Registration Fee Now Required for Webinars:
All 2021 Virtual Conference Sessions Available
The pandemic brought challenges, and some surprising gifts, for many of us. Cancelling our 2020 conference was definitely one of the challenges. Because we had to cancel just a few weeks before the conference was scheduled to begin, we lost money already spent on the event, as well as the registration fees. These financial losses represent a substantial percentage of the annual income EVAWI needs to operate. We know that many of you are already aware of that.
What you may not know is that our last federal technical assistance (TA) grant ended in May 2021. These TA grants have been supporting the training and technical assistance programs many of you depend on. Unfortunately, the most recent round of 2021 solicitations did not include similar funding opportunities that we could apply for. [emphasis added]
Between these two developments, EVAWI is unable to continue providing all our online services free of charge, as we have done for so long. We hope this situation will change, as we emerge from the pandemic and new grant opportunities arise.
For the time being, however, we will be charging registration fees for all our live and archived webinars. That may be bad news for some of you. But the good news is that our 2021 virtual conference was extremely successful, with over 2,000 people registered to attend. Because all the sessions from this virtual conference were recorded, we can now – for the first time ever – allow people who couldn’t register for the entire conference to pay for one or more of the 68 recorded sessions. You can find the complete agenda here. Together, this means we now have a total of 120 webinars available in our archive.
Looking ahead, we are very excited about returning to an in-person conference in San Francisco in 2022, but of course also nervous as we continue to navigate new terrain and constant changes. At this time, we are doing everything we can to continue offering our OnLine Training Institute and Training Bulletins free of charge, and we will reevaluate our sustainability in early 2022 to determine if any additional changes need to be made.
We appreciate your support, as we move forward.

Source: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/All-Webinars-Now-Require-a-Fee.html?soid=1101938584617&aid=kkloAR7295I

Categories
Believe the Victim Campus Department of Justice Investigations Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Start By Believing Title IX Trauma Informed Victim-Centered Investigations

PR: Railroading the Innocent: 5,200+ Petition Signers Demand an End to ‘Victim-Centered’ Investigations

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Stewart: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Railroading the Innocent: 5,200+ Petition Signers Demand an End to ‘Victim-Centered’ Investigations

WASHINGTON / June 16, 2021 – An online petition is demanding an end to the use of so-called “victim-centered” investigative methods. “Victim-centered” approaches serve to remove the presumption of innocence and tilt the investigation in favor of the complainant (1). Such investigative philosophies are becoming widespread both in the criminal legal system and on college campuses.

The petition highlights the account of Matt Rolph of New York, who was accused of sexual assault by his former long-term girlfriend. Despite the fact that a jury found him innocent of all charges, Hobart College launched a “victim-centered” investigation that ignored inconsistencies among the witness statements. Rolph sued the college, with Judge Elizabeth Wolford eventually ruling in his favor (2).

Inexplicably, Congress has been supportive of such “victim-centered” methods.

Recently the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1620, which endorses “victim-centered” investigations. The bill defines “victim-centered” as asking questions of a complainant “in a manner that is focused on the experience of the reported victim.” (3) This description is an admission of the biased nature of such investigations, because it says nothing about focusing on the experiences of the defendant, or seeking to verify the truth (or falsity) of the allegation.

“Start By Believing” is another “victim-centered” philosophy that has enjoyed generous government support. Over the years, the “Start By Believing” sponsor has received $9.5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice and other sources (4).

“Trauma-informed” is yet another victim-centered ideology that has been derided as “junk science.” (5)  Healthcare providers now are being instructed in circular “trauma-informed” thinking. According to a New York State nurse who attended one such training, “Current trauma-informed training teaches that a patient who remembers every detail of an incident, or a patient who remembers little to nothing of an incident, both indicate a trauma has occurred.” (6)

Two years ago the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) successfully organized to defeat ABA Resolution 114. The resolution sought to establish an “affirmative consent” standard on the basis of flawed trauma-informed science (7).

The National Registry of Exonerations, which tracks wrongful convictions of the innocent, found that investigative misconduct contributes to 35% of all wrongful convictions. The investigative misconduct includes concealment of evidence, fabrication of evidence, witness tampering, misconduct in interrogations, and making false statements at trial (8).

The names of the petition signers, now numbering 5,278 persons, are available for inspection (9). The online petition continues to accept additional signers: https://www.change.org/p/congress-stop-sham-believe-the-victim-investigations

Citations:

  1. http://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/sa/victim-centered-investigations/
  2. https://casetext.com/case/rolph-v-hobart-william-smith-colls
  3. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1620/text
  4. https://evawintl.org/grants/
  5. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-bad-science-behind-campus-response-to-sexual-assault/539211/
  6. https://www.saveservices.org/2021/05/healthcare-providers-are-being-indoctrinated-with-trauma-informed-myths/
  7. https://nacdl.org/Article/SeptOct2019-FromthePresidentUnleashingthePowerofNA
  8. http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/detaillist.aspx?View={faf6eddb-5a68-4f8f-8a52-2c61f5bf9ea7}&FilterField1=OM%5Fx0020%5FTags&FilterValue1=OF&SortField=Exonerated&SortDir=Desc
  9. https://www.saveservices.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2.-Petition-signatures-Attachment-B-6.6.2021.pdf
Categories
Campus Department of Education Department of Justice Discrimination Title IX

BOLD program under investigation for Title IX complaint

By  — Senior Writer, The Ithacan
Published: February 10, 2021

The U.S. Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation against Ithaca College’s BOLD Women’s Leadership Network after receiving a complaint of a Title IX violation by a University of Michigan professor.

Mark Perry, professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan, filed a complaint against the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network in August on the basis of sex discrimination. The BOLD Women’s Leadership Network is a leadership development program that awards a two-year scholarship to students who identify as women, particularly those who have been underrepresented in higher education.

Samantha Elebiary, BOLD Program Director at the college, said that she cannot comment on the status of an ongoing investigation but that the college will cooperate with the Office for Civil Rights.

Perry said the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network violates Title IX policy, which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” according to the U.S. Department of Education website.  Because the college allows students to apply federal money to their tuition through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the college is required to comply with Title IX policy.

The BOLD Women’s Leadership Network is funded by the Pussycat Foundation, which sets the application criteria for participating colleges. The program requires that applicants identify as women, but Elebiary said nonbinary identifying students are not discouraged from applying. Elebiary said students are not required to disclose their gender identity on the application.

President Shirley M. Collado brought the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network to the college in 2017, shortly after she became president of the college. Collado founded the program when she worked at Rutgers University–Newark. Elebiary started working at the college as a residence director in 2017 and began working with BOLD in 2018.

Collado has not responded to requests for comment.

At the All-College Gathering on Feb. 9, Collado said the program has received over $4 million in funding since she brought the program to the college.

“The main goal is to provide that additional professional leadership development to students who identify as women or female and are in their junior and senior year,” Elebiary said.

Perry said he has filed 283 Title IX complaints. A majority of these complaints are against colleges with programs or spaces exclusive to women. He said he has filed complaints against BOLD Women’s Leadership Network programs at Middlebury College, The College of Saint Rose, University of Connecticut and Colby-Sawyer College. The only college that hosts a BOLD Women’s Leadership Network program that he has not filed a complaint against is Rutgers University-Newark.

His complaint against The College of Saint Rose was also opened for investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. The other complaints are still pending investigation.

Perry said he believes the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network is in violation of Title IX because there is not a similar program for men, and men are ineligible for the current program.

“It’s not just illegal, but it seems unethical to have federal civil rights legislation that’s only enforced selectively and with a double standard,” Perry said.

At this time, Elebiary said the college does not have any plans to alter the structure of the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network.

The college hosts leadership scholarships that are open to all genders like the Leadership Scholar Program Award, the Martin Luther King Scholar Program and the Park Scholar Program. The college also offers leadership opportunities to all students through the Student Leadership Institute organized by the Office of Student Engagement. Student-athletes can also participate in the Ithaca College Sports Leadership Academy, a program that coaches its members on developing individual and team leadership skills.

Perry said he believes women do not need special programming for leadership development because they attend college at a higher rate than men. Women earned more than 57% of undergraduate degrees and 59% of master’s degrees in 2018, according to the Center for American Progress.

While women make up 50.8% of the U.S. population, they are still largely underrepresented in leadership, according to the Center for American Progress.

Categories
Department of Education Department of Justice Due Process Law & Justice Legal Office for Civil Rights Sexual Assault Title IX

The Biden Plan For Title IX Must Protect Due Process

By: MICHAEL POLIAKOFF | January 25, 2021

The 18th-century British jurist William Blackstone pronounced, “It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.” There are few principles of law we hold more sacred than “innocent until proven guilty.” For most of the last decade, however, this doctrine has had negligible impact in matters of campus sexual assault.

There are policies of the previous administration that President Joe Biden is already in the process of overturning or altering. It would be well, however, for him to reconsider his campaign promise to “return to and then build on” the Obama administration’s Title IX policies, which led to more than 500 investigations of accused students and shattered an untold number of lives. Having himself been the object of unproven allegations of sexual assault, he must look into his own heart before reinstituting campus procedures that make a mockery of justice.

The victim of sexual assault is likely to bear the emotional and psychological scars for years to come. It is a moral imperative for an institution of learning to protect students from the trauma that ensues. But the mirror image of that horror happens when an innocent person is unjustly found guilty of sexual assault and punished – typically by expulsion or long-term suspension – by his college. The reputational scars and career damage may last a lifetime. Due process provides a greater likelihood that punishment will fall on the guilty and not those wrongfully accused.

There are many instances in which the courts have found wrongful prosecution. Sometimes the case hinged on spectacular mendacity, like the invented account of a brutal gang rape in a University of Virginia fraternity house in 2014 that provided Rolling Stone with a fraudulent cover story. Or the dishonest prosecution launched by an opportunistic district attorney—later disbarred—of Duke lacrosse players that showed how quickly a prestigious university, from the president on down, called for punishment when no crime was committed.

Last spring, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos signed a Final Rule that provided key definitions and regulations for the enforcement of Title IX when students accuse other students of campus sexual assault. In addition to the rule’s protection of alleged victims, including reporting procedures and survivor support, it notably provides to the accused the rights to present, cross-examine, and challenge evidence in campus hearings.

You do not have to be a constitutional scholar to recognize that Secretary DeVos was right to redress a longstanding ethical and procedural abuse. The Biden administration must not reverse her important work and bring back the guilt-presuming process that the Obama administration demanded in its April 4, 2011, “Dear Colleague Letter” and in subsequent, egregious misinterpretations of Title IX.

These extra-legal Department of Education decrees, which never went through a formal regulatory review process, pressured universities to stack proceedings against accused students. They even threatened to take away institutions’ federal funding if they allowed cross-examination of accusers in campus hearings. Thus, did the Obama administration deprive accused students of what the Supreme Court has repeatedly called “beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”

“Innocent until proven guilty” does not fare well against dramatic claims of sexual violence. At the extreme end, recall then-congressman Jared Polis, now governor, who inverted Blackstone’s wisdom by stating in a House higher education subcommittee meeting on sexual assault: “If there are 10 people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard, maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all 10 people. We’re not talking about depriving them of life or liberty, we’re talking about them being transfer to another university, for crying out loud.”

For crying out loud, indeed. What college or university is going to admit a person, innocent or not, who has been expelled on a charge of sexual assault? What company, scholarship foundation, or professional school is going to take that person whose academic record will forever show expulsion or even suspension for sexual assault?

President Biden should consider documented cases like that of the Amherst student who was expelled based on a woman’s claim that he had forced her into sexual contact more than 20 months before—even though her own text messages proved that in fact she had been the active party when he was blackout drunk in her room.

Had the accusations hurled against President Biden on the campaign trail been leveled years ago against College Joe and adjudicated under a campus regime like the one later decreed by the Obama-Biden administration, he would probably have had no meaningful chance to defend himself or clear his name. His career and American history would have been entirely different.

Michael Poliakoff is president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities. He previously served as vice president for academic affairs and research at the University of Colorado and in senior roles at the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Pennsylvania Department of Education. He has taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, Hillsdale College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Wellesley College. He received his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Yale University, a Class I Honours B.A. at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. in classical studies from the University of Michigan.

The Biden Plan For Title IX Must Protect Due Process (forbes.com)

Categories
Department of Education Department of Justice Law & Justice Legal Title IX

Biden faces Title IX battle complicated by politics and his own history

A Long and Complicated Road Ahead
Improving how colleges respond to sexual assault on campus is one of President Biden’s top priorities. But it’s likely to be an uphill battle

By Greta Anderson, January 22, 2021

Joe Biden entered the White House this week with high and wide-ranging expectations from higher education leaders, advocates for survivors of sexual violence and students for how his new administration will require colleges to handle and reduce sexual assault on college campuses.

In addition to addressing the public health and economic consequences of the pandemic, supporting the ongoing movement for social justice and equity for Black Americans, and trying to unite a politically polarized population, President Biden has also promised to strengthen Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded institutions, which mandates how colleges should respond to student reports of sexual misconduct.

Through his time as a senator and vice president, violence against women and the prevalence of sexual assault has remained a “signature issue” and something the president “cares deeply about,” said Shep Melnick, a professor of political science at Boston College and author The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education (Brookings, 2018).

Melnick noted that Biden was a “major factor” in the Obama administration’s emphasis on reducing campus sexual assault. As vice president during that eight-year period, Biden led the administration’s It’s On Us campaign and visited colleges to promote awareness of the problem and advocate for prevention strategies, such as bystander intervention, or encouraging and training students, particularly young men, to intervene when they see a classmate in a dangerous situation. He wrote the 1990 Violence Against Women Act, which aimed to protect women from gender-based violence.

Aya Gruber, a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who writes about feminism and the criminal justice system, recalled when Biden said, “If a man raised his hand to a woman, you had the job to kick the living crap out of him,” during a White House event promoting men’s involvement in the fight against campus sexual assault.

Protecting women and strongly punishing those who commit sexual violence is “part of Biden’s brand,” Gruber said. His past rhetoric and policy positions on campus sexual assault offer some idea of how Biden’s Department of Education will address the issue. He has so far vowed to “immediately” put an end to the Title IX regulations issued by former secretary of education Betsy DeVos, which dramatically shifted how colleges respond to allegations of sexual misconduct.

The DeVos regulations were incessantly criticized and challenged in court by advocates for survivors of sexual assault, who took issue with mandates for colleges to require students who are opposing parties in sexual misconduct cases to be cross-examined by a third party “advocate” at campus hearings for sexual assault investigations. The regulations also exclude sexual misconduct that occurs off campus from oversight under Title IX and apply a more limited definition of sexual harassment.

Several women’s groups and organizations that support survivors’ rights, such as the advocacy group Know Your IX, want the DeVos regulations gone. They say students who are sexually assaulted or harassed were better off under the 2011 Title IX guidance issued by the Obama administration, when institutions were advised to investigate and adjudicate all reports of sexual misconduct, “regardless of where the conduct occurred.” The guidance, commonly referred to as the 2011 Dear Colleague letter, said that a single incident of sexual harassment could prompt a Title IX investigation and that institutions must use a preponderance of the evidence standard when determining a student or staff member’s guilt.

DeVos rescinded the 2011 guidance during her first months as education secretary in 2017. Biden has pledged to reinstate it. His plan to address violence against women published online says his administration will “restore” the 2011 guidance that “outlined for schools how to fairly conduct Title IX proceedings.”

Biden’s campaign website, which details his agenda for women’s issues, says the Education Department under DeVos has “rolled back the clock and given colleges a green light to ignore sexual violence and strip survivors of their civil rights under Title IX, guaranteeing that college campuses will be less safe for our nation’s young people.”

His administration will “stand on the side of survivors, who deserve to have their voices heard, their claims taken seriously and investigated, and their rights upheld,” the comments on the website say.

Civil liberties groups and advocates for the rights of students accused of sexual misconduct are dismayed by Biden’s stated intention to reinstate the 2011 guidance. They argue that the guidance led to colleges violating free speech and due process rights. Supporters of the DeVos regulations, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and SAVE, a Washington, D.C., area-based organization that advocates for constitutional protections during college disciplinary proceedings, say the 2011 guidance was grossly unfair.

Edward Bartlett, founder and president of SAVE, said the 2011 guidance was ineffective at reducing sexual misconduct and infringed on student rights. He said the hundreds of federal and state lawsuits filed after the issuance of the 2011 letter prove it did not help those who report sexual misconduct or those accused of it, he said.

Bartlett noted that a Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct by the Association of American Universities found a slight uptick in rates of sexual assault at top colleges between 2015 and 2019, and reporting of incidents remained low throughout this time period. Two surveys were conducted, one in 2015, which involved 27 colleges, and another in 2019, in which 33 colleges participated. The 2019 survey found the overall rate of sexual assault was 13 percent for all students and nearly 26 percent for women undergraduates at those colleges, according to an AAU report about the data. There was a 3 percent increase in the rate of sexual assault among undergraduate women between 2015 and 2019 at the colleges that participated in the surveys, the AAU report said.

“Not only did they find no improvement, they found it got worse,” Bartlett said.

Melnick, the Boston College professor, said the AAU survey and other data available about the prevalence of campus sexual assault are not strong enough to conclude whether or not the 2011 guidance was effective. There isn’t any empirical evidence that suggests that Title IX guidance issued during the Obama administration made the issue worse, he said. But if the Biden administration intends to revert to the former guidance, it may soon have to provide data to support that decision, Melnick said.

“The current debate over evidence — inconclusive as it is — will loom larger in the future,” he said in an email.

In the years since the guidance, several federal appeals courts have also struck down parts of the Title IX processes that many colleges developed following the Obama administration’s guidelines, deeming them “unfair” and sometimes discriminatory against men.

Experts who study Title IX and advise institutions on how to implement the law said colleges would be better off if the Department of Education takes a forward-looking approach to combating campus sexual misconduct rather than reverting to the 2011 guidance.

Jake Sapp, a Title IX legal researcher for the Stetson University Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy, said court decisions that favored students accused of sexual misconduct were a direct response to the 2011 guidance, which didn’t set clear standards for due process.

The DeVos regulations rely heavily on these federal court opinions and went through a formal rule-making process that can’t simply be revoked, as some advocacy groups for sexual assault survivors are urging Biden to do, Sapp said. Even the most contested item in the DeVos regulations — the cross-examination requirement — has been backed by several appeals court decisions and will be applicable to colleges in those judicial circuits even if the Biden administration stops enforcing the regulations, he said.

“The administration can set a regulatory floor, but they can’t build a roof over what the court’s jurisdiction is,” he said. “They can’t say colleges can’t provide this due process protection when a federal court says that you already have to have that.”

Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX, endorses halting enforcement of the DeVos regulations, but she said the challenges student survivors face have changed significantly in the decade since the 2011 guidance was issued and returning to it isn’t going to effectively address those new challenges.

“Survivors on campus are facing horrendous obstacles to getting support from their school that are nothing like the Obama administration was dealing with,” Carson said. “My fear is that the Biden administration will come in and say, ‘We’ve dealt with this issue before, we know how to do this,’ and not take the time to understand the needs of students right now in this unique moment.”

Carson described obstacles such as a “huge uptick” in students accused of sexual assault filing retaliatory countercomplaints or defamation lawsuits against their accusers. These actions can mean survivors do not receive the support they need from their college or end up in debt from legal fees, she said.

Colleges and students have also been through bouts of “whiplash” as they’ve had to make policy adjustments based on the political positions of the president in office, Carson said. Some institutions have been consistently “awful” on protecting students from sexual misconduct, but other institutions attempted to comply with the Trump administration’s requirements and experienced “confusion, frustration and a lack of resources,” Carson said.

The lack of clarity and conflicting policies and rhetoric has frustrated students and discouraged some from filing sexual misconduct reports, she said.

“There will be schools that are strained by this back-and-forth,” she said. “To restore confidence in survivors turning to their schools, this administration is going to have to be very transparent about what students can expect … This is going to be a tough, uphill battle.”

Peter McDonough, vice president and general counsel for the American Council on Education, said college administrators recognize that their institutions can’t simply go back to the 2011 guidance. There are new decisions by federal courts that many institutions must follow, new state laws that change how campuses respond to sexual misconduct and resolution agreements between the Education Department and individual colleges that outline how those colleges must improve their Title IX policies and procedures, McDonough said. The DeVos regulations are just one piece of the puzzle, and eliminating them doesn’t change how colleges must deal with sexual misconduct moving forward, he said.

College officials would appreciate “more flexibility” from the Biden administration — such as guidance that loosens some requirements of the DeVos regulations — but they also spent months pouring time and energy into adjusting their policies to meet the new standards during the coronavirus pandemic, McDonough said.

“We’re tired,” he said. “Don’t give us one more thing to do this academic year. Let us get our students back to as close as we can to normal.”

The Biden administration should begin the work of creating new Title IX regulations that strike a balance for all sides, including those who experience sexual assault, those accused of it and the college officials that are legally responsible for carrying out the procedures, McDonough said. What college officials are hoping for is a “thoughtful” look at how to amend or replace the DeVos regulations with what all sides feel is the fairest possible process, he said.

“Otherwise we’re going to boomerang for years,” McDonough said. “How are we going to get ourselves, as a broad community, to a place where we feel like what we’ve got is pretty fair? That rhetorical question needs to guide a fair amount of the decision making in this next administration.”

Sapp, who is also deputy Title IX coordinator at Austin College in Sherman, Tex., said Biden and the Education Department officials working under him should not focus on rhetoric painting the DeVos regulations as an “attack on survivors” and listen to more than just one line of thought on the issue. Sapp believes the DeVos regulations are a “good starting point” for Biden to build on, but that the politics surrounding them will deter Biden from publicly recognizing that.

“Part of what Biden has demonstrated is that he’s open to diversity of ideas and thought,” Sapp said. “That needs to be demonstrated in the ideas that he has on Title IX … If you’re going to put forward a Title IX regulation that’s going to stand the test of time, it’s going to have to have input from across the board.”

Gruber, the University of Colorado law professor, is not convinced there can be a compromise on Title IX.

“Whatever he does, somebody’s not going to be happy,” she said.

The Biden administration’s path to well-received Title IX requirements is further complicated by outstanding allegations of sexual misconduct against Biden. Some student leaders of college sexual assault prevention groups said the allegations made them feel conflicted about voting for Biden in November, which they felt they had to do in order to reverse the Trump administration’s actions on Title IX. But Carson, of Know Your IX, said that she and other survivors have not forgotten the story of Tara Reade, the woman who said she was sexually assaulted by Biden in 1993, and others who said he inappropriately touched them.

“That’s something that our team is grappling with every day as we approach this administration,” Carson said. “That’s something we’re going to remember moving forward. We should always be supporting equity and supporting survivors, not just when it’s convenient.”

Biden faces Title IX battle complicated by politics and his own history (insidehighered.com)

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Department of Education Department of Justice Discrimination Law & Justice Legal Office for Civil Rights Title IX

Department of Education says schools can’t use ‘national statistics’ to justify women-only scholarships, programs

GREG PIPER – ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE COLLEGE FIX

Don’t give ‘special status’ to outside groups with sex restrictions, either

Largely thanks to the efforts of University of Michigan-Flint economist Mark Perry, schools across the country are facing scrutiny from the Department for Education for offering programs and scholarships that exclude males from eligibility.

His flurry of Title IX complaints indisputably played a significant role in its Office for Civil Rights’ creation of two new “issue codes” last year to track complaints against “single sex campus programs” and “single sex scholarships.”

On Thursday, the Office for Civil Rights went a step further by releasing “technical assistance” on its interpretation of Title IX with respect to such programs and scholarships.

Much of the material is not new to people who follow Title IX complaints and resolutions, and the document explicitly tells institutions that it does not have “the force and effect of law” and is “not meant to bind the public or regulated entities in any way.” (The Obama administration, by contrast, explicitly threatened institutions for not following its nonbinding Title IX guidance.)

But for K-12 schools and colleges that have long acted as if Title IX didn’t apply to activities with the word “girls” in the title, and depictions of only females in their materials, the 11-page document makes plain that it does.

One of the most popular reasons for offering a female-only program or scholarship – supposed underrepresentation – is severely restricted under the feds’ interpretation.

While they can restrict eligibility by sex for “remedial or affirmative action” in “limited circumstances,” schools are still prohibited from using “sex-based quotas.” Even more sweeping, they cannot “rely on national statistics as evidence of limited participation.”

Rather, schools must “clearly articulate why the particular sex-based scholarship or program was necessary to overcome the conditions in its own education program or activity which resulted in limited participation therein“:

As part of this analysis, OCR evaluates whether the classification based on sex was supported by an “exceedingly persuasive justification,” based on a substantial relationship between the classification and an important governmental or educational objective.

Schools targeted with complaints will have to provide “a specific assessment of the facts and circumstances surrounding the scholarship or other program” to OCR. The office will analyze whether the “purported remedial discrimination” has any relation to “overcoming the effects of those conditions.”

It flatly warns schools that their sex-based scholarships justified as affirmative action “may never rely on overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females.”

Schools should also be wary of titles for scholarships and programs that are “reasonably perceived” as stating a “preference or restriction” based on sex. Otherwise they must “clearly state in their public-facing communications,” such as websites and recruiting materials, that such preference or restriction does not exist, despite the title.

OCR notes that it has reviewed scholarship applications and “awardee data, disaggregated by sex,” to discern whether schools have “communicated effectively” about their nondiscrimination policies.

Several sections in the question-and-answer format are answered “Generally, no” on the appropriateness of sex preferences and restrictions. One of them is whether schools can even advertise or promote third-party scholarships, such as by listing them on its website:

OCR expects that schools will take reasonable steps to verify that the sponsoring organization’s or person’s rules for determining awards do not, expressly or in fact, discriminate on the basis sex.

The guidance also cautions schools about providing “significant assistance” to third parties that offer “non-funded” advancement programs, such as fellowships, with sex preferences or restrictions.

Such assistance has historically been interpreted to include giving third parties “special status or privileges” not offered to “all community organizations,” such as by designating faculty sponsors or letting parties use campus facilities “at less than fair market value.” Simply listing a non-funded program on its website, however, is not “significant assistance.”

Some of the guidance is highly nuanced, particularly with respect to elementary and secondary schools. But other parts are direct and unambiguous, such as the section on sex-based restrictions on school facilities:

OCR has opened an investigation into whether a university that offered a designated “women’s only” workout space in its gym facilities violated Title IX by restricting that space to members of only one sex.

Read the guidance.

Department of Education says schools can’t use ‘national statistics’ to justify women-only scholarships, programs | The College Fix

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Accountability Campus Civil Rights Department of Justice Discrimination Law Enforcement Office for Civil Rights Press Release Research Training Victims

PR: Expert Panel Calls on Lawmakers to Bring an End to Campus ‘Kangaroo Court’ Investigations

Contact: Gina Lauterio
Telephone: 301-801-0608
Email: glauterio@saveservices.org

Expert Panel Calls on Lawmakers to Bring an End to Campus ‘Kangaroo Court’ Investigations

WASHINGTON / October 11, 2016 – Warning “victim-centered” investigations are “inconsistent with basic notions of fairness and justice,” an Expert Panel has issued a report calling on lawmakers to end such approaches in campus sexual assault cases (1). The Expert Panel was convened in observance of Wrongful Conviction Day on October 4 and addressed the growing problem of “victim-centered” investigations at colleges and in the criminal justice system.

“Victim-centered” methods abandon traditional notions of impartiality and objectivity, and instead call on investigators to presume that “all sexual assault cases are valid unless established otherwise by investigative findings,” as one report enjoins (2). Such recommendations represent a negation of the long-held tenet of the presumption of innocence, and are likely to lead to wrongful determinations of guilt.

One of the expert panelists was Michael Conzachi, a former homicide detective and police academy instructor. Conzachi sharply criticized the University of Texas-Austin document Blueprint for Campus Police, saying its recommendations to remove inconsistent statements and exculpatory information from investigational reports represent a potential violation of laws that bar evidence concealment and tampering.

E. Everett Bartlett, president of the Center for Prosecutor Integrity, reported that many lawsuits by accused students against universities now include allegations of investigational impropriety. He identified nine categories of investigational biases claimed in campus lawsuits such as Overt bias/Predetermination of guilt and Inadequate investigator qualifications.

SAVE has developed a model bill titled the Campus Equality, Fairness, and Transparency Act (CEFTA). The bill mandates the use of “justice-centered” investigations that would require campus investigators to “discharge their duties with objectivity and impartiality” (3).

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Accountability Department of Justice Innocence Press Release Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Wrongful Convictions

PR: Georgia Tech Reinstatement is Evidence of Growing Public Alarm over Due Process and Free Speech on Campus

Contact: Gina Lauterio
Telephone: 301-801-0608

Georgia Tech Reinstatement is Evidence of Growing Public Alarm over Due Process and Free Speech on Campus

WASHINGTON / January 6, 2016 – The recent decision to reinstate a Georgia Tech student expelled for an alleged sexual offense marks a growing wave of popular concern over the erosion of due process protections and free speech rights on college campuses.

Earlier this week the Georgia Tech Board of Regents overrode the decision by a school administrator who had recommended the expulsion of a student accused of sexual assault. The Board reinstated the student when it learned that the investigator failed to interview witnesses provided by the defendant and gave him only one hour to review a 13-page, single spaced summary of the investigation (1).

Numerous other judicial decisions or legal settlements in recent months have overturned the findings of campus sex tribunals for due process violations. The decisions involved the University of California-San Diego, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Washington and Lee University, University of Southern California, and Middlebury College (2).

Concerns over the loss of free speech rights are being voiced, as well. President Obama has twice called for the restoration of open debate on campuses, first at a town hall meeting on September 15 and more recently during a November 15 interview with George Stephanopoulos (3).

Legislators have also taken up the cause of restoring free speech. On June 2, 2015 the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on the state of free speech on college campuses (4).

In Missouri more than 100 members of the state Legislature signed a letter to the University of Missouri’s board of curators demanding the “immediate firing” of a professor who attempted to have a reporter forcibly removed during a student protest (5).

The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri likewise urged the University of Missouri to not compromise the right to free expression in its efforts to fight racism, saying, “Mistakenly addressing symptoms — instead of causes — and doing it in a way that runs counter to the First Amendment is not the wise or appropriate response.” (6)

“Due process and free speech are part of the American DNA,” notes SAVE spokesperson Sheryle Hutter. “Lawmakers should not shrink from the challenge of restoring constitutionally-rooted rights and protections to college campuses.”

1. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/expelled-georgia-tech-student-reinstated/article/2579610
2. http://www.saveservices.org/2015/09/pr-due-process-gains-momentum-moves-to-center-stage-in-campus-sexual-assault-debate/
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PlcALRh6Og
4. http://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/20150602/103548/HHRG-114-JU10-20150602-SD003.pdf
5. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/05/missouri-lawmakers-flex-muscles-in-call-for-professors-firing.html?intcmp=hpbt2
6. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/12/aclu-urges-university-missouri-to-better-protect-students-free-speech.html