Category: Sexual Assault

PR: Noting the ‘Seriousness of Penalties,’ College Administrators Suspend Trainings that Promote Sex Stereotypes

Post author By saveadmin
Post date October 19, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Noting the ‘Seriousness of Penalties,’ College Administrators Suspend Trainings that Promote Sex Stereotypes

WASHINGTON / October 19, 2020 – In response to new federal requirements, college administrators have begun to stop school trainings and curricular offerings that promote stereotypes based on sex or race. For example, the University of Iowa recently announced a decision to suspend all such trainings, workshops, and programs. Noting “the seriousness of penalties for non-compliance with the order,” the pause applies to all harassment and discrimination trainings offered by the institution (1). Other institutions of higher education reportedly have made similar decisions (2).

Two federal policies are driving the re-evaluation. First, the new Department of Education sexual harassment regulation states that Title IX training activities “must not rely on sex stereotypes.” (3) Second, Executive Order 13950 directs federal agencies to suspend funding for any institution that promotes concepts that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive.” (4)

SAVE is urging administrators at colleges and universities across the country to take immediate steps to end trainings and other activities that may promote sex stereotypes. Title IX and other training programs are known to be promoting sex stereotypes in at least seven ways:

Domestic violence: Each year there are 4.2 million male victims of physical domestic violence, and 3.5 female victims, according to the Centers for Disease Control (5). University training programs need to clearly and accurately state these numbers.
Sexual assault: Nearly identical numbers of men and women are victims of sexual assault, according to the federal National Intimate Partner and Violence Survey. Each year, 1.267 million men report they were “made to sexually penetrate,” compared to 1.270 million women who report they were raped (6). But many university training programs utilize data from surveys relying on methodologies that undercount the number of male victims who were made to penetrate.
Annual vs. lifetime incidence: Due to well-known problems with recall and memory retrieval, lifetime incidence numbers significantly undercount domestic violence and sexual harassment incidents, especially less serious incidents that occurred in previous years. University trainings should use annual, “in the past 12 months” numbers, not “lifetime” numbers.
Sex-specific pronouns: In referring to domestic violence or sexual assault perpetrators and victims, many training materials misleadingly refer to the perpetrator as “he” and the victim as “she.”
Examples: Training materials often provide hypothetical examples to illustrate key concepts. Such examples need to highlight approximately equal number of male and female victims.
Imagery: Some university websites feature domestic violence incidents that portray a threatening male standing over a fearful, often cowering female. Such one-sided portrayals are misleading.
Negative stereotyping of men as a group: Some universities offer campus-wide programs that seek to redefine, reform, and/or stigmatize masculinity. University-sponsored courses that promote theories of “toxic masculinity,” “rape culture,” and “patriarchal privilege” are likely to be in violation of the federal ban on sex stereotyping. Such stereotypes serve to undermine principles of fairness and equity for male students.

For example, the University of Texas offers a program titled “MasculinUT.” The program’s website states that concerns about sexual assault and interpersonal violence justify the “need to engage men in discussions about masculinity as one tool to prevent violence.” (7) The university does not offer a similar program directed at females, thereby creating an unlawful stereotype of male perpetrators and female victims.

Some universities teach courses that feature the American Psychological Association report, “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men.” (8) The accompanying APA article made the stereotyping claim that “traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.”

To date, the SAVE Title IX Equity Project has submitted 20 complaints to the federal Office for Civil Rights for non-compliance with regulatory requirements for Title IX training materials (10).

Links:

https://diversity.uiowa.edu/regarding-executive-order-13950?utm
https://blog.aspb.org/policy-update-uneven-implementation-of-executive-order-on-race-and-sex-stereotyping/
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/titleix-regs-unofficial.pdf 45(b)(1)(iii)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-race-sex-stereotyping/
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/2015data-brief508.pdf Tables 9 and 11.
Lara Stemple and Ilan Meyer. The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4062022/
https://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/masculinut.php
https://www.apa.org/about/policy/boys-men-practice-guidelines.pdf
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner
http://www.saveservices.org/equity/

Campus Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX

PR: Legal Experts Warn of the Perils of Campus ‘Dual-Track’ Adjudications

Post author By saveadmin
Post date September 16, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Legal Experts Warn of the Perils of Campus ‘Dual-Track’ Adjudications

WASHINGTON / September 17, 2020 – One month after a historic civil rights policy took effect at colleges across the nation, legal experts are warning administrators about the legal pitfalls of “dual-track” adjudications. Dual-track adjudications are employed by colleges when students or faculty are accused of a type of sexual misconduct that falls outside the strict definitions found in the new Title IX regulation.

Yesterday, SAVE issued a report titled, “Dual Track Adjudications: Recipe for Legal Disaster.” The Commentary notes that apart from the requirements of the new federal policy, “there is another branch of government that vigorously enforces due process rights: the judiciary.” The analysis cites recent decisions by the Third, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Circuit Courts that make it easier for an accused student to prevail in a legal action charging the university with sex discrimination (1).

The article concludes, “While universities may seek to evade the intent of the new Title IX regulation by creating dual-track disciplinary systems, they cannot ignore the courts. As federal circuits change the law to favor accused students in these lawsuits, universities should think twice about attempting to preserve their discriminatory practices.”

The SAVE Commentary echoes concerns recently expressed by a number of legal experts:

Last week, Samantha Harris and Michael Allen published an editorial titled, “Universities Circumvent New Title IX Regulations.” The attorneys reveal, “Things were supposed to change in August, when the new Title IX regulations took effect, with robust free speech and due process protections. Now it appears that many campuses are fighting to ensure these protections remain illusory. It’s not that institutions aren’t changing their policies. Rather, they are doing so to comply superficially while claiming increased authority to subject students and faculty to processes that provide few, if any, of the protections that the regulations require.” (2)

In an August 24 editorial, attorney Teresa Manning voiced concerns that schools “are devising their own sexual-misconduct policies, presumably with their own definitions, separate from Title IX.” For example, Princeton University’s dual-track policy does not require in-person questioning of parties, even though legal scholars believe that live cross-examination is “beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.” (3)

Addressing the issue more broadly, legal commentator KC Johnson identifies three themes reflected in the four recent appeals court decisions: officials’ indifference to innocence, widespread procedural irregularities, and institutions that bowed to political pressures to find more accused persons guilty. In his September 15 article, Johnson warns of the specter of continued litigation: “In theory, the new federal Title IX regulations, which require colleges to use fairer procedures, will protect against the injustices identified in the recent appellate decisions. But political, legal, and university opposition to the regulations cloud their future. It may be that federal courts will need to continue to correct campus processes that too often seem indifferent to justice.” (4)

If college administrators decide to create “dual-track” adjudications, SAVE urges that these systems assure the same level of due process protections as campus Title IX adjudications.

Links:

Campus Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Equity Project Training

PR: Many Universities Not Compliant with New Title IX Requirement to Post Training Materials

Post author By saveadmin
Post date September 8, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Many Universities Not Compliant with New Title IX Requirement to Post Training Materials

WASHINGTON / September 8, 2020 – A review of the websites of 50 colleges and universities across the nation reveals that 65% are out of compliance with the Title IX regulation’s requirement to post all Title IX training materials. This past week, SAVE filed complaints with Office for Civil Rights against several of these non-compliant schools.

The Title IX implementing regulation, 34 CFR 106, has new provisions, which went into effect on August 14, 2020, that require the posting of Title IX training materials. The regulation calls on schools to post on their websites, “All materials used to train Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and any persons who facilitate an informal resolution process.” §106.45(b)(10)(D)

On May 18, the Office for Civil Rights issued detailed guidance on the topic: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/blog/20200518.html. The guidance states, “All materials used to train Title IX personnel…Must be publicly available on the school’s website.” [emphasis in the original].

The guidance goes on to explain:

“Section 106.45(b)(10)(D) does not permit a school to choose whether to post the training materials or offer a public inspection option. Rather, if a school has a website, the school must post the training materials on its website.

A school must post on its website: “All materials used to train Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and any person who facilitates an informal resolution process.” Posting anything less than “all materials” on the website in insufficient. Accordingly, merely listing topics covered by the school’s training of Title IX personnel, or merely summarizing such training materials is not the same as posting “all materials.” [emphasis in the original]

Many institutions, such as Princeton University (1), posted training materials geared toward students and faculty, or webinars provided by the Department of Education, but did not post the training materials used for Title IX staff. The federal regulation states that all materials used to train Title IX personnel must be posted. Training materials that are protected by a student ID number or password are also out of compliance, as the federal regulation states the material must be made publicly available.

In contrast, many schools are in compliance with the federal regulation’s posting requirement. Examples of such schools are Amherst College (2) and the University of Colorado-Boulder (3). The University of Vermont even posted a YouTube video of the actual training program that their staff attended (4).

SAVE has filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights against 10 schools that are out of compliance with the federal regulation. More OCR complaints will be filed as SAVE continues its review of school websites.

The SAVE Title IX Equity Project has found that Title IX violations are widespread at schools across the country. These violations pertain to sex-specific scholarships, sex-specific programs, and due process procedures in campus adjudications. The number of open OCR investigations of such violations currently exceeds 200 cases, and continues to increase (5).

Citations:

https://sexualmisconduct.princeton.edu/reports
https://www.amherst.edu/offices/title-ix/title-ix-policy
https://www.colorado.edu/oiec/policies
https://www.uvm.edu/aaeo/title-9-sexual-misconduct
http://www.saveservices.org/equity/ocr-investigations/

Campus Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Victims

PR: Survivors, Accused Students, and Faculty Bid ‘Farewell’ to Campus Kangaroo Courts; Welcome New Title IX Regulation

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 18, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Survivors, Accused Students, and Faculty Bid ‘Farewell’ to Campus Kangaroo Courts; Welcome New Title IX Regulation

WASHINGTON / August 18, 2020 – Sexual assault survivors, accused students, and faculty members are welcoming the new Title IX regulation, which took effect this past Friday on college campuses across the nation. Title IX is the federal law that bans sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds. The new regulation replaces a 2011 Department of Education policy that sparked national controversy, hundreds of lawsuits, and thousands of federal complaints.

Sexual assault survivors are applauding the new regulation because it provides a detailed and legally enforceable framework for colleges to investigate and adjudicate allegations of sexual assault. Under the old policy, some victims reported the ‘brush-off’ treatment they received was more traumatic than the original assault (1).

Many of these victims complained to the federal Office for Civil Rights. As a result, the number of sex discrimination complaints increased over four-fold, from 17,724 (2000-2010) to 80,739 (2011-2020). (2) Male victims of sexual assault are anticipating that their complaints also will taken more seriously by campus administrators.

Accused students will benefit from a restoration of fundamental due process rights, which include the right to an impartial investigation and an unbiased adjudication. Over the years, hundreds of wrongfully accused students have sued their universities. On July 29, for example, a federal appeals court reversed a lower court decision and reinstated sex discrimination charges brought by David Schwake against Arizona State University (3). The Schwake decision brings the number of judicial decisions in favor of students accused of sexual misconduct to 184. (4)

Faculty members, who found their free speech rights curtailed by expansive definitions of sexual assault, welcomed the new Rule, as well. The National Association of Scholars decried how faculty members had been “denied the chance to respond to complaints, the right to confront and question witnesses, and even the right to be presumed innocent.” (5)

On August 9, Judge John Koeltl issued a ruling that allowed the regulation to be implemented as planned on August 14. Highlighting the long-awaited improvements for all parties, the Judge noted the regulations will “benefit both complainants and respondents by providing procedural guidance for grievance procedures,” and promised complainants “greater assurance” that decisions “will not be overturned because the process did not comply with due process.” (6)

The new Rule has been praised by a wide range of stakeholders, including the Independent Women’s Forum (7), National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (8), Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen (9), former ACLU president Nadine Strossen (10), former Virginia governor Douglas Wilder (11), and others (12).

Staci Sleigh-Layman, Title IX Coordinator at Central Washington University, explains, “These new changes give a lot of credibility and due process and equal kind of attention to the person accused as well as the person coming forward… they put in place a process that seeks to provide due process for both sides.” (13)

Links:

Campus Investigations Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Trauma Informed

PR: Four Reasons Why General Counsel Should Not Allow ‘Trauma-Informed’ Investigations for Title IX Cases

Post author By saveadmin
Post date August 3, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Four Reasons Why General Counsel Should Not Allow ‘Trauma-Informed’ Investigations for Title IX Cases

WASHINGTON / August 3, 2020 – With less than two weeks remaining before the effective date of the new Title IX regulation, SAVE is advising university counsel to review institutional polices to assure Title IX investigations do not rely on flawed “trauma-informed” methods. The use of such investigative approaches, sometimes referred to as “victim-centered” or “Start By Believing,” is inadvisable for four reasons:

Regulatory Requirements: “Trauma-informed” means the investigator presumes that the complainant has experienced significant physical and psychological trauma, and interprets the complainant’s statements through that lens. This presumption is inconsistent with the text of the new Title IX regulation, which reads:

“A recipient must ensure that Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and any persons who facilitate an informal resolution process, receive training on….. how to serve impartially, including avoiding prejudgment of the facts at issue, conflicts of interest, and bias… recipient also must ensure that investigators receive training on issues of relevance to create an investigative report that fairly summarizes relevant evidence….Any materials used to train Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and any person who facilitates an informal resolution process, must not rely on sex stereotypes and must promote impartial investigations and adjudications of formal complaints of sexual harassment.” [key words in italics] (1)

Case Law: In a growing number of lawsuits, judges have issued rulings against universities because of their use of trauma-informed investigations. In a recent judicial decision against Syracuse University, the federal judge noted: “Plaintiff alleges that the investigation relied on ‘trauma informed techniques’ that ‘turn unreliable evidence into its opposite,’ such that inconsistency in the alleged female victim’s account . . . becomes evidence that her testimony is truthful” (2).

Brooklyn College professor KC Johnson has summarized a number of these cases (3): “In a lawsuit against Penn, the court cited the university’s trauma-informed training as a key reason why the complaint survived a motion to dismiss. During the Brown university bench trial, the decisive vote in the adjudication panel testified that she ignored exculpatory text messages because of the training she had received. Ole Miss’ trauma-informed training suggested that an accuser lying could be seen as a sign of the accused student’s guilt. And at Johnson & Wales, the university was so disinclined to make public the contents of its training that it refused a request by the accused student’s lawyer to see it before the hearing.”

Lack of a Scientific Basis: Several peer-reviewed articles have discredited the scientific basis of trauma-informed investigations: Deborah Davis and Elizabeth Loftus: “Title IX and “Trauma-Focused” Investigations: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” (4); Sonja Brubacher and Martine Powell: “Best-Practice Interviewing Spans Many Contexts” (5); and Christian Meissner and Adrienne Lyles: “The summary of Training Investigators in Evidence-Based Approaches to Interviewing.” (6)

Journalist Emily Yaffe has described trauma-informed methods as “junk science.” (7) A compilation of other scientific critiques of trauma-informed is available online (8).

Criticized by Leading Title IX Groups: Several organizations have issued reports and statements that are critical of trauma-informed investigations: ATIXA: “ Trauma-Informed Training and the Neurobiology of Trauma;” (9) FACE: “Trauma-Informed Theories Disguised as Evidence”(10) SAVE: “Believe the Victim: The Transformation of Justice;” (11) In addition, 158 professors and legal experts endorsed an Open Letter that is critical of the use of trauma-informed methods (12).

A UCLA working group appointed by former California governor Jerry Brown concluded, “The use of trauma-informed approaches to evaluating evidence can lead adjudicators to overlook significant inconsistencies on the part of complainants in a manner that is incompatible with due process protections for the respondent.” (13)

“Trauma-informed” may be useful in the context of providing counseling and mental health services. But trauma-informed philosophy serves to bias the investigative process, rendering campus adjudications unreliable.

Links:

Accountability Campus Civil Rights Department of Education Discrimination Due Process False Allegations Investigations Office for Civil Rights Press Release Sex Education Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX Training Victims Violence

Double Jeopardy: SAVE Calls on College Administrators to Assure Due Process Protections for Black Students in Title IX Proceedings

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 28, 2020

Contact: Rebecca Stewart
Telephone: 513-479-3335
Email: info@saveservices.org

Double Jeopardy: SAVE Calls on College Administrators to Assure Due Process Protections for Black Students in Title IX Proceedings

WASHINGTON / July 28, 2020 – SAVE recently released a study that shows black male students face a type of “double jeopardy” by virtue of being male and black. (1) Analyses show although black male students are far outnumbered on college campuses, they are four times more likely than white students to file lawsuits alleging their rights were violated in Title IX proceedings (2), and at one university OCR investigated for racial discrimination, black male students were accused of 50% of the sexual violence reported to the university yet they comprised only 4.2% of the student population. (3)

In 2015, Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley raised an alarm to the U.S. Senate HELP committee that, “the rate of complaints and sanctions against male students of color is unreasonably high.” (4) She advised school administrators to, “not only to secure sex equality but also to be on the lookout for racial bias and racially disproportionate impact and for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity – not only against complainants but also against the accused.” (5)

Her powerful words were ignored. Over the past 5 years numerous black males have been caught up in campus Title IX proceedings. Their lawsuits often claim a lack of due process in the procedures.

Grant Neal, a black student athlete, was suspended by Colorado State University – Pueblo for a rape his white partner denied ever happened. (6) Two black males students accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student recently settled a lawsuit against University of Findlay for racial, gender and ethnic discrimination. (7) Nikki Yovino was sentenced to a year in prison for making false rape accusations against two black Sacred Heart University football players whose lives were ruined by her accusations. (8) These are just a few examples.

Wheaton College in suburban Chicago, a major stop along the Underground Railroad, recently dismissed Chaplain Tim Blackmon, its first nonwhite chaplain in its 155-year history. Blackmon claims Wheaton’s Title IX office failed to investigate a previous Title IX complaint against him in a “clear misuse of the Title IX investigative process,” and he was “completely blind-sided by this Title IX investigation.” Blackmon’s attorney believes the professor’s race heavily factored into his firing, and that Wheaton was looking for an excuse to sever its relationship with its first African American chaplain and return to being a predominantly white educational institution. (9)

The impact to black male students and faculty could be even greater than any data or media reports imply since only those who can afford a costly litigation file lawsuits and make the news. More data is needed, but anecdotally black males are disproportionately harmed in campus Title IX proceedings.

SAVE recently spoke with Republican and Democrat offices in the House and Senate regarding this issue. Virtually all staffers agreed members of Congress are concerned about harm to black students and supportive of ways to offer protections to all students, including those of color.

The new Title IX regulation offers necessary due process protections that black students need. By complying with the regulation, college administrators will protect the rights of all students and address the serious problem that black men are accused and punished at unreasonably high rates. At a time when activists on college campuses are clamoring that Black Lives Matter, college administrators should assure they are doing everything they can to help their black students.

Citations:

SAVE is leading the policy movement for fairness and due process on campus: http://www.saveservices.org/

Campus Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment Title IX

Ringing the Bell of Justice, 14 Attorneys General Remind Colleges of their Legal Duties Under Title IX

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 19, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

Ringing the Bell of Justice, 14 Attorneys General Remind Colleges of their Legal Duties Under Title IX

WASHINGTON / July 20, 2020 – The Attorneys General from 14 states have released an Amicus Brief that summarizes the legal obligations of colleges and universities in responding to allegations of campus sexual misconduct. The Attorneys General represent the states of Texas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee.

On May 6, the federal Department of Education issued a new regulation creating a legal obligation for colleges to investigate and adjudicate allegations of sexual assault. The regulation, known as the Final Rule, increased legal protections both for complainants (1) and the accused (2).

But one month later the Attorneys General from 18 other states filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the implementation of the new regulation, claiming the policy would cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to schools and students (3).

Last week’s Amicus Brief by the 14 Attorneys General is grounded in schools’ constitutional and other legal obligations to assure fairness for all students. The AGs note, “the Final Rule’s due process protections requiring live hearings, direct cross examination, and neutral fact-finders, reflect a reasonable, straightforward approach to resolution of Title IX complaints that protects both complainants’ and respondents’ due process rights.”

The Brief charges that current campus policies represent a “constant recycling of discredited, unconstitutional policies” that “effectively eliminated a presumption of innocence for those accused of sexual misconduct.” The Brief concludes, “The Final Rule aims to provide robust protections for individual rights by ameliorating the constitutional and statutory deficiencies caused by prior regulations and guidance.”

The Amicus Brief also disputes the “immediate and irreparable harm” claim, accurately explaining that the plaintiffs “have known for years that constitutional norms favor more procedural protections for students accused of sexual harassment, not less.” Therefore, “If Plaintiffs and these institutions suffer harm because of the Final Rule’s effective date, then that harm was self-inflicted.”

To date, 650 lawsuits have been filed by accused students against their schools (4). In a majority of cases, judges have ruled in favor of these students (5).

The Editorial Boards of the following newspapers have endorsed the new Title IX regulation: New York Daily News, Detroit News, Wall Street Journal, The Oklahoman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Philadelphia Inquirer (6).

The Attorneys General Amicus Brief is available online (7).

NOTE: The original AG Brief, filed on July 15, listed 14 Attorneys General. The following day, the Nebraska Attorney General also agreed to support the Brief. So now 15 Attorneys General are included. This is the revised Brief: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/04517937890.pdf

Links:

Campus Civil Rights Due Process False Allegations Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment

Why Are Some Members of Congress Opposing Due Process Protections for Black Male Students?

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 14, 2020

SAVE

July 14, 2020

During the Senate HELP Committee’s 2015 hearing on campus sexual assault, Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley made the surprising observation that in her experience, “male students of color are accused and punished at ‘unreasonably high rates’ in campus sexual misconduct investigations.” (1) Two years later, journalist Emily Yoffe posed this question in The Atlantic: “Is the system biased against men of color?” explaining, “black men make up only about 6 percent of college undergraduates, yet are vastly overrepresented in the cases I’ve tracked.” (2) Lara Bazelon, director of the racial justice clinics at the University of San Francisco School of Law, likewise has opined about the troubling racial dynamics at play under the current Title IX system, and urged Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to “take important steps to fix these problems.” (3)

During this time of national reflection on race relationships, stories mount of black men whose lives were irrevocably harmed by false allegations or poorly administered campus tribunals (4). The examples of unfair treatment are numerous and egregious:

Two years ago, Nikki Yovino was sentenced to one year in jail for falsely accusing two black male football players, students at Sacred Heart University, of sexual assault (5).
Grant Neal, a black student athlete suspended by Colorado State University-Pueblo for a rape his white partner denied ever happened, sued and settled with his university (6).
Two black male students accused of sexual assault recently settled a lawsuit against University of Findlay for racial, gender, and ethnic discrimination (7).

Black faculty members also have been targeted by the campus kangaroo courts. The nation’s first elected black governor, former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, penned a scathing letter regarding his “unimaginable nightmare at Virginia Commonwealth University” after he was erroneously accused of sexual misconduct. He aptly titled his letter, “Secretary DeVos Right to Restore Due Process on Campus.” (9) Similarly, Howard University castigated law professor Reginald Robinson for allegations of sexual harassment, although his actions were clearly an expression of academic freedom consistent with university policy. (10)

So how widespread is the problem?

In 2017, the Office for Civil Rights investigated Colgate University for potential race discrimination in its sexual assault adjudication process. During the course of the investigation, the institution had to reveal the embarrassing fact that “black male students were accused of 50% of the sexual violations reported to the university,” (11) even though black students represent only 5.2% of all undergraduate students (12).

More recently, Title IX For All analyzed demographic data from the approximately 650 lawsuits filed against institutions of higher education since 2011. Among the 30% of cases in which the race of the accused student was known, black students are four times as likely as white students to file lawsuits alleging their rights were violated in Title IX disciplinary proceedings. Title IX For All concludes, “These findings come at a time when public officials who have long regarded themselves as champions of civil rights for minorities suspected or accused of crimes advocate a heightened awareness of their rights, while simultaneously working to undermine their rights in higher education settings.” (13)

The new Title IX regulation will ensure fairness, equitability, and credibility, and will support and assist sexual assault complainants, as well (14). Some members of Congress in both the Senate (15) and the House of Representatives (16) have urged Secretary DeVos to rescind the new regulation with vague claims that it is harmful to students.

At a time when activists across the country are clamoring that Black Lives Matter, why are some members of Congress opposed to a regulation that will help improve the lives of black men?

Citations:

Campus Office for Civil Rights Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment

PR: SAVE Files Amicus Brief Against 18 Attorneys’ General, In Support of New Title IX Regulation

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 10, 2020

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@saveservices.org

SAVE Files Amicus Brief Against 18 Attorneys’ General, In Support of New Title IX Regulation

WASHINGTON / July 10, 2020 – SAVE filed an Amicus Brief yesterday in support of the recently released Title IX regulation, which seeks to restore fairness and due process in campus sexual harassment cases. The Amicus Brief highlights the legal inadequacies of the attorneys’ general Complaint, and urges that the Court dismiss their request for a preliminary injunction.

In 2011 the Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague Letter” that imposed a range of new campus adjudication procedures for sexual assault cases. These changes removed a number of due process protections, such as the right of parties to be represented by counsel. As a result, hundreds of lawsuits were filed against colleges (1). Amidst intense public pressure, the Department of Education revoked its notorious Dear Colleague Letter in 2017, and later issued a new regulation on May 6, 2020. (2)

One month later, the attorneys’ general from 18 states filed a lawsuit seeking to block the long-awaited regulation. The lawsuit claimed the new regulation will “reverse decades of effort to end the corrosive effects of sexual harassment on equal access to education.” (3)

In response, the SAVE Brief highlights that Title IX “is not limited to the protection of one sex or gender; it protects all.” (page 9) This contrasts with the assertion by the California Women’s Law Center Amicus that states Title IX only serves to protect “women and girls.” (page 8).

The SAVE Brief enumerates the types of sex-based discrimination against male students: Biased educational materials; inconsistent enforcement of policies for male and female students; and a double-standard for intoxication policies. (pages 10-16).

The Brief also provides examples of universities that refused to investigate allegations by male students claiming to be victims of female-perpetrated sexual assault. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, each year 1.7 million men are sexually “made to penetrate,” compared to 1.5 million women who are raped (4).

Noting the hundreds of lawsuits filed against colleges, the SAVE Brief reaches a resounding conclusion:

“This demonstrates a simple truth: male students constitute the overwhelming majority of victims of proceedings on campus that are unlawful and constitute discrimination on the basis of sex, in violation of Title IX. Plaintiffs totally ignore this truth in their Complaint and subsequent Motion for Preliminary Injunction. This is especially astounding given that the deprivation of students’ rights in the disciplinary process,…was a substantial predicate for the issuance of the Regulation.” (pages 9-10)

The SAVE Amicus Brief is available online (5).

Links:

Sexual Assault

Men’s Lives Matter: Male Victims of Sexual Abuse

Post author By saveadmin
Post date July 9, 2020

When a woman sexually abuses a man, the pain inflicted is dismissed by those whose political paradigm does not include men as victims. Unfortunately, these voices dominate the research, media, and legislation that surrounds the issue of sexual victimization.

Their narrative: “Women are victims, men are perpetrators.” This rigid approach even ignores the glaring male-on-male sexual violence in prisons because it does not fit the mold; in fact, if prisoners were counted, then men might well show a greater rate of rape than women. The blindness to male victimization inflicts a second injustice on every male survivor who is either viewed as a liar or as unimportant. Female survivors of rape in the ‘50s were treated in much the same way by law enforcement and the court system.

The situation with the sexual abuse of men is slowly changing. A few years ago, the CDC added a category of sexual abuse called “made to penetrate,” which is an important but almost entirely overlooked form of sexual abuse, perhaps because it applies only to males. A report entitled “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions” was published in a 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. There, UCLA researchers Lara Stemple and Ilan Meyer explain, “By introducing the term, ‘made to penetrate,’ the CDC has added new detail to help understand what happens when men are sexually victimized…Therefore, to the extent that males experience nonconsensual sex differently (i.e., being made to penetrate), male victimization will remain vastly undercounted in federal data collection on violent crime.” Stemple and Meyer conclude, “we first argue that it is time to move past the male perpetrator and female victim paradigm [of rape]. Overreliance on it stigmatizes men who are victimized.”

Including the category ‘made to penetrate’ could shift the entire paradigm of sexual violence. The CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010-2012 State Report, released in 2017, indicates (Tables 3.1 and 3.5):

Males:

Made to penetrate: 1.7 million
Rape: Numbers too small to report a reliable estimate
Sexual coercion: 1.6 million
Unwanted sexual contact: 1.9 million

Females:

Rape: 1.5 million
Made to penetrate: Numbers too small to report a reliable estimate
Sexual coercion: 2.4 million
Unwanted sexual contact: 2.5 million

With this shift of paradigm, female-on-male violence may start to receive attention. The problem is enormous. BOJ statistics for 2018 show the imprisonment rate in America as 431 sentenced per 100,000 residents. Extrapolating from the figures for federal prison, well over 90% of prisoners are male. In its report “No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons,” Human Rights Watch indicate s that approximately 20% of male prisoners are sexually victimized. Most sexual violence professionals, however, seem indifferent to the situation.

The rate of male sexual victims is likely understated because men notoriously underreport their abuse. The National Domestic Violence Abuse Hotline offers several reasons why. They are socialized against appearing “weak”; their abuse becomes the brunt of jokes; they believe there is no support out there for them…and with reason. The Maryland nonprofit Stop Abusive and Violence Environments summarized the situation. “On the one hand, about 25% of men who sought help from DV hotlines were connected with resources that were helpful. On the other hand, nearly 67%…reported that these DV agencies and hotline were not at all helpful. Many reported being turned away.” Their research tells “a story of male helpseekers who are often doubted, ridiculed, and given false information. This…impacts men’s physical and mental health.”

How can this happen in a society preoccupied with sexual abuse? The dominant narrative of sexual violence is identity politics. This claims that a person’s identity is not defined by a common humanity and the choices he or she makes as an individual. It is defined by the specific subcategories of humanity into which a person fits; gender and race are examples. Instead of humanity having common interests, such as freedom of religion, the subcategories have interests that clash. Men benefit at the expense of women. They do so by sexually oppressing women…or so the story goes.

The preceding statement reflects some historical truth. In the ‘50s, men as a class did receive preferential treatment in the workplace, academia, and from the general culture. Women who experienced sexual and domestic violence were blamed for their own victimization. But society has changed at a dizzying pace. We live in a healthier society that contains a fatal flaw: identity politics. If people are defined by biological subcategories that are in conflict, then society is at war—a forever war. Fairness or equality to one class means pulling down another. If men perpetrate sexual violence, then raising up women means policing and punishing males. When facts contradict the narrative, they may be given a cursory nod, then the narrators return to the script.

In the ‘60s, the unjust treatment of female rape victims sparked a sexual revolution that ripped open the culture. But no revolution defends male victims. Instead, the ‘60s revolution has been institutionalized within academia, bureaucracy, and law. It has calcified. The established sexual order now depends on ignoring male victims or dismissing them as inconvenient. It must ignore the fact that violence has no gender. Violence only has individuals who abuse and individuals who are abused. Excluding women or men from either category shows a willful blindness to reality. It expresses political self-interest, not justice.

Source: https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/mens-lives-matter-male-victims-of-sexual-abuse/