Indiana College Student Reports Being Raped, School Reacts by Accusing Her of Harassment
by Bob Cull
Back
in 2011 a student named Samantha at Hanover College in Indiana went to
college authorities with a complaint about her roommate. Samantha says
that they handled that problem by giving her one day to move out of her
dorm room, and made no provisions for her to be housed elsewhere. With
nowhere else to turn, she moved into her then boyfriend's fraternity
house where she reports that after a night of heavy drinking the boyfriend assaulted and raped her.
Samantha reported the rape
to authorities at the college a month later, requesting at the time to
speak to a female officer, but was forced to tell her story to a male
officer instead. Not only did the officer refuse to believe her story,
he demanded that she sign an agreement not to prosecute her attacker
before he would allow her to leave the room.
After
that the now ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend began a campaign of
harassment against her, which she says ultimately led to the boyfriend
coming to her dorm room late one night to deliver a beating along with
some verbal abuse.
She
reported this to the college as well offering to provide them with
photos of the bruises from the beating. After the boyfriend denied
having been in her room, however, the college informed her that the
photos would not be necessary.
Over
the next several months Samantha continued to report the harassment in
hopes that the school would finally intervene. Instead the school told
her not to expect any help from them and that if she continued to claim
being harassed she might be expelled.
Finally,
in the summer of 2013 Samantha and her attorney brought the case to the
Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) which attempted
to negotiate an agreement between the parties.
In
November 2013 the college announced that it had decided that the former
boyfriend and his girlfriend were not only innocent of all of the
charges Samantha had lodged, but also that Samantha herself had been
waging a campaign of harassment against them. They generously declined
to punish her for her crimes however, noting that the type of harassment
she had engaged in is not covered under the school's code of conduct.
Last week the OCR informed the college, a small Catholic liberal arts school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church,
that it is under investigation as a result of the way it handled
Samantha's case. Under title IX of the federal gender equity law
colleges are required to prevent and intervene to stop harassment when
it is brought to their attention. In Samantha's case this clearly did
not happen.
h/t: Opposing Views
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