What the article failed to articulate is the egregious lack of due process on our campuses. In the criminal system, the accused are allowed to have an attorney represent them, they are given the opportunity to confront and question their accuser and witnesses, the verdict is based on reasonable doubt.
In most cases, the accused are not permitted to have an attorney represent them. If an attorney is permitted to accompany the accused to a hearing or investigation interview the attorney is not allowed to speak or advise the accused. In most cases the accused is not allowed to defend himself because he is not presented with all the evidence and testimony until after the decision of guilt or innocence is rendered. In my son's case, not only was our lawyer not permitted to represent my son, but my son was not aware of any witnesses who testified against him or what their testimonies consisted of until after he was told he was expelled. At which point my son was handed a 10 page summary written by the investigator. Within this summary was testimony from individuals who were not present at the time of the alleged incident. There was zero physical evidence and all witness testimony was hearsay. The accused submitted edited text messages, leaving out key messages both from her and my son. Though my son supplied the investigator with the full undoctored messages, they were discarded by the investigator. Betsy DeVos is simply restoring due process again.
47
If a college sophomore held up the campus pizza joint, or if a junior burglarized or robbed a professors house, the police would be called and the follow up would go through the local court system. The student would suffer the academic consequences if their actions, and the courts decision would be final. No Moms would be having group cofffees in suburban Minneapolis to discuss the injustice of it all. There wouldn’t be anyone blaming the pizza clerk or the professor. And the NYT wouldn’t be reporting on it. There would be no debate.
So why is sexual assault different?
Something is off here.
101
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him.”
Wow. As the father of a college freshman and high school senior (one boy, one girl) I just can’t fathom this comment.
Behaviors are learned. I’d suggest the families of these young men look in the mirror and ask who did they learn from.
73
It's clear from the dismissive and accusatory tone of many of the comments, that many people have no idea how wildly unfair campus Title IX hearings can be. Emily Yoffe's recent article in the Atlantic, The Uncomfortable Truth About Campus Rape Policy, is a good place to start in educating yourself.
34
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.
Yes, you need to do precisely that. You need to teach your sons that just because they want to have something that belongs to another, that it doesn't belong to them. You need to teach them about bodily autonomy. You need to teach your sons not to rape women. You need to teach your sons to respect other people.
You, Judith, have failed as a parent if you do not do that. You clearly have not done that and your son raped a fellow student. His life is ruined. Oh, boo hoo.
I was raped in college, by someone I knew. It was 1968 and I didn't tell anyone because I assumed it was my fault, because I allowed him into my dorm room. There was no alcohol involved. He just took what he wanted and what he wanted was my body. In time, I dealt with the aftermath and pushed through it. There were no solutions for me then, no support, no university trials, no nothing.
We must not go back to those days. Ever.
90
I am a FACE mom. While I don’t speak for FACE I believe it what they stand for. Families Advocating for Campus Equality. What my son experienced because of flawed implementation of DOE/OCR guidelines:
1). He was not informed of the accusation against him
2) Her mother called the police, after she lied to her mother
3) Campus cop did not follow proper procedures
4) Forensic evidence exists to prove my son’s innocence (school chose to supress)
5) Accuser lies on multiple occasions, to multiple people, including on the police report
Because of the school’s approach this accuser was never challenged or questioned.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, it gets worse.
My son endured the school’s Kangaroo court, & through improper police procedure led to an arrest, which led to an over-charge & over-zealous prosecutor intent on making my son an example.
BUT... he was PROVED innocent & overwhelming acquitted at trial. Now I fight to fix the policies that have forever changed my son & my family. What happened to him was WRONG. And no amount of rape-apologist finger pointing shaming will ever change the facts. She lied, got caught, my son suffered emotionally, academically, and financially. There are plenty of voices standing up for accusers. This voice will stand up for the FALSLEY accused until what happened to my son will not happen to another accused student. FACE was there for me on the darkest days.
46
If you are white and male you are guilty. That's just the way it is today.
26
I have been a victims advocate for 30 years due to a heinous crime committed against one of my family members. I also am the parent of 2 sons and 2 daughters. I received a phone call from my son one day much like these mothers discuss in this article. He had been accused of sexual assault by a girl he had been on a date with months previously. He cooperated fully with police and absolutely no charges were made. The school then had their title ix investigator who had been their English teacher investigate. The girl made the allegations AFTER my son started dating her friend. The schools title ix investigation was a joke - didn't interview numerous witnesses. A mutual friend to the accuser and my son contacted my son and said she had text messages that he needed to see. The accuser sent texts to her bragging about the sex the next day saying "we used a condom", "he was real good", and asking her if it was too early to add him as her snap chat friend. When he went to the hearing it didn't matter what my son said, if she said it, it must have happened. My son was labeled a rapist by a school (not our justice system) and expelled. If schools are getting it wrong in cases like my son, don't you think they are getting it wrong in cases where the allegation is true. School administrators are not equipped to handle investigating a crime, they can't subpoena witnesses, or get forensic evidence.
52
This article did not show the lack of due process and the unfair treatment that the accused go through. Here are a few example of bias at our school. The TIX director told us that there was a lot of pressure from the Federal Government and that this is just how things work. The college states the Notice of Outcome is as follows; “This document shall consist of a summary of allegations, a summary of the evidence in support of the complaint,… The only evidence allowed is that supporting the accuser. How is this not biased? “The panel will examine all testimony and documentary evidence it deems relevant, …” Is it fair and impartial to be given a no contact order and not told why, what, where or when? Sanctions were administered before any review of the case? School Policy;“Title IX Response team receives annual training in strategies to protect parties who experience sexual misconduct to promote individual and institutional accountability.” When you are trained to protect the complainant, who is protecting the accused? I thought you are innocent until proven guilty? Shouldn’t “discipline proceedings seek to ascertain the truth, not prove guilt or innocence?” The investigating officers daughter in my son’s case was noted to be friends with the complainant. “Sexual Violence is a complex epidemic whose eradication from our campuses is a daunting yet feasible goal.” If you were accused at this college do you feel like you might receive fair and equal treatment?
24
The police file criminal charges for False Accsuation again the accuser. That is not done lightly. And still the lecturing on how to teach your son not to rape. Wow.
I’m not sure if the proven innocent part was just skimmed over by any of you or ignored on purpose.
Patterns have emerged in exactly how railroading occurs on campus during IX adjudication: told not to call their parents or involve an attorney, witnesses not talked to, investigation reports written from a biased view, Viewing Times only (mere hours typically) to prepare, gag ordered on campus so students cannot talk to witnesses to prepare, witnesses submitted by accused students not talked to or included in investigation reports, pre submitted questions not asked during hearing, evidence that could prove innocence denied. Railroading 101. And if you think this doesn’t happen, think again. It happens all the time. Ideology is the driver. Not fairness. Not equity. Not truth. Not Justice. No one wins, certainly not true victims, and certainly not the innocent.
28
If my son committed rape, I'd want him to serve jail time. I'd make sure he got serious therapy upon release, pray for his redemption, and for the young woman's healing. Now if my son was accused of sexual assault by a college classmate who during their encounter said yes then days or weeks or months later got the idea that she had been too drunk, only my son had no way to know because she seemed fine, and he had no intention of causing upset or harm, and was found responsible for sexual assault, I would be enraged. Both scenarios are playing out on college campuses. With the former, it is derelict that the police are not called. With the latter, it does not seem fair to suspend or expel students in such cases.
31
I am a wrongfully accused student that was expelled without a hearing, investigation, or right due process. This happened at an HBCU (Historically Black College & University). I lost everything.
For the past three years, I've walked the halls of Congress with FACE, sharing my story with every congressional office that would listen. Some offices were sympathetic; some were dismissive, most were indifferent.
I appealed to the offices of the most staunch civil rights advocates, John Lewis, the Congressional Black Caucus, the HBCU caucus. In the end, I felt ignored. Preservation of due process rights on college campuses didn't' matter to them. Neither did the daily struggle of a wrongfully accused black man.
My most significant support came from Congressman and Senators that understand the importance of due process and preservation of constitutional rights, all of which are Republican. In the end, the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter proved itself to be bad policy that disenfranchised both wrongfully accused students and victims of sexual assault. The system failed us, and the Dept. of Ed, Office of Civil Rights, of the previous administration was to blame.
This election cycle I was a single-issue voter, which candidate was most likely to defend the constitutional rights of students in college?
On November 8, 2016, I voted for Donald Trump.
On September 22, 2017, the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter was rescinded.
This administration has given a voice to the voiceless.
MAGA
31
It is unfortunate that the article did not discuss a primary mission of FACE, which is to advocate for a fair process for investigating and deciding allegations of sexual misconduct on college campuses. A fair process should provide an accused student a written statement of the specific allegations, should consider all of the evidence provided by both parties, (including texts, phone records and witnesses), should allow both parties to review all of the evidence prior to a hearing, should allow both parties to present witnesses, and should allow both parties to ask questions of each other and the witnesses. In other words, FACE advocates for a process that is designed to elicit the truth. The fact that many colleges do not handle sexual misconduct allegations this way is inexcusable.
It is also disappointing that when the article mentioned the standard of proof -- preponderance of the evidence-- that was required by the Obama administration, it did not explain what that means. Not only is the standard lower than "beyond a reasonable doubt", it is lower than "clear and convincing." Title IX investigators describe it as "50% plus a feather". With such a low standard of proof and without procedural protections, innocent young men are being expelled.
We should all be opposed to sexual assault and we should all be in favor of a fair process.
25
In response to the Title IX “Dear Colleague” letter, universities have implemented Student Conduct Codes stating that any student who has sex with someone who is impaired because of alcohol is automatically guilty of sexual misconduct. This black-and-white approach presumes that is the men who are responsible for sexual misconduct prior to any form of investigation when an allegation is made.
As a result, thousands of young men have had their lives turned upside down because they thought that they had consensual sex after they and their partner had been drinking.
With no motivation for universities to investigate fully, provide due process or sort out the facts, male students are quickly suspended or expelled from school, and stigmatized by their campus community.
We must develop a more just and realistic approach to address the complexities, and more importantly, prevent these types of situations from happening in the first place. Instead of applying an unjust form of punitive response, both men and women would be better served through education, counseling, and restorative justice approaches.
15
Rape is the most under reported crime. It is also the most frequently falsely reported crime. It is an incredibly difficult issue and one that is best left to professionals experienced in dealing with sex crimes.
18
The college judiciary proceedings are laughable, were it not for the damage done. Campus security personnel have no training in conducting investigations or interviews. Faculty have no training in judicial matters. College presidents are not driven to uncover the truth, as evidenced by their many, many years of silence in the face of sexual assault on campus in the past: they are solely driven by the fear of being investigated, sanctioned, and losing Title IX funding.
People who have been raped, and the people accused of raping them, deserve qualified investigators, interviewers, and judges. When an accuser's or a defender's story is so inconsistent, so clearly fabricated, that it is factually disproved, yet given credence by an academic institution, we need to ask ourselves what is the real goal. Innocent until proven guilty is still the law of the land. Yanking the pendulum of justice as pay back for the injustice of the past is immoral. And putting matters of justice in the hands of people uniquely unqualified to serve, is stupid.
32
Before commenting one might visit the FACE website to better understand these moms; https://www.facecampusequality.org/ It clearly states the members advocate for fairness and equal treatment for any student accused of sexual misconduct. Nowhere does it suggest they work to protect their daughters and sons from deserved consequences. For a complete picture, the authors of this article might have included the developmental norms of the college aged student, current campus hook up climate and voluntary binge drinking, and social media, each of which affects students' decision making. They might have pointed to the DoEd and OCR, and federally funded schools as the real culprits implementing flawed disciplinary processes that serve no one. They might have reminded their readers students are forced to navigate serious life changing situations without the life experience necessary to understand the repercussions. Every commenter to this article enjoys their guaranteed right to the presumption of innocence before guilt and due process. Why wouldn't these moms expect the same for their students and yours? Why wouldn't you?
35
I now feel so safe letting my daughter go to college. When I was in a sorority, rape was common and I was so disgusted with this I left because the sorities would do nothing to stop this travesty. Now we are letting the rapist Go out and rape again and further torment their victim.
Great society we have here.
7
The truth is not nearly as simple as most of the "hard over" commenters suggest. There are cases where women falsely accuse. There are cases where men are felonious predators. That's just how it is. If an occurrence is reported it's immediately "he said, she said". The truth can be very difficult to discern. The process of discerning can cause more harm than any alleged crime of false accusation or rape. It's a messy truth folks. But wouldn't it be nice if we could just proclaim it one way or the other like so many of you want to do. Cheers
10
I have a son and daughter in college. Both know to take responsibility for their actions. It seems that young college males are held to a higher standard than young females, and females are getting a pass, and learning to blame others for their actions. If you have sex, own it. If you give consent for sex, own it. If you drink, give consent and have sex, own it. Please ladies, do not blame others for your consenting sex actions. Own your actions. IF you made a mistake, own it, learn and move on. This is what growing up and maturing means.
33
As a 19 year old, I was attacked by a fellow student while walking home from the chemistry lab on campus at my Christian college. My attacker hid in the shadows, tackled me from behind, and probably would have killed me, except I managed to bite his hand and scream, thus alerting a passer-by to my attack. That person intervened and held my attacker for the police.
From that point, though, I was truly attacked: the college did not want negative publicity; the police actively discouraged me from filing charges and "ruining my reputation" and a "young man's life" over a "misunderstanding." My attacker characterized the attack as a joke gone awry. It was no joke; the man who came to my aid was a ROTC student and extremely fit; it took all his strength to pull my attacker away. Nonetheless, pressure was brought by his (local) parents, his pastor, his friends, etc. and he was never charged.
I am the mother of a son who just graduated from university. He is not likely, to find himself in a situation in which he could be accused of nonconsensual sexual battery, because we have discussed this matter until he is almost wary of women.. His university has regular student training on the topic, though for Greeks only, which is a travesty. Anyone who thinks they have been a victim should immediately involve law enforcement, NOT college security, It is true that college police, even if deputized, have incentives to minimize crime statistics on campus. DeVos does no favors here.
36
Where to start my son had been drinking more than usual for him. He ran into a girl at a party and she followed him home refusing the whole way to go home. He was drunk tired and thought he would let her sleep on his couch as all he wanted was to go to bed. Not feeling to good by this point. Only to be awakened by her crawling top of him and he told her no and stopped the act. She went the very next morning went to the Title IX to report him for Rape. Of course with the mantra no matter what we believe you it was taken at face value it occurred. He under went the Kangaroo court of the college only to not be allowed to prove the state of intoxication. Not allowed to ask the questions or present evidence that he did not assault her. Everything that he had prepared for the kangaroo court was ignored. She went on record as stating she only had 2 drinks and that was less than normal for her. Guess who was expelled you got it he was. Of course I am going to fight for him. Rape is horrible and should be treated accordingly. What I fear is these cases are going to court or charges dropped before court, but the precedence that are being set along the way will hurt true sexual assault victims. It is amazing what the schools are saying is sexual assault.
30
As the mother of an accused and expelled son, I will clear up some misconceptions this article poses. What is missing is the lack of due process at that leads to wrongful expulsions and suspension for accused students. That is a crucial piece to understand why mothers (and fathers) are standing up for their children. We are not standing up because we are helicopter parents wanting to protect them. Conversely, we are parents who are trying to protect the constitutional rights of our students when they are on a university campus. To help the reader understand, here are a few issues my son faced at the hand of the University Title IX investigator. (1) He was never told what he was being accused of, so he could never defend himself from the specific accusation (2) He never had a campus hearing. He was only questioned for 15 minutes by one person at the University, and two months later he was expelled. (3) Both he and the girl were drinking, he was blacked out. Girl was on top, and witnesses saw and took picture. My son was expelled. She graduated with no reprimanding. (4) After hiring an attorney and a private investigator, we found that witness statements from the girl's friends that supported my son's version of events were excluded from the Schools final investigative report. There is plenty more, but this gives you an idea why you have a group like FACE, who is fighting not only for the rights of their own child, but for the rights of yours as well.
33
These cases should be given all the rights of the Constitution of the United States including due process. The world of academia acts above the law, and it should not be. In the college world it is guilty until proven innocent, if ever. Most accused are never allowed due process. When will this sector of society have to abide by all the laws of the land???
15
The brave and courageous parents who are behind FACE have done a great job trying to secure due process rights for their sons who have been victimized by allegations which have not undergone the scrutiny, both legal and moral, that these young men are entitled to.
24
A mutually drunken consensual sex is not rape, regret yes sexual assault no. So in this case never can legally consent so why on campus is it the sole responsibility of the male?? We need a process that is fair and impartial to get to the root of the story not just a blanket statement of we believe you. We would not want a college to adjudicate murder so why would we want them to adjudicate sexual assault. Both need to be handled by the proper authorities that have been adequately trained to handle not by someone that has set through a 1-2hr seminar once a year.
17
Insightful. Ms. DeVos made the right decision. That policy needed to be reviewed. It truly did not give an opportunity for fair hearing. Considering the stigma attached to sexual harassment, there should be careful investigation and reasonable proof, in order to avoid false accusations. False accusations of sexual harassment has ruined and continues to ruin the lives of many. It has also been used as threats. Many have been blackmailed. Hence the need to tread cautiously. In trying to solve a problem, we shouldn't create another.
10
I am the mother of two sons, one of whom was accused of kissing an eleven or 12 year old when he was 12 or 13, as though he had raped her. I have no doubt that some men are falsely accused.
However, in one case in this article, a mother, Judith, said her son was accused of raping a woman who was intoxicated. An intoxicated person cannot give consent. Whether the man in question tried to get consent is not stated.
Mothers of sons, no less than mothers of daughters, must discuss these issues before they go to college, preferably by the time they are 16. They must stress that there must be consent (and in some cases, depending on age, abstinence may be a better course) at all steps on the way to intercourse.
This is the only way to protect your sons and daughters. Don't be embarrassed; do it.
10
An intoxicated person is certainly capable of consenting, just as an intoxicated person is capable of getting behind the wheel and committing drunk driving. (Not to mention an intoxicated person is certainly capable of raping.)
Drunk sex -- however regrettable sometimes -- is a thing. It's not rape.
15
As I read the article, there is no indication that the student took advantage of someone unable to consent. We don't know this student's story. We do know college tribunals are unable and often unwilling to seek truth in these matters - federal funding takes precedent and under the Obama administration, fear of an OCR very unwilling to cooperate with colleges - why assume the accused student had intent to harm or was not intoxicated or even incapacitated himself? FACE advocates for innocent students falsely accused. The article doesn't make that clear and it should.
7
What about the Occidental case where 2 freshman, both extremely intoxicated, had sex and both were regretful and embarrassed the next day.
The girl was taken under the wing of a professor who convinced her she had been raped. Even though all the evidence showed the girl had been an enthusiastic and willing participant at the time, and had initiated the sexual encounter the boy was branded a rapist and expelled. Isn't Title IX supposed to be about equality? The real villains in this case are the supposed adults in the room who perpetrated this travesty.
15
Being gay I have no dog in this particular hunt, but I do know people who have been victims of sexual assault, have claimed to have been sexually assaulted, and who have been accused of being sexual predators. One thing I have learned is seldom is everything ever as it seems or as it is reported. I smile, listen to everyone and make my own decisions based on decades of experience dealing with deceitful people. Far too many young men have been judged to quickly and too harshly. I am glad to see that coming to an end.
8
Being gay is no protection. One of the better known campus cases involved two gay men at Brandeis. One was accused by his former boy friend of such "sexual crimes" as looking at him while he was taking a shower and kissing him as he was waking up without first asking for verbal consent. He was expelled and had to sue to get the decision overturned. All these commenters vilifying these women and their sons have no idea how one sided and unfair many of these campus tribunals are. A good start at educating yourself would be to read Emily Yoffe's recent 3 part series in the Atlantic on the topic.
7
Brandeis. A gay couple, in a committed relationship for two years. After they broke up, one accused the other of assault: good morning kisses, looking at him, touching him. This is not an exclusively hetero issue. It really is about correct judicial procedure, and sense.
https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/brandeis.pdf
7
Presumably these Mothers taught their sons not to ride with drunk drivers. Why didn’t they teach them not to have intercourse with drunk partners? Seems a pretty simple and sensible rule to teach your sons.
17
I, too, am the mother of an innocent son wrongly expelled on campus. I am also a survivor.
His innocence was later proven, and his name cleared, but the damage was done. A drunk girl came onto him, and he said No. The injustice he suffered, that many innocent students wrongly punished suffer, should not be facing such vitriol. These stories are the Truth. And while I support easy reporting path, support, accommodations, reasonable interm measures for anyone reporting being hurt, you must listen to what theses IX adjudication processes actually look like in reality.
Our son wa a found responsible before they ever talked to any witnesses, taken in for questioning one night very late- they told him to Not call his parents- they lied about the seriousness of the situation, Never told the charges against him- until the hearing, given mere hours to prepare - by himslef- alone- no advocate or attorney with him (we were told no attorneys allowed & we had found out the school appointed advocate was working with the Dean against him) Gag ordered on campus- he couldn’t talk to others or prepare any sort of defense to bring the truth to light- all evidence in his favor ignored.
10
Please explain why the FATHERS are not part of this group, and are apparently uninvolved???? I would REALLY like to know.
12
Fathers are involved! Many are taking the lead in defending their sons against the false and often miguided accusations. FACE was begun by mothers but today there are hundreds of father whom are just as active in fighting the injustice done to their sons.
9
This is a ridiculous level of helicopter-parenting. I'm sorry to these mothers, I'm sure this was hard news for them to receive, but your little boys are now grown men. They committed a crime, and now they're facing the consequences, as they should. You can't continue trying to rescue them from their bad decisions.
As for the “In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault" statement... well, that's nice and all, but should we all keep licking lead paint off the walls like previous generations apparently did? Should we get rid of seatbelts just because previous generations didn't have them? The law changes to represent the best interests and safety of the people, as those needs change.
Bottom line, parent your son better. You aren't just parenting a little boy, you're parenting a future man. If your son is already in college, he's a man and his actions will come with consequences that you do not have control over.
22
Has it occurred to you that some of these men did much less than their punishments would imply? And some others are in fact innocent?
11
So, the police file criminal charges against the accuser for Filing a False Report, the school still refused to vacate the responsibile finding under ix - and you lecture the parent to be a better mom? How about lecturing the accusers mom? Teach her not to lie.
You totally missed the FACT that these students were innocent. And you are a big part of the problem. I pray your child is never falsely accused, you have zero idea what you’re even taking about.
9
I find it problematic that these mothers are getting involved with Ms. DeVos. Their sons are adults. Sadly, these boys (who, again, are adults) may never reach adulthood and learn how to treat women as long as their parents are there to hire PR agencies and lawyers to defend them. I wonder how these mothers would feel if it was their daughter who was the accuser. This is indeed another win for GOP male-worshipping.
15
Want to strike a blow against GOP extremism?
Innocent until proven guilty: A thorn in the side of right-wingers for centuries.
7
The only people who hate women more than men are other women. Shall we next survey the mothers of mass murderers to learn that they too would do or say anything to set their sons free?
12
As a mother of a son who is 26 years-old, I understand what this fight is about. When my son was at a small Catholic college, weekends were spent at the bars and parties. He reported that often the college GIRLS were more sexually aggressive than the boys. Of course, everyone was getting hammered and making bad choices. Alcohol and drugs are about 99% at the bottom of this. There's an expression: I didn't always get in trouble when I drank, but when I got in trouble I was always drinking. So, a drunken female and male have sex. (Yes, I know the difference between this and rape, I have two daughters and I have been sexually assaulted.) Why do lives have to be destroyed in the aftermath of something that happened often in a blackout? Let's address the underlying issue: binge drinking at college...plain and simple.
27
The statements of these mothers is like a Rorschach Ink Test for readers.
"How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered" seems to indicate to many readers that the mom knew her son was some type of predatory rapist. Perhaps she just wanted her son to not have sex at all (for health or religious reasons). If parents said that to their daughters, one probably wouldn't assume they think the daughter is a potential rapist.
"We don't really need to teach our sons not to rape." Somehow becomes an admonition to what bad mothers they are. But how many parents, who teach their children right and wrong and to be respectful of people, specifically teach their kids not to torture or kill or purposefully maim people?
"In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault" suggesting that rape isn't a big deal. Couldn't she also be point out that situations like her son's where presumably both parties were too drunk to give consent, that it's a bit insane to declare one party a rapist and one party a victim, based on their gender.
18
I was once quite young and dumb, and basically I'm lucky to have survived those years un-raped, un-beaten, unscathed. I had plenty of imprudent sex.
But I didn't do what I didn't want to do, at the time. I once fended off an Arab ambassador for whom I worked, while living abroad, by almost kneeing him when he made a move on me. It was an automatic reaction, rather than some well-thought-out defensive move, but still. I didn't just stand there like a mesmerized mouse.
Life is full of messiness, of really stupid spur-of-the-moment choices, and sometimes an idiotic going-with-the-flow.
Everything is a learning moment. Sometimes a little pain and regret are valuable things.
Rape is rape. It's criminal, and should be vigorously prosecuted. Clumsy unlovely sex is often just clumsy, unlovely, and sometimes quickly regretted. It should help you get smarter, next time...
16
This'll be a wildly unpopular suggestion but here goes...Ladies, let's give up on demanding that young men choose the right answer in these sticky-wicket consent situations complicated by an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex, alcohol, and the inherent disability of the Y-chromosome. Let's decide that we are 100% responsible for what happens to us at a party, on a date, or in a meeting at a movie producer's hotel room. If we can believe our fate is solely in our hands, we can feel more empowered to protect ourselves from sexual assault. Stay in large groups, don't over imbibe, make a plan for getting home, get away from a man ASAP if he makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, don't take meeting in a hotel room, etc.
Should we HAVE to do these things?? Absolutely not. Men should be able to police themselves, 100%. But alas, many succumb to their lizard brains. Our commander-in-chief is a prime example. This is a losing battle. Men are men. It is sadly up to us, as always, to police them.
14
So just a different wording of again blaming the victim... maybe next it's suggested that women in this country should never leave the house alone or never be around men who are outside of their family? Think about where that leads... As human beings, in what is supposed to be a civilized society, woman have a right to go about their everyday lives without constantly fearing for their safety. Men need to take responsibility for their actions, no one should be given a pass on that kind of behavior. As a woman, we of course want to be safe and keep our friends safe, however writing it off to animal instinct does nothing to help men, or our society as a whole, to be more accountable. The fact that millions of men manage to interact with women and girls their whole lives without attacking them proves men are perfectly capable of functioning in a civilized society.
4
Of course mothers want to protect their sons. That's a given. Did De Vos meet with victims of campus sexual assault? With their parents?
9
Yes actually she did
5
I have a near-miss story that nonetheless has stuck with me for nearly forty years. What is telling is that I find myself reluctant to tell the truth about it even now. My concerns remain -- will I be judged as being imprudent at best and my experience dismissed as "what did you expect?". These are not small injuries and the lasting effect goes on for years.
10
What is this hatred for other people's sons who have, according to this article, not been charged nor convicted through the criminal justice system?
College-age men and women equally can be complete, total idiots in their interactions; can mistake each others' intentions; can be manipulative and untruthful; can be uncertain of what they want--and can discover to their distress that what they thought they wanted one evening was not what they were happy to have done, the next morning.
Why are we not teaching our daughters to own their choices, even if those choices may have been foolish or dangerous ones?
We're certainly not teaching them to be strong, sensible women who can evaluate situations for themselves. In news story after news story, young women are quoted saying they didn't think a sexual or touching encounter was assault or rape until some else--sometimes months or more later--convinced them it was.
Well, perhaps if you hadn't felt violated at the time, you hadn't been violated.
Rape is rape. It is a violent crime. It is a crime regardless of whether you knew or did not know the perpetrator; whether or not you had a prior or ongoing relationship with the perpetrator; whether or not you had consented to what quaintly used to be referred to as "petting."
But don't diminish the awfulness of rape by declaring almost everything these days to be sexual assault, if it resulted in you being unhappy afterwards.
43
As a victim and mother of sons, I am certain that you taught your sons well. Boys, I believe who are raised by females who are involved in their rearing, thoroughly comprehend a concept of the meaning of 'no' and further if the object of your sexuality is drunk or drugged, then one doesn't take advantage of that individual. Children need to know that sexual activity between 2 willing individuals is far more satisfying and beautiful than sexual activity with someone who is a non participant, because of actual or near unconsciousness or worst, not interested.
Children also need to appreciate the fact that today its you and tomorrow its me. AKA the so-called 'do unto others' rule. My actions for which I have responsibility, are not reduced because one was drunk or drugged at the time. Rape is an ugly crime, regardless of the educational level of the perpetrator. Women and men can be raped, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin or sexual orientation. The above lessons are blind to religion, morality but filled with commonsense and taught to children from age zero to eighteen.
To permit the Ms. Betsy 'privatizing of schools' DeVos to set policy on what ought to be the purview of the police department is inappropriate, especially when Ms. DeVos relies upon the opinions of mothers of boys who were NOT falsely accused is frightening. Ms. DeVos' personal educational level highlights her incompetency & unsuitability for that cabinet position.
8
We have sons, we never had to tell them to "keep it zippered!" No. What we did was raised our sons to respect women, as human beings, as equals. And to understand the meaning of the word, NO. Having sex with a woman too drunk or impaired to consent IS rape.
If she cannot consent, the answer is: No.
34
Huh. When your first response to your child telling you he's in trouble is, " How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered", you might have a problem. Was that supposed to convince us of his innocence?
21
Or... we could just teach our sons not to assault women.
Nah.
14
That's right, we've already been doing that anyway.
1
Rape is a crime and should be reported to the Police. Investigating a report of rape is not the role for school administrators.
27
“Any mother is watching out for the children, that’s what mothers do,” Ms. Davidson said. “But I think all mothers should get the facts and open their eyes to what could have happened or not.”
Right, and so should the mothers of the women making accusations.
8
As the mother of a son, and as a HUMAN BEING, this makes me sick to my stomach: “In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
In the real world, Judith, sex without consent is *rape*, and someone too drunk to give consent haven't consented. Therefore, they've been sexually assaulted, even by your precious son.
18
I have to agree with you. Judith’s quote from the article is repulsive.
15
How drunk is too drunk to give consent? By the currently approved legal definition I expect I've "raped" at least a dozen women over the years because how dare I (and they) have consensual sex after a drink or two.
None of them were passed out on the couch at a fraternity party and none of them were anything but enthusiastic, but the law treats these acts as one and the same.
You do *no honor* to rape victims by distorting the crime to include pretty much anyone who ever both went to a party and had sex. I'd add 'in college', but really it applies everywhere right?
By the strict (current) legal definition, I can also bump into you accidentally in the hallway and we can add felony assault to those charges.
"In my generation" refers to both the letter and the interpretation of the law in the pre-1980's era. None of the things I stated would have been considered misdemeanors, now they're special-victims-unit worthy felonies.
Once upon a time safe sex involved a rubber, now it involves a notary public and a breathalyzer. I have nothing but sympathy for rape victims but broadening the terminology to include any woman who regretted having sex after the fact is incredibly disrespectful to these women and what they went through.
4
I have a beautiful son as well as a beautiful daughter and both know that you never ever touch someone without their full consent.
Judith son is a rapist and yes that was rape in you generation, rape by any other name is still rape. That she thought otherwise doesn't surprise me as her son thought so too in this generation.
6
As always, it's a "He said, she said". I do not envy the authorities that have to sort it out. Of course, some incidences are out and out sexual assault. Forced non consensual assault whether the victim is incapacitated by drugs/alcohol or is fully conscious. And then there are the gray areas. Parents of Ms. Seefeld's ilk are a nightmare for any college administrator and police agency.
2
Weird. Republicans would never dream of defending someone accuse of theft, murder, larceny, arson, but they go out of their way to protect accused rapists. Why?
25
Because people accused of theft, murder, larceny or arson receive due process under the law.
8
Weird. Democrats would never dream of violating the basic due process rights of someone accused of murder, larceny, arson, but they go out of their way to railroad accused male rapists. Why?
As noted Democrat Jerry Brown will tell you, it's not just Republicans who see just how insane these policies are. Plenty of liberals who didn't succumb to this moral panic have been sounding the alarm for years.
10
Actually victims don't get much due process.
7
What if these young men were drunk and passed out. What if another man came to take advantage of them sexually. They were too drunk to resist or say no. Would it not obviously be rape??? What is the difference ?
32
"One mother, Judith, said her son had been expelled after having sex with a student who said she had been too intoxicated to give consent.
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
This is the most telling part. In other words, "Yes, my son is a rapist, but not that kind of rapist. He's a good boy."
55
People on both sides are painting with broad brushes.
Back then (just a few decades ago, when I was in college), the definition was far too narrow.
The answer isn't to make assault anything a complainant says or feels it was. And yes, *some* complaints -- not 90%, probably not even 45% -- are more matters of regrettable sex than of assault.
1
Very interesting points from both sides. I just want to add that there seems to be a chatter in some responses that a college woman that has been drinking and reports being raped the next day bears some responsibility. Well maybe but maybe not. She may have been raped by someone who followed her home or offered to take her home. Or maybe her date did rape her. I one went out a bar with colleagues for fairwell drinks. I had worked somewhat closely with one of the men and he'd even set me up on a double date: he and his wife and me and a friend of his. I'd had dinner at his house and met his toddlers. He left the bar with me and said he'd walk me home because his subway stop was just a block away. When we got to my apartment door he asked if he could use my bathroom as he had a long way to go. I said yes and he used the bathroom. WHen he came out he knocked me down and started ripping off my cloths. I tried hard to fight him off but he was too strong. I tried crying and for some reason that stopped him. He kissed my tears (yuck) and said stop crying. Then he left but as he left he looked back and said "don't tell anyone about this." I called a lawyer the next day. The lawyer told me no jury would every believe me because I'd had a drink with him and warned that because the guy was now a client, I might lose my job. So yeah I guess campus law is much more lenient but I didn't wake up the next day and say "oh I'm embarrassed so why dont i report this"
19
So you were fighting him off and he overpowered you. That sounds like a perfectly rational definition of rape.
This is now the year 2017 and a drunk man consenting to sex with a drunk woman, even if she suggests it to said drunk man also sounds like a legal definition of rape.
That's the issue here. You being coerced into keeping quiet about an actual rape...not okay. Making consensual sex for non-Mormons illegal (since they don't drink)...also not okay.
2
If Mom’s first reaction was being annoyed that, despite telling him many times, he hadn’t “kept it zippered”, then that whole “respect women” ship has sailed. And as one of those women who did something “stupid and got embarrassed”? I was 19 and going to my first fraternity dance. I didn’t know the guy all that well, but we were going in a group, so my guard was down a bit. And yes, I admit. I was nervous and I drank too much. When the dance was over I asked him to take me back to the dorm. He said no, and brought me to his house off campus. I actually called my roommate back at the dorm saying he wouldn’t bring me back, but I had no idea of the address. So at that point, I felt like I had no choice. Because he took my choice away from me. So he had sex with me, and then took me back to the dorm. And I didn’t feel embarrassed by the way. I felt violated. And never went to a fraternity dance again. Even the thought of it, even with a nice guy, made me feel nauseas. We need to teach these boys better.
35
I read the article and all the comments. I have also read numerous other articles in NYT and all the comments on those. I must conclude that there is nothing more to be said on this topic. Like so many things, there is very little chance that anybody on any side will change their mind about it
6
Geez seriously. Of course their sons are "precious." Just as my son is precious to me. If you are a good parent, you have raised a good son, and if you've raised a good son, you believe him and in him, you defend him against false or mistaken or malicious allegations and accusations, and you do everything humanly possible to have him cleared of such dangerous slander.
It is also true that there are parents who are not good and who have not raised good children and who, bereft of character themselves, cannot recognize wrongdoing in their children.
Are these parents such people? We can't really know, just from reading this article.
But it's a basic part of parenting to protect and defend one's children. How can anyone be nuts enough to revile the mothers here for doing that?
And yeah. Women--especially very young, very inexperienced women living away from home for the first time, in that perilous time between adolescence and the beginnings of adulthood, can be really confused about sex, can regret the next morning what they didn't object to the night before, can find the messiness of human copulation to be not very much like the fairytale they may have been anticipating. Clumsy uncomfortable and often drunk coupling does not always translate to rape or assault. Time the adults grew up enough to recognize that and help our kids through the minefield of growing up, too.
9
"How many times have I told you- you have to keep it zippered "
Yikes. If a mother has to say that to her son, it's hard to believe he was "wrongly" accused.
40
"Keep it zippered" or "keep it in your pants" means being careful before having *consensual* sex.
2
Alternate title: "wealthy women, possibly in denial, protect coddled sons from younger, more vulnerable women."
Sounds strange because it is.
33
These mothers tend to be wealthy because poor mothers of accused sons can't afford the sort of legal fees these efforts require. So thankfully, as long as the boys being railroaded in college kangaroo courts are poor, you'll have no pushback to worry about.
9
The inability to cross examine accusers "because it might hurt their feelings" or "because rape is difficult to prove" absolutely destroys both due process and the underlying credibility of the tribunal. Confrontation, in person, and cross examination are the only way to try and obtain truth.
26
There are also forms of evidence such as witness accounts, physical forensics, videos and phone evidence, as well. Having people "confront" each other is not the only, nor even a sufficient, determiner of truth. It's a trial, not a prize fight.
4
A little due process goes a long way. Colleges are being sued, successfully, for denying it to men who have been accused of sexual misconduct and not given the opportunity to defend themselves in any meaningful way.
22
If these young men would stop getting smash hammered at parties, they'd stop getting falsely accused. How is this not just good old fashioned common sense? If you ask me, they're asking for it.
26
Well, Judith, in OUR day when women blamed themselves for being stupid, men got away with assaulting women who were in no condition to consent. Is that how you raised your son? That not hearing "no" was the same as hearing "yes"? I call what happens to these young men "consequences." And there needs to be a lot more of them.
40
wow. I, too, am the mother of a son, and I was raped in college. I guarantee you that for every accusation made about a young man, there are at least 10 who were never accused. what would these mothers say if it had been their daughters?
38
Why is it so difficult to believe that not all accusations are truthful? So, as the mother of a son, let me ask if your son were to be falsely accused, what would you do to clear his name? Shrug it off because there are at least ten others that weren't? False accusations destroy the lives of the innocent, much as the lives of actual victims of sexual assault are destroyed.
31
where in my post did I say anything about all accusations being truthful? what I *am* saying is that there are additional rapes that go UNREPORTED. whether or not an individual rape is "truthful" or not, that's up to the legal system. you need to reread my post without your filters on.
10
The moms didn't say the sons were "falsely accused".
2
Look at all the commenters who have automatically assumed that these young men are rapists and their mothers are enablers, based on a few inflammatory quotations cherry picked by the authors and isolated from context (or simply on the basis of the accusation). Now think about a young man accused of sexual misconduct or assault tossed into a Title IX machinery devoid of basic due process protections, full of people who frequently share those same biases exhibited here, who lack the training to render a competent decision and act as investigators, judge, and jury. In this atmosphere he is expected to defend himself against felony accusations. Of course you are going to get young men found responsible who are not.
32
Most of these mothers believe that there is no possible what that THEIR sweet little boy could ever have done that. They refuse to believe that people are complicated and have dark sides. They believe in simplistic stereotypes, that only the grizzled homeless man in a trench coat lurking in the bushes could possibly be a rapist. The handsome affluent middle-aged father and husband could not possibly ever overpower the babysitter, or stalk a high-school teen aged girl. The handsome college freshman who's a sports star could not possibly 'resort to' raping a girl, because 'he's got his choice' of girls who are throwing themselves at him. Think again, those scenarios are not uncommon.
20
Right up there with daddies (maybe mommies too) who can't accept that their little girls are all grown up now, and sometimes make foolish decisions that they are "feel" violated after doing or even lie about.
Yes, your little angel sometimes wants sex but doesn't always like the aftermath. It's not always, or even usually, an oversexed man forcing himself on a virgin on her way to Bible Study.
2
It is appalling to me to see most of these comments, picked by the New York Times as "picks", as unsupportive and harassing to these mothers who have valid complaints and concerns about how society treats young men today. Think for a second that some women do lie, they regret, colleges applaud and take advantage of those regrets due to the "Dear Colleague" letter Obama spearheaded, and the young men involved never saw what was coming at them. To think women who call themselves "feminists" support these actions to accuse men for sexual behavior when they also participated, and do not stand up to women to admit fault, drinking to excess, and being unable to say no is abhorrent to me. Saying no to a woman should have equal play as saying no to a man, but it is never considered that way. If both parties are drunk, women should be equally responsible to stop any sexual behavior because the males are unable to say "no". It goes both ways.
Think for a second men have been blamed for nothing more than petting which results in being kicked out of school, when the females were the aggressors. It does happen, and to not acknowledge that is being blinded by the power of women's voices today, blaming men for everything and taking no responsibility for their own aggressive, most likely inebriated behavior. Try to see both sides of the issue instead of blaming the young men for their "their stupid actions".
19
Try being the parent of a rape VICTIM who was drugged by two rapists that planned it. Try knowing for a FACT that approximately 4% lie. Which leaves 96% of rape victims telling the truth. Try watching your child attempt suicide twice from shame and bullying. Try being an advocate for survivors and have to listen to “mothers” like this woman state how much it costs to defend their sons.... when we are somewhere around $120,000.00 with hospital, counseling and relocation due to bullying from our daughters rape. Something she didn’t cause. Try listening to her say women like our daughter should take responsibility. This mother is a morally reprehensible human being, and it’s abundantly clear why her son has done what he’s done. She needs help, and I feel sorry for her.
24
Kym, truly sorry for what your daughter went through and no one else will ever be able to understand the pain your family has endured.
I am concerned about the comment that only 4% lie as a rational to convict without due process. A life ruined on either side of this accusation is a life ruined. America is one of the very few countries in the world that believes "Better that 10 guilty go free than to convict one innocent person." It a standard that tells all people how dedicated we are as a society to protect the innocent if they are falsely accused. There still exist societies that punish people on a mere accusation as did western civilizations in the middle ages. In today's world there is enough forensic science to generally (nothing is 100%) make a determination of the facts. In one reported case a student charged by his ex girl friend after they had broken up was exonerated by having her fit bit watch examined and it was determined that she was not even on the campus when she claimed the incident took place.
Support due process for these incidents and require investigations of the facts as we do in our justice system. Emotional outrage cannot replace justice.
4
(1) Straw man. Nobody is saying that rape is good or even that rape is rare. What we're saying is that one kind of victimization does not justify another kind.
(2) "Try knowing for a FACT that approximately 4% lie. Which leaves 96% of rape victims telling the truth."
Talk about playing G*d. You can't possibly know that, and neither can anyone else.
Estimates by David Lisak -- who thinks our campuses are crawling with serial rapists -- show that up to 10% of accusations are *proven* false.
And "proven false" is not a redundancy. Not where one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Not to mention that an accusation can be not-false while not being true. Mistaken memory, mistaken identity, mistaken belief in consent all happen.
Last but not least, when we're still deciding whether someone is telling the truth, they're a complainant (or an accuser). "Victim" implies we've already decided. Last time I checked, that's prejudice.
3
Why is this article only about Mothers in defense of their children. Where are the Fathers in this article?
13
"We really don't need to teach our sons not to rape" she said. There is the problem in a nutshell. Yes, you do need to teach your sons not to rape. We need to have clear conversations with boys (in addition of course to girls) about what consent is, and is not. We need to discuss how to treat people. What to do if you see someone at a party who seems incapacitated. Hint: It's not taking them into another room and raping them. Until we start having these conversations, I fear that nothing will change.
33
Most children raised in a normal environment instinctively understand that rape and murder are heinous crimes. There is no need to "teach" not to murder or rape unless the child has psychopathic tendencies. Talking to children about drinking and sex, just as we talk to them about drinking and driving, is responsible parenting. Both men and women are responsible for their behavior when drinking - whether they are behind the wheel of a car of voluntarily agreeing to sex. Most young men on campus are not predators raping incapacitated women. No one would send a daughter to college if that were the case.
4
certainly not most. unfortunately some are. part of the reason why some do it is the culture that does not clearly equate sex with an alcohol incapacitated person with crime.
3
Well lets all take a min to think about being a rape victim and having to provide " more convincing evidence." That sounds horrifying and unfair. To these mothers who who want to defend their children, perhaps you teach your sons not to accept consent from intoxicated women. Perhaps fathers and mothers need to teach their children the true definition of consent. Lastly, lets not forget that most women keep their stories a secret.
18
The standard used under the current guide to keep getting federal funding by universities is " a preponderance of the evidence". In layman's terms it is a 51% -49% standard. Since rape is crime imagine yourself accused of a felony and the jury just have to believe the witness is just slightly more credible than you. Off to prison for 25 years. The standard of beyond a reasonable doubt-'reasonable doubt' not just "well it could be true" is something that as an attorney I treasure. Lets always give the accused the benefit of doubt and require real evidence to put someone away or to ruin their lives. Justice is not served by pitch forks and mobs or raw emotional responses to a claimed incident.
3
No, more convincing evidence is perfectly fair. Because the complainant -- who may or may not be a victim, that's why we're discussing evidence in the first place -- is not the only person who counts.
Intoxicated is not the same as incapacitated. Drunk sex is a thing -- not always a good thing, but it's not necessarily rape.
We all know many rape victims don't report. But that has nothing to do with adjudicating the reports that are made. (If anything, the fact that many true victims feel too ashamed, or afraid of reliving their rapes, gives the advantage to a liar -- who by definition has no shame and nothing to actually relive.)
3
The only concern of the college or university should be whether any of the students involved, including any enablers, should be able to continue as students at the institution. That need not require proving a crime was committed. Colleges throw people out for underage drinking, cheating, and all kinds of things. If a college thinks one person is a bad apple, it has the right to protect the student body and tell them to finish their education elsewhere. Whether a crime was in fact committed is for law enforcement. As to the 'continue as students' question, the preponderance standard is acceptable unless depriving a student of earned credits, or failing to refund tuition for a semester where a student is separated from the university community as a consequence. I don't see a property or civil right in continuing as a student until graduation that needs to be protected by the beyond a reasonable doubt standard. If there is a criminal conviction, then the university should be free to rely on it to revoke credit, etc., but then there is reliance on the justice system, not some little shadow court that has no idea what it's doing. Often the alleged perps seem to admit to things that given full discretion, would cause me to tell them to pack their stuff up, crime or no crime.
10
Problem is, rape and sexual assault *are* crimes -- and contemptible crimes at that. Putting aside how rarely colleges expel students nowadays for underage drinking or cheating, a drinker or a cheater has relatively little problem finding another college to finish his or her degree.
Whereas a sexual assaulter generally can't -- and arguably shouldn't -- be able to go to college anywhere else.
So if an innocent person has been expelled for sexual assault, he (or she) now has a whole bunch of nearly worthless credits. For which he, she (or his or her family) has paid and/or borrowed thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars.
(And if borrowed, generally that's a millstone around one's neck until fully paid off. Usually even declaring bankruptcy won't get your student loans discharged.)
Not to mention, good luck finding a good job after leaving college -- much less having been kicked out for sexual assault.
I understand that generations ago, college administrators could indeed kick out any student they just felt was a bad apple. Those days are long gone...among other things because the days of working your way through college are also long gone.
1
Out of every 1000 rapes, 994 perpetrators will walk free. Only 334 sexual assaults out of 1000 are reported to police. No woman wants to go through the additional trauma of reporting a rape after the initial trauma of rape/sexual assault. So those few brave women who do report their assaults are likely not filing false reports. I have to wonder how the mothers of these sons of whom they are so protective respond when their daughters are sexually assaulted.
15
It's a good bet they victim-blame the daughters for not being "good girl enough," and tell them to be silent about the assault.
6
And I'm sure many people struggling with eating disorders. Doesn't change the fact that obesity is another national problem.
Many rapes without reports and many reports without rapes aren't exactly mutually exclusive.
In fact, if true victims feel ashamed to report, or afraid of having to relive their rape, that leaves more room for liars -- who aren't ashamed of anything and certainly have no rape to relive.
Maybe if some of these parents, of the accused and of the accusers, would take a little responsibility and teach their children the downsides of recreational fornication, then these kind of situations might not become such tragic family problems. Nobody is forcing them to be slaves to the so called "sexual revolution".
5
so many Harvey Weinstein's learn bad behavior and think women are playthings for their pleasure.
3
These comments are chilling. Posters are taking the mothers’ words out of context and wildly extrapolating the worst-possible interpretations (especially that ‘keep it zippered’ comment that most posters seem to think now implicates the mother in a years long rape conspiracy! Crazy!). Posters are injecting their own fact-less interpretations into events (‘intoxicated’ suddenly becomes ‘unconscious’, etc.). All of this founded on the patently sexist idea that a woman who is even mildly intoxicated is incapable of taking responsibility for her actions (i.e. incapable of offering consent), but that a man remains in full possession of his mental faculties regardless of how intoxicated he is.
You know, I thought the Salem witch trials were behind us.
50
Is this article for real? Generally with an article like this I would have expected BOTH sides of the story to have been represented. A bit more fact checking and less vilifying of the victims would have been appreciated. Article makes it sounds like there's 'sorority girl boogieman' out to destroy the precious sons of these women.
Most frightening of these tales is the last one, in which we receive an account of a wealthy and powerful woman threatening the President of her son's school basically to ignore all charges against an accused rapist. What?
I can't help but feel that NYT has created it's own War on Women. Between Robert Gottlieb's sneering article on women authors and readers a few weeks ago, to the shaming of women who come out against sexual assault. One has to wonder what agenda NYT has, and if a paper that prides itself has being a forward thinking force in our culture is no better than the current Powers That Be.
20
The article is about these women, their sons, and their stories. I don't see that profiling their experience is a problem.
4
I agree totally Liz. That mom's behavior really came off as unbearable. Has that been her response every time her son was accused of mis-behaving? I found the article to be oddly one-sided as well.
That being said, I think there is some merit to the mothers' case. The men in question are sometimes receiving a punishment before any kind of real investigation even happens, if this article is to be believed. This is a hard situation, how to protect and get justice for victims while maintaining due process of law for the accused. Certainly there is much wrong with this system as it currently stands. But I don't think the answer is to discredit people who come forward saying they have been assaulted. That seems like a step or two backwards.
6
"Most frightening of these tales is the last one, in which we receive an account of a wealthy and powerful woman threatening the President of her son's school basically to ignore all charges against an accused rapist. What?"
Or, we have a cautionary tale about a son who was falsely accused and got railroaded by a school. Most males in this situation have no recourse. THAT is frightening. This particular male had an advocate with power who knew what to do to make the school to do handle the case appropriately.
9
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
Look, I don't think anyone drinking to the point of incoherence is a solid personal-safety decision. Taking advantage of someone's incoherence to rape them is a stupid, not to mention criminal, decision as well, and deserves to be punished accordingly--regardless of what happened in past generations.
These women are enabling their sons' predatory behavior by trying to excuse or qualify it.
19
Was there an implication that the complainant was incapacitated? I missed that. The discussion on college campus usually involves two equally drunk, not incapacitated, students. Who is responsible when they mutually agree to have drunk sex? The guy? That's what colleges are saying. That might be a bit biased.
2
these mothers are aiding and abetting criminal behavior. If a college girl has been drinking sons - don't engage in sex with her. For God sake women - stand up for women - not for bad boys. Teach your children - don't coddle them.
12
Aiding and abetting assumes that a crime was committed. It is not altogether clear whether or not in their sons' cases that they were criminals. In that case, they're correct in defending their loved ones. I don't blame them at all and certainly don't view them as criminals themselves for "aiding and abetting."
8
When that mother was quoted as saying that she didn't need to teach their son not to rape my thought was, "Clearly, you do."
8
Just require everyone to text consent prior to sex. Could be a one button/touch app.
1
Ah yes, texting....A young woman made no secret of the fact she was interested in my son. He was very honest with her about not wanting to be in a relationship. We have texts from her suggesting they start a "friends with benefits" relationship. We have another text in which she invites him over specifically to have sex. A few weeks pass and she's upset that he still doesn't want a relationship (remember, the "friends with benefits" was her idea). You guessed it - he gets expelled. There was no alcohol - there was clear intention and consent - there was also a campus kangaroo court. For the sake of the falsely accused AND victims of actual sexual assault, this needs to STOP!
16
Since when is it news that the family members of accused criminals insist that the allegations are false? Will the NYT interview the mothers of accused murderers next? What about a piece about the mothers of accused drug dealers? Why is it that only accused rapists are singled out for these sorts of sympathetic articles?
(that's a rhetorical question, of course - we all know full well why)
13
In drug crimes, to use your example, there is usually evidence to back up the accusation. If there is no evidence, then we're asking a committee to apply their own moral authority to others based on feelings, and then punishing those people.
That's just not a good system.
4
"How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered.”? Let's think about that statement to an 18-year-old son. Makes you wonder.
9
I'm sure there was a "boys will be boys" attitude in that family. This is where it got them.
3
What are your thoughts on that statement?
1
My thoughts, like so many others, are complicated on this matter, but I will say that I didn't have to say to my daughter, "How many times have I told you, you have to keep your legs together" when she left for college at 17. I did, however, raise her to be respectful of other people and their feelings, and to stay safe by not allowing herself to be put in a vulnerable situation with drugs, alcohol, or walking alone late at night. That, more than her sex life in college, was important to me. So I wonder why this mother had to say that to her son.
2
"But if the mothers do not defend their sons, she said, who will?"
Public defenders and other defense attorneys who specialize in felony rape. Any other questions?
22
Wrong. That's only in criminal court, not college tribunals. In college tribunals you are not allowed an attorney, you're not allowed to question your accuser, you're not allowed to offer your own evidence, you don't have the right to remain silent, and you're not assumed to be innocent.
Try again.
8
So glad to see somebody get it so right and lay it out so concisely.
1
I've always wondered why these criminal cases are being handled by the schools instead of by the criminal justice system.
6
Intoxication is not a defense or an excuse. Many many horrible things have been done by someone who is "intoxicated". Guns are misused with terrible results. Rape is perpetrated. Cars are driven and death happens. Individuals fall down stairs and are brain damaged or dead.
We as parents and as citizens should advocate against drunkenness. We should ask our children: do you want to kill someone by mistake? Do you want to engender an unwanted child by mistake? Do you want to irreparably damage yourself by mistake? The answer should be no. If not, consult mental health professionals. So don't put yourself in a position that impairs your judgement and puts yourself and others at risk. We hope you wouldn't get drunk and try to jump off a bridge. So don't get drunk at all. Parents: discuss safe limits for alcohol with your kids before they are 21. Don't let them drink before 21. Make it clear that they are responsible for their own actions.
Why isn't there a fraternity or a campus group for non-drinkers who are not religious?
3
This article is an apologist's article. As a retired law enforcement officer and the mother of a son and a daughter I will say this:
Sexual assault and rape are serious allegations that should ONLY be handled by law enforcement personnel.
Colleges and Universities are neither equipped nor capable of handling these allegations/complaints.
I say this having arrested more than one man on a Rape 1 count.
I say this having witnessed a man bully his daughter into saying she was raped.
If I had a quarter for every parent who said, "my child would never ______" I would be very rich.
JUST KNOW THIS: No one knows what another person might do.
But I do know that I raised my son to never take women for granted and if in doubt, assume that the young lady did not consent. Yes, drinking, drugs and a variety of factors come into play. But I have to believe that if you raise your son to truly respect women, they will KNOW when consent is granted or not. And if in doubt, IT IS NOT GRANTED!
These are simple rules folks.
The mothers in this article, I am sure, believe their sons and that they raised their sons well. But I also have experienced apologist mothers for their son's behavior that had nothing to do with the opposite sex, but had everything to do with believing their child over obvious facts.
The biggest problem with sexual assault on college campus' is that the police are not involved immediately. They are the only ones properly traomed to deal with these kinds of accusations.
28
Please read college conduct codes for the campus definition of assault. It has nothing to do with the legal definition. Most complaints do not rise to the level that would require police investigation.
2
I sincerely believe that the ultimate answer to the sexual assault issue is to require the recording of every sexual liasion on video (perhaps smartphones), with prior mutual consent to record authorized by the participants. The videos would be uploaded to a secure server, which would require multiple authentication to access. I'm sure an app could be developed.
Think it's a crazy idea? It's the closest to objective evidence we can get.
Better a recording than an assault.
1
don't quite get the "i was inebriated when i decided to have sex" version of rape. doesn't this trivialize real rape? if a woman is unconscious, that is clearly rape. but if two students are drinking, and have what at the time appears to be consensual sex how is one guilty of rape and the other not? Unless someone is unconscious, don't they have ANY obligation to say no i want this to stop? I am a father of 3 daughters, 2 sons, 2 son in laws, so I am not without fear for my daughters. but my sons, i fear for them because they can honestly believe that they are doing everything right, yet still must be mistrustful of someones "consent". There are greater things to aspire to than victimhood, and it is important to remember that if everything is rape, then nothing is.
8
Judith's son was expelled after having sex with another student who claimed she was too intoxicated to give consent. In many/most cases, both people are imbibing. Was the female student also expelled for having sex with someone incapable of giving consent? Or is this penalty something that is only applied to male students?
9
Sexual assault, ie rape is a CRIME. The investigations should be handled by the relevant local law enforcement agency, that has sworn officers and experienced investigators. Period. If probable cause exists for an arrest, and arrest and/or criminal charges should be pursued.
In our criminal justice system the accused is considered innocent until proven guilty. Once the criminal justice system has had its chance at the investigation, they can then turn over the results to the University, and it can decide what to do with the evidence, which is after all, a public record. If the victims is unwilling to file a police report, that should be the end of the matter.
7
"We don't really need to teach our sons not to rape" This turned my stomach. If these women really cared about their sons (or their son's sexual partners) they would absolutely be teaching their sons not to rape. They'd be teaching their sons not just to "keep it zippered" but how to ask for and get consent every step of the way before and after unzippering. Women absolutely should be taught this as well. Patriarchy hurts men, too because women are seen as the keepers of virtue and men as the destroyers of it.
Another issue here is one of class. These women appear (from the photo) to be white, they live in a tony suburb in a very white state. The examples given show that these mothers have a lot of time, money, and political clout to fight for their sons. The mere fact that they view the weapon of public opinion as the most powerful weapon here indicates how surely they are coming from a place of privilege. That they are so sure public opinion will side with them instead of their sons' victims. No matter what policies are put in place, rich white men will be given preferential treatment, whether it's at a university tribunal or a court of law. Don't believe me? Just ask Brock Turner.
16
Trump voters, for sure.
2
I am a Democrat, and I applaud DeVos' decision. The administrative approach, whatever its intention, had devolved into false accusations, kangaroo courts, and star chamber proceedings. Innocent lives were being destroyed. If you are a victim of a crime, call the police and have the case decided in court according to the same rules we all have to follow. College administrators or fellow students are as unfit to make these decisions as Trump is unfit to be President. The rule of law cannot be abandoned for any special interest group.
14
This is unbelievably hard and complicated. To people saying that we always have to take an accuser's word because no one would ever put themselves through this unless they had to - but we do have (some high-profile) cases where false or at best misguided accusations were made. We really cannot just take anyone's word about this and use it to ruin someone else's life. And we need some better way to define consent. Yeah - no means no - but now we've devolved into only an emphatic yes means yes. And no human conducts sexual relation like that and they never will.
10
As the mother of a son who is on the autistic spectrum, I am all too aware that my son is especially vulnerable to being accused of sexual harassment because of his inability to read nuanced behavioral clues from other people. Last year, when he saw a co-ed from his dorm walking alone, he hurried to catch up with her; she hastened her pace. By the time he arrived at the dorm, she had already gone to the authorities and accused him of "stalking" her. Another young woman, who repeatedly went out of her way to ask my son to dine with her, became annoyed when he asked her what it would take for her to consider him as a boyfriend. She didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him the truth--that he wasn't boyfriend material for her--so she accused him of harassing her to get him to stop texting her questions. The administration made him sign a contract saying he would delete her from his Facebook and never text her again. He was hurt, angry and wanted revenge. In the era of Harvey Weinstein, the ultimate troll, are we going to categorize every unwanted advance and awkward overture as sexual harassment? Women have just gained a voice in this matter and that's great and long overdue, but we risk losing that voice's authority if we sign on to a witch hunt and manufacture victims who may be simply awkward, immature and as voiceless as countless women have been in the past.
82
Dearpru, I wish this comment section enabled each of us to give five or ten Recommends to one, and exactly one, comment. Because you'd get mine.
9
Ugh. The "Obama guidance" approach to campus sexual assault is wrongheaded, and these women are mostly on the right track. But the discussion about intoxication in the article is cringe-inducing.
Yes, of course a sufficient level of intoxication renders consent invalid. Such a situation can give rise to a sexual assault - which is a terrible crime, not merely an embarrassing event.
At root, the problem with the campus status quo concerning intoxication is as follows:
First, the standard for invalidating consent is not "intoxication." It is "incapacitation" - when a person consumes so much alcohol/drugs that he or she is unconscious, unaware, or otherwise physically helpless. One can be buzzed, drunk (e.g., too drunk to drive) and still validly consent to sex. The campus approach too often proceeds as if low level intoxication is sufficient to void consent. It is not, and to say otherwise would transform the lion's share of campus sexual activity (and sexual activity generally) into rape.
Second, it is a two way street, and intoxication does not absolve one from responsibility for rape. Many of these situations on campus involve two intoxicated (but not incapacitated) persons. In those situations, if intoxication is the standard, TWO rapes have occurred. But that isn't how the process plays out. Instead, the woman's intoxication voids her consent while the man's does not. The man is responsible for raping the woman, but not vice versa.
12
We DO need to teach our sons not to rape. And not to abuse another human being physically, verbally, or emotionally. And not to view themselves as superior or better-than any group of others — gender, skin color, sexuality, faith, nationality. And that they are human beings first, and all their other fine attributes only secondarily. And that the same is true of every other human being they will encounter in their wonderful lives.
We DO need to teach our sons these things, because our popular and embedded historic culture role models for and teaches them to act in unreasonably entitled and superior ways.
If we do NOT teach our sons not to rape, who do we expect will do so for us?
13
“I mean, we’re talking about a private institution. If I was running one, I might say, ‘Well you know even if there’s a 20-30% chance that this happened, I would want to remove this individual.'" - Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing in September 2015
Politicians will do extreme things if they think enough people support it.
2
Guilty until proven innocent, the new American way.
6
Actually, we do need to teach our sons not to rape. As a mother of two young boys, a feminist, and as a psychologist who works with sexual assault survivors, I have every intention of teaching my boys what exactly constitutes consent, and how they can protect themselves and their partners from (hopefully unintentional) harm. I feel deeply for these mothers - it must be horrible to know that your child did something like this, but getting them off the hook for it is not the answer. Apologizing, taking responsibility, and doing better next time - that's what makes boys into men.
102
As the mother of a young adult son, we have had serious conversations about rape and what it means to be consenting partners. I have also discussed with him at length about compassion, respect for others, to walk away when the threat of violence is in the air as the way to settle a difference and to remember that just because some one is different is no reason to judge them according to our values.
Maybe if respect was taught universally, that sex is not an on demand possibility when desire is present but is the result of a mutual understanding that intimacy is sought and desired when both parties are of sound mind. I would hope he knows to handle himself with dignity no matter the presence of drugs, peers or alcohol. Most people are not born with decency but need to be treated that way to understand what it means. This is a much bigger issue than making sure both parties are acting under their free will and feel that way the day after.
8
As a psychologist, you must understand that children raised in a normal, healthy environment understand that crimes such as rape and murder are society's worst and most heinous crimes. It is not something that needs to be "taught", these are moral and ethical family and societal norms understood by any child who is not a psychopath.
FACE mothers are not defending students (accused are both male and female) who have been found guilty in a forum with all the rights you would expect in the US. They have been found "responsible" by unskilled college administrators for a conduct code violation with wide and varying definitions in a sham investigation with the lowest standard of proof and no procedural protections, then been labeled "rapists" by their school. There are over 180 lawsuits by accused (so far 69 courts have found in their favor) an over 300 OCR complaints by alleged victims. It's not working for anyone. You may want to read up and become informed on what is happening in these campus tribunals before you pass judgment. There is so little media attention to what is actually happening in campus Title IX investigations. Sadly, this article does little to enlighten readers.
4
You are misunderstanding the issue - not your fault - the article has misrepresented these mothers and the issue. FACE mothers are not supporting students who have raped, they are supporting innocent students who have been wrongfully labeled as "rapists" by a college adjudicatory system woefully unprepared to handle these matters, and coerced by a federal government to see it their way or lose federal funding which can amount to 1/2 billion dollars annually for some schools. Sexual assault is horrible and victims should be supported and respected - for too long they were ignored by their university. The pendulum swung too far in response. Let's make it fair for all students.
6
There’s a curious analogy here with the child abuse witch hunts of the late 1980s. In terms of the aggressive teams of prosecutor, lawyers, and therapists that established widespread fear that children where victims of all kinds of mistreatment including satanic rituals. Often cases arose during traumatic divorce and custody cases and included a so called recovered memory syndrome. Parents and damaged families paid dearly emotionally and financially. No doubt there were and are cases of malicious abuse as today but prosecutors and authorities can be very narrowly informed and trained especially when the media spotlights these issues.
5
While I'm sorry for the parents that go through this, in reality, most mothers (and plenty of fathers) don't have a clue what their kids get up to in college, or beyond college for that matter. My brother was arrested not once, but twice for possession of marijuana when he was in college. My father bailed him out and they both hid it from my mom, who thought her son had never tried drugs. I know other mothers (and fathers) who have no idea of the kind of people their kids are. Kids are on best behavior around their parents. Most parents think their kids are wonderful and can do no wrong. It's understandable, but naive. (BTW, my brother finally told my mom about his arrests about 10 years after the fact. She didn't even want to believe it when he confessed.)
12
Unfortunately, people that have not personally experienced this can't understand it. They assume common sense and fairness exist in school Title IX hearings - they do not. The preponderance of evidence standard is 50.01%, making the tipping point of credibility a tiny 0.01% - how is that even measured? Add to that the "believe the victim" training of the TIX administrators and you have a combination that virtually guarantees that an accused student will be found responsible, regardless of the facts (and evidence). A recent UCLA study estimates that 33% of these students are INNOCENT. Are those of you that are attacking FACE really OK with that? Is it that difficult to believe that not all accusations are based in truth?
12
I find it hard to relate to this discussion since I was playing computer games pretty much all the time in college (apart from frantic bursts of getting work done) but a presumption of guilt is never good especially in a sexual assault claim.
The crime carries a worse stigma than murder in the eyes of most and can derail someone's life and reputation (usually a man's) very quickly in an age of social media and Googling.
6
Why would females be any less confused by adolescent sexuality in the college environment than males? Why might they not make mistakes too? My brother was falsely accused about 25 years ago, was vigorously bullied by a college counselor -- till it turned out that the female was in a mental health crisis. Fortunately caring administrators took over from there and handled the situation effectively.
15
Regardless of which forum the charges are handled, the burden should be "beyond a reasonable doubt." I fully understand the concern for young women, but do not understand the alleged feminists failure to treat young women as if they were less mature than young men. Some insist that the vicitms not be identified, but fail to understand that they are actually "alleged victims." Guilt is presumed. The names of young alleged victims are kept secret, but the alleged perpetrators are publicly identified. Why? understand the impact of publicly identifying alleged victims, but the system ignores the impact on alleged perpetrators. Changes are needed.
15
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
Are they serious?? Her son raped an unconscious girl and this mother blames the girl for her sons crime? If these mothers really want to prevent sexual assault by there sons, they should be saying more than "didn't I tell you keep it zipped" and teach these men (yes MEN they're over 18, they can vote, they join the military) that actions always have consequences and that women were not put on this Earth to satisfy their urges. Betsy DeVos' ignorance and incompetence as an leader in education notwithstanding, putting the onus on the accuser as opposed to the accused is why so many women refuse to report attempted rape, rape and sexual harassment.
These men made a choice when they raped these girls, and I am sorry that they lost their future, but if they had not so selfish-fully thought with their penis instead of their brains, they would not have been in this position. These men should have paid more for their crimes than a simple expulsion from school. These men don't need "defending" they need to be held accountable for their actions, and it would seem, their parents should also be held accountable for raising possible rapists.
22
By current terms, I was assaulted in 2006 at college. But, I’m a guy. I had a woman who had trailed me around campus find me wasted trying to sleep/pass out in a room at a friend’s party, and before I knew it she was on top of me with her shirt off. I was about as drunk as possible while still being awake, and I was still able to put a stop to it, without force, through strong words.
For me to have allowed her to proceed, and then the next day for me to have gone to the police or college administration, would have been totally unfair - a trap, essentially. I never asked for this, but I never considered this assault because I was able to stop her before anything further happened. Rather, this was an offer I’d turned down.
I think by widening the circle of what we consider assault, we hurt the people we try to protect by instilling a victim mentality that really does convince them they’ve been hurt and can’t trust anyone. I don’t think of myself as a victim, and I don’t often think of the above story nor all the times I’ve been groped (including repeatedly/aggressively by a friend’s wife at a wedding last month, and this month by a co-worker at a new job insisting on too many oddly tight body-to-body hugs).
That all sucks, sure. But none of it is as bad as changing a diaper or traffic. I know we’re supposed to be woke, and maybe being a man gives me some type of shrug it off privilege, but people need to be less sensitive generally and more explicit about non-consent.
14
Our culture is and has been overwhelmingly WASP and anti-woman. We do not have equal pay, the equal rights amendment, equal opportunity, and equal recognition of achievement. Wake up America.
11
As others have commented, this is for law enforcement, not college enforcement. Colleges have an obvious conflict of interest. Just as do churches.
(Look at how the U of PA covered up the football abuse scandal all those years; or hos the Church covered up for decades - if not centuries).
10
Not U of PA. Penn State had the football abuse scandal. The University of Pennsylvania and Penn State are completely different schools.
2
Normally, we would rather let 9 guilty people go than punish an innocent. It's bad to let the guilty go, yet we choose to do it in the criminal justice system all the time, for good reasons. Why do these reasons not apply here?
8
So Judith's logic is if a young woman is foolish enough to drink to the point of incoherence, her punishment should be unwanted, and probably unprotected, sex with her sick, predatory son who enjoys having sex with inanimate, incapacitated women. Sounds like early onset necrophila.
I wonder how she would feel if a gay man had unwanted and unprotected sex with her drunk son? And I don't think he would only feel embarrassed.
32
No. I think the point is that when men and women both get drunk, things happen. Neither party is thinking clearly
5
Some of these "sex assault" cases sound ridiculous. There is one one where the "victim" adamantly says nothing was wrong but a friend of hers disagreed and her boyfriend was expelled. In another one, a young woman wrote in her diary that she "hooked up" with a friend. They continued to be friends. Her mother found the diary and, almost a year later, and forced her daughter to file a complaint. How do I know it was forced? That was part of the record. Despite that, the young man was also expelled. We're American expats and don't want our daughter -- yes, daughter -- going to a school that treats student likes this: we'll keep her here in Europe (where genuine sexual assault is still very much illegal).
Even the report that there are very few false allegations of sexual assault is bunk. I read that and it defines a false allegation of provably false: that is, there is a presumption of guilt that cannot be rebutted even if the "victim" is found to have lied. It is only marked false if the accused can 100% prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is false, an almost impossible burden to meet. Needless to say, the study shows a very low level of "false" allegations.
14
One mother said, "In my generation what these girls are going through was not considered assault. It was considered, 'I was stupid and I got embarrassed.'" That sounds like Harvey Weinstein's excuse of growing up in the 60's and 70's and not knowing any better! Sexual harrasment and sexual abuse have always been wrong no matter the decade or the century and anyone using the excuse of the time they grew up in is pathetic, including the mothers of these sexual offenders. It's 2017 moms and your sons have no excuses, neither do you. Maybe you moms should have done a better job raising your sons.
29
So here's what I take away from this, to teach my children:
(1) Do not get so drunk or high that you can no longer make good decisions or control your own actions. You could ruin your life, or someone else's.
(2) Do not have sex with people who are not your spouse/domestic partner. You could ruin your life, or someone else's.
11
This is terrible reporting. I can't believe you published without the voice of a single victim of rape victim.
And 'keep it zippered'... As if rape was about sex, and not about not about violence.
20
To many young people go to college and think it's party time. They are away from home, feeling the rush of freedom and thinking they are invincible. Drunk boys take advantage of drunk girls and sometimes not so drunk girls. I have a good friend who, in his 40's with three lovely daughters, said "Men are pigs." Unfortunately, that is often true. Men respond to opportunity and as we have seen, over and over, to a sense of power. I do agree that all claims of rape should be referred to law enforcement and not mitigated by college staff who are covering their own butts. Drugs and alcohol play a big role in this and I would warn my daughter, granddaughter to stay away from gatherings that set the table for stupid behavior....same goes for the boys. Simply put, there will be consequences. Unfortunately, nobody listens until a complaint is made.
10
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.
Well, maybe you do. Mothers have been covering for the bad behavior of their sons forever. Nice to know that rapey boys get preference over raped girls. No wonder the problem perpetuates.
31
Don't. Have sex with someone from another college, and have it not remotely near campus. Have dinner with a friend before and breakfast after.
1
I prefer going back to the old adage all of us were taught back before they had millennials: No one was ever raped in an upper bunk, whatever the claims are.
1
While I appreciate (a bit) their impulses to protect their sons, these self-entitled women are part of the problem. They have chosen to take advantage of their privileges to help perpetuate rape culture by intimidating and silencing victims and institutions to allow their sons to continue their life trajectories of harassment and rape behavior. Good going, Ladies. Now please line up here to turn in your Feminist Cards.
26
"“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”"
Wow! You've just confirmed that sexual assault happened and that your son was guilty!
Plus, guess what?! Even back in the 1950s, a man getting a woman tipsy and forcing himself upon her was still assault, even rape.
What's been going on is so much more than being "embarrassed".
31
More of Obama's wrongheaded rules that need to be reversed. The rule should not be that mere intoxication renders a female incapable of consenting to sex. And the standard of proof of rape should be higher than "preponderance of the evidence."
4
Dude,
In no other sphere, is Intoxication an excuse for bad or criminal behavior, why should it be different for sexual assault?
One big problem is that too many young men and women don't know what sexual assault is and their parents and schools often have done an inadequate job of educating them
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him.
3
As in other countries with a politically dominant extremist religious right, women are not recognized as fully human. Thus, rather than rape or sexual assault being perceived as criminal, women's bodies are perceived as the dominion of men, deserving of brutality and deprivation of autonomy.
We are simply erasing rape and sexual assault as 'crime', redefining them as just punishment and a 'natural consequence' for women who refuse to adhere to standards of feminine purity such as virginity and sobriety.
Two things really bother me about this reporting:
1) It's shameful the voices of the victims are totally left out. As if a rape-victim, a college student who was run out of a state by the vindictive affluent mother of her rapist who was willing to abuse her professional contacts and position to persecute, could deserves to be raped a second time by the NYT's in pursuit of culture war's cannon fodder.
2) Does the NYT really imagine it's done due diligence by not getting a call back from an anonymous, terrified, 20-something who's mother has sworn out a fatwa against her. As I read of this woman, aware enough of her son's problematic sexuality that she had a slang phrase in her head with which to admonish him, I thought of the horrible stories from dowry-based cultures where men's mothers tortured, abused, humiliated, and even killed young women they found to be in some way deficient for the precious sons. Betsy Devos et al are just these misogynist monsters.
17
Like the women who supported Trump, it is difficult to watch women -- who ought to know how terrible sexual assault is more than anyone -- throw other women under the bus and step on the gas.
146
Are you talking about the reporters? That is what they did. Cherry picked the most incendiary comments, taken out of context, and built an article around it. Disgusting. I know these moms and they were completely ambushed by these reporters. And those of you that don’t know their life experiences and all they have had to go through, would cringe at the bias and unfair practices on college campus.
7
"Totally ambushed?" This reads like a love letter to the mothers. I'm not sure how much more positive they could have been about the mothers. But this article read to me as though it accused all women of just making up stories of asault to ruin men's lives.
I'm reading aggressive bias in this piece and in most of the letters in favor of the boys/men and blaming the women almost universally. So, yes. It is clear there is bias. To treat women as though it's all their fault.
12
Those other women are often mothers of girls. On a jury many years ago, only one other (male) juror & I deemed the naval non-com guilty of rape of an under age young woman. The "not guilty" jurors, all stay at home moms of teenage or older "girls." Their justification: "Girls lie."
2
Its unclear that these charges were really false. And parents who go to any lengths to cover the tracks of their children's bad deeds are the probable reason these boys thought they could get away with this in the first place. "Mommy fix." I have both a son and a daughter. In my daughter's first year of college, one of her friends was raped. The rapist said it was consensual. The girl could not stand living on the same floor of their co-ed dorm as her rapist. She slept on the floor of my daughter's room for the rest of the semester and then dropped out of school. I guess her rapist had another mommy who "fixed" the situation.
31
I am sure there have been cases of sexual assault or rape. In those cases the perpetrator should be punished according to the law. But let me ask the women on this board. When you had sex with your or a partner did you say 'Yes' in writing, verbally, or any other way? Were you sober, lightly drunk, or completely drunk? How about your sex partner? Is that the direction we as a society should go? I mean: get a written consent or a recorded consent from both stating that they want to have sex with each and that they haven't consumed alcohol or other intoxicating products? And should this be done each time we have sex? Lord help us!
2
If one understands that a consequence of intercourse can be pregnancy, and this affects a female FAR more than it does a male, then "yes"... it seems obvious that fully communicated consent is necessary.
2
Not only does pregnancy affect the man significantly, but he is afforded no "right to choose." A significant portion of the male prison population is there because of unpaid child support. Presumably many of them would have chosen not to take on the responsibility of parenthood if they had such a right. Even male rape victims have been forced to pay for the children conceived during their assaults.
There's no winner in an unwanted pregnancy. I hope someday both women and men will have full reproductive rights, but we're a long way off from equality there. So far only the Liberal Party in Sweden has advocated for men's right to "legal abortion."
But at the very least, could we leave men their basic right not to have their lives ruined based on a single evidence-free accusation?
2
If you are about to engage in one of the most intimate acts two people can engage in, why shouldn't they be able to clear-eyed and say that yes, they both unequivocally consent to the action that could have far-reaching implications? (pregnancy, STDs to name two).
Why shouldn't it be done each time we have sex? The problem is actually this mindset that you have to be a little drunk or distracted for it to be spontaneous. That it isn't something that you actively make a decision about but rather fall into. People would be well served by giving consent. That really IS romantic.
In Harper Lee's groundbreaking book, "To Kill A Mockingbird," our feminist foremothers took it for granted that the poor white trash antagonist was lying (for her own convoluted reasons), and that the testimony of the saintly, noble black man was above reproach. As the story goes, in the "he said, she said" kangaroo court which followed, the noble black man was convicted of rape on the basis of a "preponderance of evidence." Sound familiar? Sadly, it has become just as familiar that he was shot and killed police while trying to escape. If today's feminists continue to insist that women have attained saintly nobility, and that the testimony men is as untrustworthy as Harper Lee's tragic hero, we've simply exchanged one variety of noxious bigotry for another.
13
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.
Uh, I'm guessing you do. The fact that rape and assault and issues of consent are as much of a problem as they are says we need to be teaching all of our children about consent.
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him.
Sounds like a problem.
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
That's an issue of your generation. How can you teach your sons and daughters about consent when you obviously fail to understand it? If you're embarrassed about a sexual encounter, guess what? You just don't talk about it. The overwhelming majority of people don't claim RAPE of all things, especially with how much blame gets placed on the victim. Get real. Also, if your dirty son is having sex with a girl who is too intoxicated to consent? It's assault. Deal with it. Raise better sons.
30
"We really don't need to teach our sons not to rape." That attitude sums it up for me.
16
For me the most telling statement in this article is the mother who says she doesn't need to teach her boys not to rape because she is a feminist. This assumes that mothers (or parents) are the only influence on children. It is quite the opposite especially for teens, society has a huge influence on their views of the world. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that continues to marginalize women, treating victims of sexual harassment and assault as "at fault" and paying them to be silent. Parents are not in-biased in their perceptions of their children.
15
This woman is not a feminist. She pays lip service to it (when it benefits her and those like her), but she doesn’t see young girls as anything but evil temptresses.
4
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.
That is the only thing you need to know about these women. They should be deeply ashamed of themselves.
25
I am a mother of two sons. I am also a woman aware of the sexual violence perpetrated against women all over the world. And I consider the Obama-era college guidelines to be an abomination, an assault on the rule of law, and the breeding-ground for witch hunts. I despise Trump and his entire administration but if something good comes out of this cesspool, it’ll be return on normalcy on campuses. I am sure there are sexual assaults on campuses but no more than anywhere else. We don’t have kangaroo courts for sexual crimes committed in trailer parks; why to have them for universities? And being a mother gives you no special insight or moral authority to adjudicate crimes. However, if you know your son to have been falsely accused, you would, of course, do whatever is necessary to protect him. I would hope that if you know your son to be guilty, you’ll step aside and let the law take its course. And the same for mothers of daughters. If you believe your daughter to be delusional or mistaken, take her to a therapist instead of letting her drag an innocent man through mud. And if your daughter is a real victim, stand by her and demand justice. In other words, let the law do its job. Yes, the law is not perfect but it is all we have.
18
The article largely doesn't give us any information about the exact nature of the accusations. It's interesting how all of the comments just fill in the blanks and assume that it must be a case of drunk women accusing equally drunk men.
7
Interesting isn’t it, that the real story behind the FALSE/WRONG accusations are curiously missing. Leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions. Comment section very telling in where the bias is.
And...has anyone stopped to consider what the question was that prompted the we don’t have to teach our son not to rape... that part was left out. Interesting.
1
"She felt a flash of irritation.
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him."
Innocent?! Sounds as if the mother was well aware that her son was a sexual predator and far too "active" for his own good.
Even if it were true that this one time there were extenuating circumstances, the mother's immediate reaction suggests that there may have been many other cases where the boy was overstepping bounds.
Besides, if the woman was inebriated, and he took advantage of that, it's still rape!
14
Having sex with someone who is "inebriated" is not rape in any legal jurisdiction. Inebriation is involved with lot of sexual activity, 99% of it entirely consensual and perfectly legal.
3
Or maybe it is the feminist Mom that is projecting on her inexperienced son and warning him every time he leaves the house there are predatory college girls waiting to pounce. Be safe, keep it zipped, no matter how aggressive she gets.
Didn’t think of that did you.
1
I sympathize with these mothers, but must wonder at what point their sons take responsibility for their own actions. I taught middle school for many, many years and saw boys like these learning their sexual behaviors, and watched their mothers defend them endlessly through bra snapping, harassing, and name calling that brought girls into my class to tears. I heard them as these mothers justified and quantified their dear son's behaviors, and blamed their friends, or the girls, or the school, or me. I often wondered where these blind defenses would end; when the boys would gain their own sense of person and responsible behaviors. Now I know. Never.
Moms need to be busier helping to create better men and not protecting worthless boys.
21
If two people are drunk and have sex, who's the victim? For some reason we rush to say that the woman is the victim. Are we being fair to men?
13
If one drunk person punches another drunk person, who's the victim? If one drunk person robs another drunk person, who's the victim? If one drunk person shoots another drunk person, who's the victim. Being drunk does not excuse a perpetrator of any crime except rape, I guess.
6
Well if the drunk person who is being punched verbally asked to be punched we can assume that it was consensual, even though the next day he may very well regret giving consent.
the lack of compassion in most of these comments that presume guilt and mock the parents is unbelievably tragic - another manifestation of the Colisseum Culture we are now living in where the angry mob wants to see any transgressor stripped of every aspect and put in stocks for the rest of life. it's wrong.
universities should not be judging these accusations at all, by any standard, and the only reason they do so and need to "protect the university" is that lawyers seek money by making "rape culture" the university's fault, while blurring all degrees of sexual incidence into one big angry mix. the legal goal is compensation, just as Gloria Allred wants to win large hush settlements for her female clients instead of encouraging them to speak the truth. in both cases the system wins and the individuals lose, and the facts never have to be proven either way.
allegations should always and only go to the police. both students (male and female) should be put on leave of absence until adjudicated for events that are inconsistent with the purpose of education which is the university's ONLY job. young people need a lot more guidance about drinking, drugs, sex, and the cruelty of the legal process for them both, as well as the cruelty of the online world they now inhabit that will seek to hurt them. that needs to be as routine as giving them the HPV vaccine at adolescence.
57
Criminal accusations do need to go to the police. But these university processes are not criminal actions. They do not result imprisonment, criminal records or fines.
Universities are entitled to set their own standard of conduct - whether it relates to drinking, cheating, or assaulting other university community members -- and create processes to determine whether a student has violated those standards and the consequences for those violations. The standards of proof, just like the standards of proof in civil actions, do not need to rise to the standard of proof our society requires for a criminal action.
What's more, apparently many of the men accused discussed in this article were exonerated by the very processes being criticized. What these mothers are advocating is that their sons never be accused in the first place, not that a fairer process be set up to handle these issues.
That does not mean that processes can't be improved by bringing in legal expertise. But it seems well accepted that universities are capable of creating fair processes for determining whether cheating, plagiarization or (other types) physical assault has occurred, which might result in suspension or expulsion, yet when it comes to sexual assault, they are considered incompetent. which makes me suspect something else is going on here.
That being said, the culture of unsupervised excessive drinking which is poorly addressed on campus, needs a great deal more focus and education.
7
I'm glad I only have daughters. I don't worry about my girls' social lives. In a day and age when young women can make all the choices, access excellent birth control, get an abortion, and be relatively assured they can get wasted without being accused falsely of a crime, I have no worries. Sow your oats.
It would be awful to have a child, a son, who could so easily become the victim of our hysterical campus identity politics and political correctness, in addition to all the other risks of sexual behavior and relationships for young men. All it takes is one rotten girlfriend who lies about her birth control use/ consent/ abuse, and your life is over.
I've seen it happen. I've seen the ex-wives who fake abuse to get a free divorce lawyer from a "Women's Shelter", the college girls who lie about rape so they can achieve coveted "Victim Status", the girlfriends who secretly go off birth control to force their boyfriend become a father and marry them.
Even with all the high profile instances of sexual harassment in the news, I would still rather be a woman in this society. I am a woman, I've been harassed, #MeToo and all that, but harassment is nothing like the ruinous situations I have seen some abusive and manipulative women put men through, with the full cooperation of our laws and our culture.
14
Right up until the end I was hoping you were being sarcastic.
11
...coveted "Victim Status", wow, just wow.
3
Um, you're a woman? Okay. I live in Oklahoma, where many women did vote for Mr Lady-Grabber, so I guess I believe you. It's sad to see people bigoted against groups they belong to, though.
1
'“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.'
Yes, you kind of do. We all need to teach our sons this.
16
"We don't really need to teach our sons not to rape," [Judith] said.
Wow, when rape culture in colleges has been a major news item for DECADES, you don't need to teach your son not to rape??? WRONG! We all need to teach our sons and grandsons not to rape. And in the strongest possible terms. As well as to intervene to protect vulnerable women, or any woman being taken advantage of.
9
Sexual assault is real. Making false accusations of rape is real too. (Remember university of Virginia?)
None of us wants to be convicted of something based upon preponderance of the evidence.
16
Reading along, thoughtfully considering that there is, of course, multiple facets to every story... until this quote:
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him.
Can't bring myself to read further...
13
This story is the reason that 50 years from now it won't be Cosby, Weinstein, O'Reilly, Trump, Clinton, etc., it will be a whole new list of other names and everyone will gasp and feign surprise. Some things never change.
10
We need to follow due process in all of these cases. We are a nation of laws and all of us have the right to our day in court. Universities are not exempt from the bill of rights or any law,and for them to operate as judge and jury when a law is broken is like the Catholic church dealing with pedophiles.
5
It seems that these horrible situations develop pretty exclusively when the kids are drunk. If alcohol abuse fuels the behaviors - colleges would be well-served to place strict standards of behavior around alcohol. Perhaps they should talk about these types of lawsuits as part of the educational process because fear works. Also, no doubt some accusers fabricate. But we all know, as a society, that women are vulnerable when it comes to sexual assault and that underreporting due to shame or fear is common. Finally, the mother telling her son to "stay zipped" and the other hiring a pr firm are each disgusting facts.
5
Perhaps the lifelong democrat should have instructed her son better as other parents. These boys should know the world and be instructed about potentially disastrous situations. If every college student was not so sex obsessed and more intent on grades no one would have to worry about the problem.
5
When are mothers going to start teaching their sons to respect women? Mothers don't want to believe their sons did something as hideous as being abusive. That would mean they were not a good mother. Maybe the sons saw thier fathers disrespect their mother.
And of course for both men and female, drugs and alcohol need to somehow be limited.
3
Actually some of these mothers, there was no sex in their son’s situation. They were falsely/wrongly accused for no sexual anything. It is remarkable that those moms were not quoted in the article.
2
Teach people that consorting with strangers and mere acquaintances has its dangers. Let’s get to the root of why young sexuality is so steeped in drinking and work on changing that. Get colleges out of it except to implement a no fault plan for keeping accuser and accused as separate as possible while the justice system works. Use big data to identify those likely to be serial sexual predators and either don’t admit them or do but tell them the university will be watching carefully, and they are going to need to do some counseling. And to the lady with the zip it comment, news flash: just like speeding, having encounters with a lot of folks you don’t know catches up to you even if you avoided a ticket a lot of times. Better advice is not to zip it but try actually dating and getting to know someone. Pretty good inoculation against a false accusations.
6
These are difficult issues. Sexual assault is real, but so are false accusations of the same. Both the rights of the women and the men must be protected.
One thing puzzles me: if a woman claims she was too intoxicated to assent to sexual intercourse (which can certainly be the case) is the man who may be similarly intoxicated the only responsible party? Certainly men can (and do) act to get a woman drunk in order to assault her--and that is certainly rape. But a man and a woman (or a same sex couple) drinking consensually together who then engage in sexual intercourse--that is a very different matter.
13
What would these mothers of accused rapists do if the situation was that they had a child who was the raped victim? Will they be as lenient, advocating, and nurturing? They have no place in interfering with the very complex process of reviewing and adjudicating such cases. Just as how universities and colleges have no place in sentencing the guilt or innocence of these accused.
If a mother of an accused rapist could easily swing the process of a rape case by viciously contacting a university president and change results, then this process in and of itself is corrupted. If this was a case in a proper court of law, the mother of the accused could not directly contact and influence the judge without a proper lawyer.
The US is most likely the only place on earth whereby rape cases can be tried in the extremely flawed system of an university. Universities have an incentive in the outcome of such cases. Court of laws do not. If the judge has a direct conflict of interest (because they are related to the victim/accused), they would not be allowed to try the case. Similarly, a university does not want the appearance of being infested with a rape culture, so it has every incentive to not gain such an appearance.
The entire Department of Education has no authority in establishing the protocols for trying rape. Rape is a criminal offense, just like any other criminal offense (murder, theft, bodily harm), it should be put in the judicial system. This entire system is corrupt.
6
Rape and sexual assault are crimes and should be treated as such. College faculty and administrators are no more able to deal with this issue than would be any poker party or bridge group. Get the cops and prosecutors on the job right away. Colleges hide behind their process to conceal what's going on on their campuses and to protect their reputation--neither is reason to avoid involving those responsible for enforcing the law.
9
While my boys have graduated college, I still discuss with them a "test" to ascertain morally safe grounds on which to engage in sexual activity. When a potential partner or yourself has been using alcohol/drugs, refrain. Period. Sometimes, a simple, steadfast rule is easier than trying to judge a situation while under the influence. In order to be effective, a personal rule or guideline like this requires integration into a young person's moral fiber.... who they ARE as a person. "I don't have sex when either person is under the influence." This is something moms and dads can discuss at an early/appropriate age. I'm not saying this is fool (or alcohol) proof, but it is a great start in developing moral guidelines on the issue, which is our job as parents. "Keep it zipped" is not realistic.
I want my young adult children to develop healthy and emotionally satisfying sexuality. Taking substances out of the equation requires a bald honesty many college kids are not ready for. A committed, long term relationship is the best venue for this development, but on a college campus, a "long" term relationship is relative. Best partner is someone you know and trust and not under the influence.
My heart bleeds for ALL the parents whose college kids' lives have been turned upside down by casual encounters with relative strangers.
10
as the mother of a five-year-old boy, i take your message to heart. thank you for your clarity. i hope that with such clarity generations can be raised up to seek healthy relating.
3
Readers have jumped on the bit below to condemn these mothers:
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
I don't think that statement is necessarily as self-incriminating as many readers seem to believe. I read it instead as an acknowledgment of the obvious: that in their day young women had agency, too, and as such were willing to admit their responsibility for mistakes they made.
In other words, Judith's statement is criticizing the young women who use accusations of sexual assault to avoid having to accept the consequences of their decisions (as I think occurred with the young woman who accused Jameis Winston, then the star quarterback at Florida State, of rape).
9
Wrong, Luder. In "her generation" domestic violence was a private family matter, rape victims asked for it, sexual harassment was just a little harmless fun, and there was no such thing as spousal rape. Not calling things what they are allows the men involved to avoid the consequences of their actions.
5
Sexual harrassment and imposition are crimes. They should be investigated by the police. Only a single guideline is necessary. If an accusation is made, the institution should be required by law to notify the authorities.
5
I have zero sympathy for these women or their sons. I hav a son of my own. I raised him treat women with respect and consideration, not as sex objects to score points off.
10
As a mother of an 11 year old boy, this issue worries me as we inch toward puberty. The position my husband and I are taking:
1. don't have sex with someone you don't know well,
2. don't have sex casually, and
3. don't have sex if you or the other person is under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Respect yourself and your partner. I suspect if many of the young men who find themselves in this bind had learn this when they were younger they may have made better choices.
12
Sexual assault laws should be gender-neutral. Consensus for sex between two adults - should the boys take it in writing? if it is given today,and tomorrow the girl says that she gave under the influence of drinks,and accuses the boy of rape ,then it is tricky issue. One cannot presume that the boy is guilty. Hiring public relations firms and taking the university to the court,mothers are using all the options they have,and one should not find fault with it. Don't companies do lobbtying,and they make the government to tweak laws in their favour. If mothers do it,what is wrong? Biased sexual assault laws are there in India also,and in other nations. A man has no legal protection if he is stalked or sexually assaulted. The legal doors are closed for men. Why it is so? Who says men are powerful? Mother's retirement savings are spent on hiring lawyers. If a parent cannot protect his child,be it a boy or a girl,then who will? Colleges should run sessions on telling students on consensual sex,and its aspects. Girls also must be feeling guilty if they accuse a boy falsely. If you cannot deal with consensual sex,they why indulge in it? In admission forms,there should be a clause on false accusations. The ideal recourse is do not attend campus parties,confine yourself to your studies,and on your career. Girls who accuse boys falsely,also need to consult therapists. The Me Too campaign should have girls who can admit false sexual assault cases.
2
Both rapists and false accusers should be expelled and prosecuted for criminal acts. Unfortunately these two categories are often not entirely clear, even to those involved. My sympathy for the parents of the rapists is limited. Contrary to the statement of one of the mothers, it is absolutely necessary to teach children not to rape and, above all, to empathize with their fellow human beings.
4
seems these mothers were "willing to do anything and everything" EXCEPT teach theirs sons how to take personal responsibility for their behavior, or teach them about consent. God forbid a young man should have to risk sexual frustration by asking for explicit consent or only having sex with people who aren't wasted. What these mothers have taught their sons is that this world was made for their pleasure and use, and that their privilege will be defended at all costs. As the parent of a son who did raise him to know what healthy sexual relations include and don't include, I am disgusted by the message in this article, which seems to suggest that young women are solely responsible for the nature of their sexual encounters with men. My son understands things differently: two people, EACH responsible for their choices and actions.
12
thank you for your clarity.
2
I'm a non-drinker (rare, I know), and I went to college. I simply have never been in a sexual situation where there was any ambiguity of consent: only plenty of yeses, plenty of nos.
I mean, the legal drinking age is 21. And that's largely due to drinking and driving concerns (e.g., MADD in the 1980s). So when drinking on campus is involved, you've got unsupervised socializing with at least a slightly surreptitious element.
Should the drinking age be reduced to 18? So that it at least takes some of the drinking out from behind closed doors, private parties, frat houses, etc?
2
Who knows if any of these mother's sons are guilty or not. I do know, as a parent, that some parents presume their children could never be involved in wrongdoing of any kind, whatever the circumstances. When these people, boys, girls, or parents, realized the seriousness of their situations, any of them is entirely capable of dishonesty. I doubt seriously that in any of the cases all information related to the events was honestly and forthrightly presented. They could all be guilty, or not. No one knows.
As for the status of "social pariah", it's simply another consequence of how the society deals with the presumption of sexual misconduct. The message? Be extremely circumspect in your casual encounters with the opposite sex.
3
Sexual assault deserves prosecution to fullest extent of law not a college expulsion. Title IX has created Campus Kangaroo courts which work on preponderance of evidence. Regret / Break-up / drunk sex become sexual assault not next day but after couple of months or years. Super Majority of the victims of Title IX are male students. College know that Middle class folks who barely can afford the cost of expensive education no way can afford the cost of expensive litigation.
2
A female college student nearby was verbally threatened, and stalked/ creeped out, w no physical contact
I wanted to break the perp's arm in a few places and then stomp on it, I was dis-advised....(I am in my own mind delightfully vindictive and creative in pain administration)
The school took no action, until a form of coercion was applied to the school, by the young woman, details not shared, at which time the offender or purported offender was advised (1) stay away, a form of restraining go order and (2) repeat actions would lead to expulsion
(3) The purported offender threatened suicide, by note and
(4) the enforcement process go guilt-ed out, backing off, until, as I say, squeezed by the fem
=
I am a great believer in public shaming, stocks, placards, the like, 'set an example'
Mostly, there needs be some equivalent to the allocution, in criminal matters, when pleading -" I did X, and it was wrong"
=
but the ambiguity of charges, makes such hard
=
in another tale from the campuses the female complainant, drunk at a time sexual consent was withdrawn or denied, unavailing to her paramour, declined to prosecute, to face her assailant, embarrassment trauma futility
=
I think we also need some mock trials, pre-enactment, w actors reading from transcripts, to ease the trauma
=
but due process is required
So we shouldn't get drunk and have sex? Ridiculous. The world would be seriously underpopulated if this rule were followed. If I get drunk and kill someone, my voluntary drunkeness doesn't excuse my culpability. However if the woman gets drunk and then has sex, she is absolved from culpability for this act and can blame her partner. The male is required to attempt to assess her level of drunkeness, while possibly being drunk himself. As a general rule this is a ridiculous proposition. Certainly if as happened in the Stanford case a more or less sober man comes across a strange woman so drunk that she can't even stand and has sex with her, this is probably rape. But when a couple get together and get voluntarily blitzed, there has to be real evidence of force or coercion before this can be treated as date rape.
71
One way to temper one-sided policies is have them apply to the entire campus community, not just the student body. If a professor has dinner and a bottle of wine with his wife and they later have sex, if this would be considered sexual assault in the case of two students, then the professor should be expelled from the institution as well
1
I think you need to revise your statement: "Certainly if as happened in the Stanford case a more or less sober man comes across a strange woman so drunk that she can't even stand and has sex with her, this is probably rape. "
A man who has sex with a drunk unconscious woman is rape. Full stop.
9
Because the drunk woman who was raped was not the person who committed a crime. The rapist is the criminal. So for your murder example, if two people get drunk and one person murders the other, again, the criminal (the person who commits the murder) is at fault. It baffles me that people are so confused about this.
6
Being accused for sexual assault is just as worse as being convicted of sexual assault because on this issue not only guilt is automatically assumed there are numerous self righteous organizations who will vilify the accused to no end even if he or she is acquitted of doing anything wrong.
Its about time the accused have some advocacy. How many people have suffered wrongfully but never the less it destroyed their lives? There are too many to even count.
3
Their distinctions between “falsely accused” and “wrongly accused” and that their sons may not have been falsely accused but were wrongly accused is a division visible to only them. False is usually a synonym for wrong. When they said that it sounded like they didn’t believe their son was a rapist yet he shouldn’t have been accused.
4
A false accusation is a high hurdle to achieve, need to PROVE malice These mothers are familiar with what constitutes as a provable false accusation, Wrongly accused is their projection of a he said / she said accusation.
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him.
wow... that says a LOT right there.
17
As a woman who has lived 64 years I can testify to the early onset of verbal assault (8 y/o) and the continued harassment throughout my early years and into my 40's. What really bothers me is that so, so many women never tell anyone what happened, I know I never did. Yet these mothers want to protect the young men. Who's protecting young girls and women from the daily grind of assaults, the date rape, the violent rapes? It seems to me that this is skewed, the poor boys and their mothers, oh my! Isn't it always about the poor boys? This is why things never change and then we wonder why!.
14
This is just one article. It is not the sum of all opinions and information on the subject.
1
How awful that the mom thinks this is something to throw on the young woman, that the young woman was stupid and should be embarrassed. The mom is correct that this is how things used to be, but that was not a good way to be. Maybe she herself didn't suffer any emotional or physical damage from being groped or raped, but I doubt it. Maybe she feels free as a bird to travel wherever she wants, but I doubt it. Maybe she is pleased at having random strangers whistle at her or make lewd comments, but I doubt it.
It's time for men to learn to keep their hands and their words to themselves. We should be free from fear and shame, and our bodies do not belong to anyone else.
7
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.
Just let that sink it. Read it over and over again. Completely reprehensible.
15
That quote means nothing without the context. That's how propaganda works. The propagandist selectively edits text for the greatest emotional impact regardless of the conversation surrounding the selected text.
8
I find it very, very troubling that the mom who went on the PR campaign succeeded not only in getting her son off, but in having an arrest warrant issued for the accuser, who was run out of town. What did his accuser have to gain by inventing this story? Likely nothing. What did the mom and her son have to gain by denying the accusation and smearing the accuser? Everything. She even threatened the university to great effect.
5
I find these mothers arguments silly to an extreme; even though it was the case that having your way with overly inebriated women was once considered good sport I always considered it beneath contempt. Whatever happened to the idea that sex should be between two clearly consenting adults? Times have clearly changed, and these mothers should stop in their attempts to justify their offspring's behavior. The root of the problem on universities, however, can be laid on administrations' blasé attitude toward alcohol abuse, which lies behind much of this behavior. Treat alcohol abuse by students under legal drinking age seriously (most college students are under 21), and perhaps the prevalence of campus sexual assault will be dramatically reduced. Then treat the assaults as the felonies they are, and don't simply leave punishment in the hands of the university.
8
Everyone’s rights should be considered and protected, but it is shocking to see women who lived through and participated in the women’s movement turn right around and engage in the very behavior the movement fought against.
Their sons were so crushed that they might have to live with consequences of their actions that couldn’t go on, but fortunately they had moms with apparently pretty extensive resources at hand to take over and manage their lives for them.
“I was willing to do everything” – including hiring a lawyer and PR firm, using political connections and threatening to sue the university and wage a public campaign that would negatively impact the school’s upcoming fundraising drive.
And the comments of these mothers sadly reveal the strategy of blaming the victim:
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault.”
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape.”
Alison remembers telling her son “How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered.”
When I was growing up the word rape was never even mentioned, so I have been very glad to hear this topic become something people can talk openly about. I can understand wanting to protect your children, but going so far as to create an organization that is so obviously going to perpetuate the old stereotypes is pretty depressing.
11
You don't actually know what happened with these cases, do you?
Part of being an American is believing in due process.
10
It seems that all these moms want is fairness and due process. No-one is suggesting we ignore sexual assault! As a Social Worker I am fully aware that "people we love are capable of doing bad”However this applies to accusers as well. Accusers lie. People lie or change the truth. ALL People are capable of this. It is for these reasons that we must insist on Due Process. Sexual Assault is serious and needs to be addressed but wrongfully punishing someone creates new group of victims.
15
"But a growing corps of legal experts and defense lawyers have argued that the Obama rules created a culture in which accused students, most of them men, were presumed guilty."
As opposed to the victims, who are usually presumed guilty. Of causing it. By being herself.
Now that the tables have been turned and the issue of how many women have been sexually humiliated, molested, assaulted or raped, will men attempt to practice controlling their urges like adults?
5
There's no worse judge of character than a mother (or parent) of their child. To admit your kid turned out badly means you have to question or genes or child-rearing skills. So with this decision the 'boys will be boys' justification is back in full forth.
5
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” What a way to talk to your son. How does that communicate a concern for the welfare of the woman the son may have sexually abused? How do words such as these communicate the message the son must take responsibility for his actions? How much more appropriate it would have been for the mother to initially have said tell me what happened and is the woman alright? Mothers who use their sons to maintain their own sense of need and importance forever cripple them, with the result that society ultimately pays the price extracted by men who do not take responsibility for their actions, sexually and otherwise, in the workplace, on the street, and in their own homes.
149
It is possible that those aren't the only words the mother said to her son. Consider that.
10
The issue needs multiple responses. First, people need to act less impulsively.
Private parts are notoriously unresponsive to reason and logic no matter how many lawyers are involved. Parents need to raise their children less as princes and and princesses, and more to resist immediate gratification, which our society encourages. Courts need to throw out many of the unfounded accusations, and make the accuser pay the defense of the accused when the charge is flimsy.
Who profits in all this as in the Weinstein affair? Lawyers, ;lawyers and lawyers. It's a gold mine to them. Many of them should lose their licenses
for what they do in these cases.
1
As a woman who's gone through the college (enough said), and the mother of a son, I am at a loss as to why university personnel should have any business evaluating claims of sexual assault. Placing them in this position is unwise - they do not have the training for it, the process is a mockery for both the purported victim and the purported assailant. These are serious, serious matters. This is not about a student complaining their roommate plays their music too loud. Sexual assault is a matter for authorities - real ones, not campus ones. I understand completely the hesitation to report, but life does not stop at the campus' borders. These are complicated matters and they should be treated with the gravity they deserve. Colleges have every incentive to advise students away from reporting - which is a BAD idea - and try to solve everything internally, but they are absolutely not the right place to adjudicate such claims.
15
It's interesting how mothers of daughters and mothers of sons see this issue so differently.
3
The Obama administration simply decided to instruct colleges to ignore the most basic tenets of the law, due process of the accused, as their solution to the problem.
What resulted was the kind of kangaroo court we might find in countries like Cuba or North Korea. The accused is judged by a panel of Professors who have no formal training in sexual assault, the accused cannot hire counsel, or bring anyone to testify in his defense. The accuser cannot be brought to face the accused or be questioned in his presence.
The case is decided on preponderance of evidence, a standard which is vague and clearly inappropriate when the consequences are so severe. The result of a "guilty " verdict is often expulsion and destruction of a person's chance for other education or employment options. Their life is destroyed. Thankfully this wrongheaded attempt to solve the problem by ignoring the law will end thanks to Ms DeVos. Sexual assault is a serious problem but it cannot be solved by ignoring due process and the rule of law. Kudos to Jerry Brown, even a left winger like him understands this. Unfortunately there are still many out there who do not.
11
1. Police are not optimal place to take sexual assault cases. District Attorneys need to win cases to be judged effective. They are disincentivized to prosecute when the victim isn't "sympathetic".
2. Anecdotes do not equal data. It's terrible when sons are wrongly accused by sex partners and terrible when college men prey on women to sexually assault them. One wrong doesn't justify another. We need systems to resolve sexual assault complaints that utilize trained personnel and that don't assume a charge = guilt.
3. Not sure we teach our children enough about consent while they are in middle school. We need parents teaching their sons and daughters to avoid hook-up culture and to avoid having sex with drunk people! Sex ed needs to be about more than biology.
4. DeVos changes to federal regs do NOT just allow colleges and universities to adopt a higher, clear and convincing standard of evidence. Schools can adopt the higher standard -- ONLY if they use that standard for other types of student code of conduct violations (e.g., vandalism, stealing from the college bookstore, alcohol violations, etc.). It would be sex discrimination to have one evidentiary standard for sex-based student code of conduct violations and another standard for code of conduct violations that don't involve sex.
6
Many commenters wrongly think that schools judge whether an accused is guilty of sexual assault. Law enforcement investigates whether a crime occurred. Schools cannot and do not judge criminal matters. They determine if the accused violated the school's sexual misconduct policy. "Sexual misconduct" covers a gamut of behaviors, up to and including sexual assault.
It's incumbent on schools to follow a fair process for both complainant and respondent. Schools do a disservice to both parties if they don't. By rescinding existing guidance, the DeVos DoE has sown more confusion at a time when schools require more clarity than ever about fair process.
4
What percent of people who are expelled and convicted by college deans are innocent, and is that percent OK in the effort to reduce campus sexual violence?
If 10% are innocent but assumed guilty, what percent reduction in women on campus who are attacked must occur to justify it? A 5% reduction? An increase in the number of women willing to report attacks, by 10%?
This is where the rubber meets the road. Some number of innocent young men must have their youth sacrificed so that more women can go to college without being violated. No one dare say that. But we have to talk about it, to come up with reasonable balance.
Saying that accused innocents don't exist, or are a negligable factor, denies reality. Saying that women aren't scared, raped, and victimized denies reality. Denying reality leads to myths and false beliefs.
Personally, I'd max the innocent but assumed guilty percent at around 3% or 4%, given what I anticipate could be a 10% to 20% overall reduction in campus attacks on women.
4
So, is it you who has "their youth sacrificed so that more women can go to college without being violated"? That is an incredulous statement. No kid should have their "youth sacrificed" so that the behaviors of binge drinking and whatever else leads to these he said she said moments - which do not rise to the level of the courts, but rise to the level a political sin - can be used as a sword against the fundamentally innocent.
3
Opponents of these mothers’ pushback seem to think it’s about not taking rape seriously. On the contrary: it’s about taking it seriously enough to make it a matter fairly adjudicated within the legal system, rather than a flimsy web of mutual accusations and playground bullying played out in secret by campus administrators and scholars who are not trained to make such judgements. It requires real attention to individual details, not vague lynch-mob arguments like “lots of women experience sexual abuse therefore this man is guilty”. There is no student discount on justice.
9
What happens among 18-21 year olds who are not in college? Honest question. Don’t have any visibility into the distinctions.
Is a culture of rape more protected on college campuses, and truly changing as young women are fighting back harder to stop the double standard that has protected young men? Is the problem that colleges try unsuccessfully to manage these cases, when courts should adjudicate them - and might be better equipped? If the courts handled all alleged rape cases of 18-22 year olds, would that level the field of justice between college men and women and those who aren’t college students?
By the way, the mothers in this story might have convinced DeVos but, based on their quotes, left me convinced DeVos is even more unqualified for her job than I previously thought.
6
It seems that the woman's consent, or lack thereof, is the central issue in most of these cases. If the ambiguity of that consent could be removed or resolved then this problem could be substantially reduced.
An unconventional but possibly effective solution might be to hold campus parties at a venue or location where the participants' consent is automatically deemed granted upon entering the premises.
That way women will know in advance that if they set foot in that space they have already consented to sex.
1
One sexual assault is too many, one student denied a fair process is too many.
The comments indicate that readers are uninformed about what takes place in campus Title IX proceedings and the article does nothing to educate them. FACE mothers are not protecting students who were found responsible by a competent system, they are fighting for innocent students railroaded by schools more concerned about risk management, lawsuits, or under the Obama administration - an adversarial OCR threatening to withdraw federal funding.
Since the OCR's Dear Colleague letter of 4/11 which gave strict marching orders to schools on how sexual assault investigations should be handled, campus Title IX proceedings have not worked for any student. This is proved by over 185 lawsuits that have since been filed by accused students (so far 69 courts have found in their favor) and over 300 OCR complaints by alleged victims.
Proceedings include a mere 60 day investigation by an investigator whose main goal is to protect the institution, hearsay is allowed as evidence, witness testimony is not under oath, no cross exam, exculpatory evidence often not allowed, and no right for the accused to know the charges. Yet based on a preponderance standard - a mere 50% plus a feather - a student can be labeled a rapist, and lose educational and career opportunities. Students should not have be forced find the fairness they were denied by their school in the court system. We can do better for all students.
8
I’ve always wondered why the alleged perpetrator’s name is released to the public but alleged victim’s name isn’t. Both should be protected until the matter is settled.
5
Bravo to these women!!! Rape is defined by legal standard in every state. It is not the business of anyone other than the courts and police to get involved in the proceedings. If a rape occurs, then the victims need to come forward in that framework and the accused needs to be innocent until proven guilty as per the U.S. Constitution. That schools get in the business of adjudicating these claims is wrong. Period. Just as they shouldn't be in the business of determining wether or not a student has committed robbery or murder.
Schools should be allowed to impose standards for admittance or attendance based upon conviction. They should even be allowed to impose those standards for someone who is charged with an offense, if that person is a threat to fellow students. But to have an accused individual be subject to a different standard of justice because the accuser is a certain class of individual (in this case a woman) smacks of show trials with the condemned being nothing more than political prisoners.
5
Boys need to be actively taught about consent, obviously. It needs to be spelled out for them, before they get old enough to act on their urges. They need to know that they will feel the urge to dominate, but that urge is like other urges, it can be controlled and channeled into better outlets.
It's part of preparing them for society, so they can prosper. Look at the harm done to these boys, along with victims, because they weren't taught like they should have about consent. It ruins lives. Do better!
5
I'll add that girls need to be taught about consent and personal autonomy as well. While males attacker/female victim make up a large percentage of rapes, males are raped. Besides, separate rules are part of the problem. It isn't a male vs female thing. It's a human being vs human being thing.
2
As a mother of both a daughter and a son, I can empathize with both sides of this very sensitive issue. While deliberate violence or sexual assault against women is not acceptable, false or nebulous accusations against a young man destroying possibly his future is also not to be taken lightly. I have faced the scorn of a patriarchal society when I reported a fellow high school student for indecent exposure, so I can see the historical value of how women reporting unwanted advances have felt disbelieved and disrespected. I have also been witness to a false accusation of sexual harassment at work when a woman colleague was trying to hide a consensual affair from her husband. The fact is these things, like any accusations of crime or violence, need to be investigated objectively before either party is presumed guilty.
7
If it is just a matter of "Principles of Fairness"...one has to ask the same question in regards to ex felons who not only have received judgement and paid the price for the the crime committed, but will continue to suffer , be penalised and in effect are never" forgiven" for the crime committed despite the completion of the punishment for its doing.
Often for those who commit sexual assault, there is often no actual punishment for the crime in terms of the law taking action as should be done, but so many times does not.
There is often a stigma or societal (and personal) negative effect that can follow a perpetrator of a sexual assault and the implications/outcomes are often severe... even if the law and justice is not involved or pursued.
And is something that every ex prisoner/felon must ALSO live with for life and despite and including having paid and being punished by the law for the crime committed in and as addition to the many perpetrators of sexual assaults on Campus who don't.
1
For every story about a mother’s efforts of a mother to save her son there are other stories about parents’ efforts to save their daughters. Sometimes they are trying to save them from the same things - suicide, public shaming, leaving promising academic opportunities. It’s worse than unfortunate that in our society, men have long used their power - physical, financial, political - to abuse women and to fight back when their victims resist or expose them. And it’s worse than unfortunate that our nation is now being led by a man who represents the most reprehensible characteristics of his gender.
No doubt there are cases of false accusation in some of these cases. But there is also no doubt that in many more cases accusations were never publicly made and no solace was ever obtained for the female victims. And there is even less doubt that our society has not yet gotten to a place where women are treated fairly in a myriad of other situations outside of sexual behavior itself. We have made progress in those areas. Are we making progress still?
2
If their mothering instincts had kicked in when they popped these kids out, instead of as a consequence of their sons' later behavior ( including knowing teaching them when to back off and not assume consent), and they had spent the important years together paying attention to their values and not just the list of items on their college application resumes, the problem would obviously be a little less prevalent ant our daughters, on the whole, would be safer.
6
Trolling the comments briefly: not immediately mentioned is the huge input that alcohol has in these cases, clouding the judgement of both parties as well as of the corroborating witnesses for both sides. Not to mention that many of the cases in the article involve underage users.
I'm curious if Ms DeVos is addressing this aspect, as the degree of intoxication in these students is not insubstantial (I worked for a time in an ER near a major State University). Combine this with phone apps like Tinder, well....the combination is a disaster happening over and over again.
2
Colleges and mothers can and must educate students about the legal and humane need for consent before sex and the need to be sober enough to understand whether consent was given.
But is NOT for colleges, or mothers, to decide if someone is guilty of rape - that should be in the hands of the police and courts.
2
It's about time these laws were repealed.
Many of these women make decisions they regret only to casually level accusations against the man they were with, not caring about the damage they do. The the bar to accuse these men should be much higher and now, thank god, It is.
It's almost become fashionable now to accuse someone of sexual misconduct, which is a broad term ,difficult properly define.
6
I have a son who is 9 years old. I have used the word consent around him since he was two. "Ask before you hug your friend." He understands that you respect someone's space and body. At an art show last year when he was 8 he noticed an artist had drawn nude models- charcoal. I asked him what he thought and he asked me " did they give consent?" The artist heard him, I heard him and his dad heard him. I was so proud of him. My 8 year old got it- on his own in the proper context. Children can be taught at a young age about consent- it is how it is framed. His best friend is a girl and I've heard them both talk about consent using their own words. Asking each other if it is ok to hold the others hand, to hug them when they are sad. Children are so much better equipped to have empathy and equate the idea of respect & equality when adults demystify language and embrace their own shortcomings & help teach their children differently then how their parents taught them. We empower our children to use their voices and to honor the answers they receive. No is always No and Yes is yes. I'm not sure is still no. I don't know is still no. And yes tonight or today does not mean yes the next time. If you are unconscious you can't consent- ever.
9
Thank you for creating a better future for my daughter!
Just two words here: Due Process. Ok, and a few more words: When we abandon Due Process for the sake of cultural or ideological pressure, we are lost. This piece was very, very important. Thank you for doing it.
9
with the current environment, these young men can have their lives upended, careers ended, academic work tossed aside and reputation permanently ruined even without a trial or evidentiary data. Innocent until proven guilty? Not in this world, at this time. This trauma is real and must acknowledged. Their rights must be defended, just as we honor and defend other victims of trauma.
6
My daughter attends college, and as her father, I want the toughest and most stringent regulations and laws legally and morally available promulgated on this matter. Yes, they should afford appropriate juris prudence, but they should be protecting my daughter and the other women attending college from sexual abuse, and designed in such a manner that women who have been violated should feel comfortable coming forward.
Perhaps a fathers group should be formed to give our opinion on this matter...
3
In California, a rape accusation by a woman with no other evidence results in immediate jail time for the accused male until bail is posted. It also often results in a restraining order for the male, which can lead to loss of a job or school attendance, as well as significant legal fees.
In other words, our society has already overcorrected for generations of unacceptable tolerance for rape. This is serious business that can destroy lives. College administrators are not qualified to investigate claims of rape, and should not be given authority to make decisions in rape cases, period.
4
Certainly, when trying to determine someone's character, the most credible testimony will always come from his mother.
2
First, we need to understand that the college adjudication process is used to investigate student behavior that violates the college's standards of conduct. This includes, for example, cheating on an exam or destroying college property. If a preponderance of evidence in those cases results in a finding of fault, the college has both a right and an obligation to uphold their standards. The means of doing so for egregious violations, such as rape, is expulsion. While heartbreaking, it's far better than imprisonment. As a mother, I'd rather my son be expelled from college than imprisoned (or raped, for that matter).
Second, we need to shift our focus to how we educate our kids. We teach girls not to get raped, but we don't teach boys "not to rape." We tell girls to dress modestly, keep in groups, and monitor their alcohol intake. We tell boys to classify drunk girls wearing short skirts as whores. We also tell them there's such a thing as "real rape," so they learn that anything else, by default, is consensual sex. Sometimes we tell them to "keep it zipped up." Mostly, we don't. Boys who are thoroughly educated in rape mythology, but ignorant of "legal" rape will behave accordingly. When the consequences are delivered, we blame the colleges, the girls, or the law. But the fault is ours as long as we continue to make them both heir and prey to our own ignorance.
3
I was raped in raped in college and sexually harassed and assaulted so often I had a breast reduction in an attempt to make it stop. Apparently having large breasts is asking for it. I'd like to pose this purely hypothetical argument. Suppose for a moment that these women's sons got drunk with a with a gay man and woke up the next morning to the realization that he had had been anally penetrated. Would he be feel "embarrassed and that he had made a mistake"? Or would he feel sexually violated or raped? Allowing yourself to become impaired in another person's presence does not imply consent.
9
Every mother of serial killers proclaims that her son is a "good boy" and innocent of his crimes. John Wayne Gacey, Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway who murdered at least 50 women, the BTK killer, Jeffrey Dahmer --- their mothers all remained firmly in denial and proclaimed the innocence of their sons.
Perhaps it is human nature to remain in denial that one has failed as a parent, that one has failed to raise a decent human being with a moral compass. These mothers are naive: their sons are the boy-children of the porn generation who have grown up disrespecting women, referring to women with the vilest of profanity, chanting like the Yale males, "No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal." These mothers are handmaidens of rape culture and patriarchal misogyny.
Women gain nothing by reporting rape. They are disbelieved, shamed and blamed. What was she wearing? She led him on. How much did she drink? What was she doing out at night? And on and on.
Although false rape reports are rare, less than 2%, less than the false report rate of other crimes, men and rape apologists believe that half of rape reports are false. And so, the chances of a rapist being arrested and convicted is near zero. And so, at least 1 in 5 girls and women are raped, half under the age of 18, half of those under 12. But few report the crimes against them. And so your daughters are nowhere safe from sexual violence. And so rapists on campuses and elsewhere go free and Weinsteins get away with their crimes for decades.
3
Extremely telling excerpts: One of the mothers who grew up 40 or so years ago still thinks that if you’re too inebriated to properly consent and you get raped as a result, that you “were stupid” and “got embarrassed”. First of all, black people we’re still being segregated and didn’t have rights and freedoms just a decade or so before, doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong or racist as hell. Things don’t work that way. The reason things are different now than 1970 is because we realized how horrible certain things were/are to other human beings. And another mother in this article thinks that she “didn’t have to teach her sons not to rape”. Great, so they went into the world never being talked to about consent? And not forcing yourself on other people?? And you truly believe they wouldn’t do that?
5
And how many mothers of victims did DeVos meet with?
6
So they rape someone and mom comes to the rescue. Republican values.
6
Gosh, there's one thing that white college guys need is more entitlement.
Ladies, perhaps if yours sons were taught better by their parents about respect, they wouldn't be in this problem.. What were they wearing? How many times have they had sex with others? I know, I know, that drunk hussy who was passed out when your son raped her deserved what she got for being drunk, how dare her drunkneness not excuse his behavior? Maybe if your boys had morals, they would't come within 10 miles of "wrongly accused." It was their fault for being there. I know when you were drunk in college you just bit the bullet, but now we're holding the penis part of the equation accountable. Tough, isn't it? you should have raised decent children, not scum.
This is disgusting. These "men" need to suck it up. They aren't innocent little babies, they're rapists who take advantage of drunk women.
"“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said." Yeah, maybe you should have done that.
7
One mother recalls telling her son, on hearing he had been accused, “How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered." Hello? This is not normal. Not every mother has told her son something like this. If you have to tell your son this, even once, then you should be concerned about what might happen when he leaves home. If your son does not have the decency and common sense to figure out what to do with his zipper, and when, something is very wrong. Believe it or not, not everybody has sex while in college. And the distinguishing factor has nothing to do with whether or not a parent said something like, "Keep it zippered." The focus should be on respecting women, and these lessons should be taught long before college.
8
Falsely accused or not, the damage is done, causing a hellish nightmare for the entire family, and in some cases, the accuser walks away and is never held accountable. From past experience with a family member falsely accused of domestic violence by a vengeful ex-girlfriend with ulterior motives, she managed to defame his character, with malicious intent to harm and punish out of spitefulness. He's a victim of discrimination and criminalization in the eyes of the courts, despite the lack of evidence, proof or testimony from a single witness. I can vouch he's living a life equivalent to being in Purgatory, and it's heart-wrenching to watch as his life's being dragged down into the depths of Hell with no recourse to climb out of it.
48
Falsely accused or not, the damage is done? In other words if the accusation is not false, the damage you describe, the hellish nightmare for the entire family, is just as inappropriate? Because that is what your comment seems to indicate.
1
My father, one of the gentlest and most righteous men imaginable, was told by his mother: "Treat every woman you meet like a lady--not because she necessarily is a lady, but because YOU are a gentleman." After all the madness of the "sexual revolution" has boiled down to our current muck, this advice remains pretty damn wonderful for mothers to tell their sons, doesn't it?
3
My view will be controversial and especially because I fully see the injustice of my view - and as a father of 2 girls my biases are obvious:
I couldn't care less about some boys (defined as I don't know, a low single digit percentage) being dragged into legal and administrative and reputation issues for what they have been ACCUSED of.
The level of actions by boys against girls and men against women that is UNREPORTED and the victims that remain traumatized with lack of justice far outweighs some take downs of some idiots on college campuses.
Sorry- as they defend their boys and "do whatever it takes" without any regards to the truth by which they'll never reconcile because of their internally conflicted views (my boy acting bad means that I'm bad- I can never face that); I on the other hand, don't care about their boys and the pain they'll go through given the multiples of pain women and girls go through in this country.
There is no slippery slope- not being disrespectful and selfish is the easiest way to avoid any overbearing regulation. I didn't take advantage, or harass girls or even go close to any kind of line in college and so this law would be irrelevant to me.
My message to them - too bad and suck it up - it's the new world and I will "do whatever it takes" so my girls are not a victim of your boys. If your boys are the sacrifice for that for the future - so be it.
7
What a troubling and distorted view of due process you seem to have. It is not too bad when someone is falsely accused nor is it too bad when someone is the victim of rape. We do not have to view the desire for the accused and accuser to both have due process as being contradictory positions. Fair processes are what is best for everyone involved and society overall.
I am a woman, I am the mother of a son, I am the daughter of a woman and a man the partner of a man. I have no desire to imperil one gender over the other. The current process is flawed and as much as I am no fan on DeVos, the Obama Dear Colleague Letter was wrong-headed.
2
A story about two chilling sides of this:
The perp, a clueless male, sank his own case with his goofy defense of his actions.
The title ix investigator claimed to be able to tell in a he said/she said situation which person was lying in the absence of corroboration from witnesses.
Two victims: the woman and the process.
Yes, the status quo is unacceptable.
DeVos wins if she can create the conditions for finding a real solution. The cops and the DA do not seem to be the answer because of the large number of women who fail to report sexual assault. By most accounts, the Law and Order types have created an open season on women by further victimizing the victims when they do come forward. The Lawyeristas in this comment stream fail to acknowledge and address this failure.
The universities collect tuition from men and women. They won't ban porn because of the 1st amendment and because about half of their customers are adolescent men. But the other half of their customers are women. So the Universities actually have a serious stake in this problem, beyond their prattle about their values.
Orient young women in that first week to the risks of drinking and toking with wanna be Harveys and Dons. Teach situational awareness and have them practice coming to the aid of classmates in need. Teach them to bring complaints, loudly. Publicly flog coaches whose athletes transgress. Decertify errant fraternities. Act on valid complaints. Restore safety.
12
1. Being accused of anything is not proof of guilt
2. Next day remorse is real
3. College officials (as I was for years) are not experts in criminal law
4. The guidelines were (are) ridiculously vague. It is not clear what "preponderance of evidence" actually means. Better safe then sorry is the watchword these days
5. Rape is a crime and merits the harshest of legal penalties. As soon as guilt is properly established the perpetrator needs to be removed and forbidden on-going access to the institution.
6. See 5 above and note the phrase 'as soon as guilt is properly established.
7. See 1 above. Accusation is not proof
142
"Accusation is not proof", yet neither is *denial* -- or a mother's defense!
2
"Preponderance of the evidence" is the standard for most civil cases; appropriate in these cases since the person's liberty is not at stake as it would be in a criminal court. I don't see how it is any more or less vague than "beyond reasonable doubt."
3
Is it any clearer what beyond a reasonable doubt means?
Shouldn't the perpetrator of rape being serving a jail sentence as soon as guilt is properly established? The harshest of legal penalties I would hope would mean more than being removed and forbidden on going access to the institution.
1
One other thought: perhaps if this was handled correctly, by professionals not professors, as a serious crime with a serious punishment, we would see a change in the behavior and culture that minimizes this issue and perpetuates the culture. Right now young men in college are not afforded the presumption of innocence before being proven guilty, but they also seemingly enjoy the ability to rape with rather limited consequence. Why on Earth is this okay?
Don’t have a chemistry professor (or whomever) merely kick someone out of college; presume innocence as should be afforded and then work like hell to put these ‘boys’ in prison where they belong.
15
What's the evidence that this"culture" exists?
Positive verbal consent-- only YES means Yes ---it is not perfect (and coercion can still happen), but it is a start.
11
How do you prove a verbal Yes when only 2 present. Still creates a he said / she said situation. Especially in cases where accusation occurs 2 years later, no evidence, just an accusation.
28
True enough, but it changes the culture of interaction.
It means far more men or, rather, boys, will exercise better judgment and be sure to get consent. It will also protect more women and girls, too!
1
There IS a way to bring the instances of unwanted sex when consent is hard to guess: Have sex with passion fully aware. But, of course, we reach for alcohol as it seems to "help" with getting less inhibited. And that's the problem: Having the NEED to become less inhibited.
To have an enjoyable sexual experience you don't need your senses to be dulled or compromised. On the contrary, it's better to have them fully alert. What is the point of having a dulled-with-alcohol sexual encounter.
And that brings us to the adolescent attitude college students have about sex: they can't seem to allow sex to themselves unless they can abdicate at least some level of responsibility for it.
Teach sex education more openly in schools, starting with preteen years. Teach them sex is a healthy need and is enjoyable to BOTH. That will help responsible -- and more enjoyable -- sex. That will reduce the unnecessary hurt that women and men feel when women are routinely disbelieved and men are too quickly accused.
20
Many cases there is no sex or sexually anything. You can teach all the great sex education and affirmative consent in some cases, wouldn’t have change the outcome. Administrators refuse to look at real evidence. Best bet, do not allow anyone you love to be alone in a room with another college student. Always have a witness and what ever you do, DO NOT go near a girl that has had a sip of alcohol. It can end very badly, even if you are just trying to help them.
10
OMW, no!
If someone sees an inebriated person being taken advantage of, they need to intervene!
1
So Mrs. Seefield pretty much threatened her sons school with a lawsuit and bad PR and—voila!—the verdict is nullified! My question while reading this entire article is how do they know their sons are telling them the truth?
As a mother of two boys—one a junior in college—I understand that “mama bear” reaction but are we to accept that these boys are truly innocent just because mom said so? Where is the victims’ side of the story?
57
While the school may have been cowed, I doubt the police would have gone as far as accusing the woman of filing a false police report if there hadn't been good evidence this may have been something like the rolling stone story....
36
When the charges are dismissed, people refuse to indict, the threat of bad publicity makes them reexamine a case, etc those are pretty good indications that the young men are telling the truth.
24
No, it's a pretty clear indication that the university is trying to avoid bad publicity!
There will always be discrepancies in reports -- one call from a campus lawyer to a local police department can quickly lead to a reappraisal.
One meeting between campus lawyer and administrators or faculty members will quickly turn things around -- to sweep things under the rug, to get past the problem.
No doubt some young men have been falsely accused; but there's no doubt far more men have gotten away with assault!
4
These mothers "are willing to do anything..." to save their sons who don't need to be taught "not to rape." They are relying on misogynist, patriarchal views embedded in our criminal justice system that blames the victim. One mother goes so far as to say "in her day" in the 1970's, an incapacitated woman who was subject to nonconsensual sex was just "embarrassed!" These educated helicopter mothers organized and lobbied non-qualified Betsy DeVos on behalf of white male privilege when the university was doing a fundraiser. How K Street! They claim that a "clear and convincing" burden of proof is too high for predators who have lawyers and public relations consultants. But who exactly is representing the real victim? No one. The college or university is just worried about its "brand." Any thought on how a group of black mothers might be greeted in similar circumstances?
104
Chances are both were drunk. I have wondered why we are assuming the woman was incapacitated but not the man....I don't know that going back to the days of treating women as more child like and less culpable is a good idea.
61
I was not willing to do anything for my son and would not have done a so if I thought he was guilty. I did not call in special favors, we let the system do its thing. If others had the same fair trial, we would not be facing this issue in our country.
@Laurel McGuire
Women have been treated as childlike and therefore less culpable of exactly what, in what days of yore? Seems to me that women who have spoken out about sexual assault and rape have mainly been accused of "asking for it" or "dressing provocatively" or being where they shouldn't have been, or drinking too much.
It is, sadly, a fact that binge drinking and drugs are pervasive on college campuses. I agree with you that perhaps both parties were drunk in one or more of the situations mentioned in the article.
But if both college women and men may frequently be incapacitated by drink, how is it that we have yet to hear of a college man alleging he was raped by a female student when he was so drunk he was unable to give consent?
Before we go back to blaming the victims, these helicopter moms -- and Betsy de Vos, and the colleges and universities themselves need to step back and acknowledge that sexual assault is not simply a "violation of campus rules" but a criminal act that should be dealt with by the police and the courts, where one hopes due process will prevail, and not political or other pressure on the institution.
That young women on or off campuses have historically under-reported rape is the result of several forces, only one of which is the fact that local police often ignore the charges.
Just when women have found support for speaking out, is it not surprising to hear these outraged stories of false accusations, or morning-after regrets?
3
For better or worse, it all comes down to these two words:
... due process.
34
This conversation always brings out a lot of people talking about due process, virtually none of whom understand what they’re talking about.
As someone who is involved in the periphery of the US educational system I have to admit that I found the Obama-era guidelines to be vague and at odds with most of the very basic principles of American jurisprudence.
The accusation of rape or sexual assault is extraordinarily serious and it demands the attention of the professionals in our criminal justice system. Under the previous guidelines, US higher education institutions set up their own kangaroo 'courts' and gave the job of investigating what in some States could be a capital crime to untrained university employees as an additional job duty.
I'm surprised that the NYT article didn't discuss what actually happens to a young person accused of this crime. Basic elements of our criminal justice system simply disappear. The accuser can remain anonymous while the accused is not. There is no requirement for the accuser to make a police report and the accused is not allowed their basic sixth amendment right to confront their accuser.
And I'm interested in understanding why an intoxicated female has no responsibility for her actions, while an intoxicated male is responsible for anything he does or says.
Sexual assault on campuses is a real problem and it needs strong government guidelines to address, but the pendulum has swung much too far in favor of the accuser, while negating very basic rights of the accused.
173
If an intoxicated female assaulted or raped or while driving, drove over an intoxicated male or female, do you really think there would be no consequences?
False equivalence.
2
"I'm interested in understanding why an intoxicated female has no responsibility for her actions..." because she's not the person who committed a crime. Clearly.
2
You make many good points, but "why an intoxicated female has no responsibility for her actions, while an intoxicated male is responsible for anything he does or says" is not one of them.
In the second case, a crime has been committed; in the first, it has not. The fact that the crime was made easier by the victims actions is immaterial.
3
I don’t think many people realize the degree to which the former administration attempted to change the very definition of sexual assault for college campuses. By taking a “micro aggression” approach to what is considered sexual assault, the admistration greatly inflated the number of purported crimes being committed. This does no one any good, from victims of real sexual assault to those accused and tried for offenses the legal system would not consider to be crimes at all.
34
I think most assaults are not reported
1
This reads like mothers trying to protect their sons, not mothers trying to rehabilitate their sons for violent crimes. This article made me cringe because it brings old stereotypes back into the conversation. This issue feels more pervasive at colleges today because we have an era of young men and women who have not been raised as independent individuals who understand that there are consequences for our mistakes in life. If we solve our children's issues throughout the process of growing up, then how can they successfully navigate intelligent, healthy choices regarding sex, drugs, alcohol and social situations as young adults.
28
My son never did anything violent. He didn’t do anything at all. He was railroaded by a school administration led by a cruel and vile investigator that lied, omitted exculpatory evidence and collaborated with the ADA to further railroad my son. All their plotting did not work, when truth was told. The girl lied and lied and lied again. When I found out her mother knew about her lies, that was the last straw. So do not lecture me on my son. No drugs, no alcohol, no sexual anything. He has rights, & BTW...a minority student.
5
So all these young men and women admit to illegal underage drinking, but no one is arrested and punished? I suspect that if everyone obeyed the law, we would hear little about these sorts of problems.
11
Most schools have a policy of waiving alcohol violations in situations where sexual assault is the allegation. Still, a deeply unfair adjudication process.
If everyone stopped raping, we wouldn’t have this problem.
2
Awesome parenting !
7
Well yes, if you like out-of-control helicopter parenting.
1
"The police said that they had found inconsistencies in the accuser’s account and that some witnesses had contradicted it. They issued a warrant for her arrest on a charge of filing a false police report. The woman left the state and has not been arrested. "
As above shows, laws are not enforced if the burden falls on the woman.
21
Extradite?
*White woman
"... inconsistencies in the accuser’s account and that some witnesses had contradicted it....As above shows, laws are not enforced if the burden falls on the woman."
Huh? Demanding that the accusation be true is "victimizing the woman a 2d time"?
Antioch College years ago (still?) enacted a policy where for each progressive step in a romantic encounter, bother parties had to declare and agree to advance further. I thought it was infantilizing but now I'm not so sure. For safety of daughters and sons, be very clear about what's proposed and be very clear if that's welcome--or no. Clear intentionality is lost in drunken hookups and in too many cases regret or hazy recollections is later called rape.
11
And away we go.
When a man is raped, it’s a horrible, tragic experience. Period.
When a woman is raped, well, was she drinking too much? Did she do anything to put herself in the position of being raped?
And so on. Male rape is seen as the tagedy it is. But female rape? Not so much.
We forget some things in this discussion. First, many states have ruled that is is perfectly legal for one to take photos up a woman’s skirt, with lawyers arguing that disallowing such action is a violation of the photographer’s free speech rights. Too, about a decade ago, a Tallahassee jury ruled that a raped woman was responsible for being attacked because she was dressed provocatively. Next, we suffer death threats for accusing football players; no one, but no one, better mess with that SEC standing.
And then we chastise Weinstein’s accusers for not being forthright - as though they would have had an ally in a society that largely looks to excuse men and blame women.
There seem to still be a lot of people who grumble that we’d all be happy if we’d just accept the innate superiority of males. I look forward to the excuses tossed at my comment.
61
It goes way back. My sister's skirt was pulled up when she was in grade school and when she told the by who did it that if he did it again, she would pull down his zipper. Guess who got hauled in front of the principal.....my sister. It's still boys will be boys and girls, if they fight back, get the stick...
2
Please read the results of the 69 lawsuits that have been awarded in favor of falsely/wrongly accused. (Only wrongly because you have to PROVE malice and intent for a false accusation) many of the cases don’t include sex, so therefore not rape.
1
Universities are not the police. Universities are not the courts. This use of Title IX is an end run around due process and presumption of innocence. If I had a son of college age I would advise him to become a plumber or a mechanic. The atmosphere in universities is toxic. Not only that, but the "education" you get isn't worth the tens of thousands of dollars you have to pay for it.
35
I agree. It’s unimaginable that the government can give authority to a school to act as a court. It is a school. Would you allow a school to investigate a murder on campus? A robbery or assault? Proponents say it’s good for the victim but I disagree. It is telling women that the crime is so different than any other crime and they should feel differently than if they were the victim in any other violent crime, no wonder why they don’t come forward. The Obama guidance is basically telling them that they are a different kind of victim and they should receive different justice than other victims.
It’s s crime like any other and should be treated as such, including by the police and courts. That said, accusing someone of victim blaming by telling people that they should be aware of their surroundings, watch how much they drink, or have a plan to stay in a group is as ridiculous as accusing someone of victim blaming for telling someone to lock their doors and windows to prevent being robbed or being the victim of a home invasion.
2
Let's see... 18 year olds leave home to attend college where any sophomore call tell you where to buy booze and when the next kegger will happen at this or that fraternity. Drinking games are so much fun and guess what, horny college students begin doing stupid things with one another, often in a state of extreme inebriation. And out of that we're going to define and implement a policy whereby everyone's rights to choose whether to participate will be honored? Good luck with that.
Ever seen photos of Chapman University's "Undie Run" an annual event? Out of this you expect to get sensible sexual behavior?
https://www.google.com/search?q=chapman+college+underwear+run&tbm=is...
19
Women are their own worst enemies.
White women voted for Trump.
Women commonly defend their abusers and their children's abusers. I recall a case many years ago here where a mother of three girls who had been sexually assaulted by mama's boyfriend told police that all three girls, 13, 10, and 8, were liars and that nothing had happened. One of the principal difficulties in prosecuting domestic violence cases is that the victim recants because she loves the husband.
I don't pretend to understand why women are willing to let men trample on them, on their children, and on other women, but it doesn't surprise me any more.
27
Child abuse is a totally separate issue from campus rape.
17
Texas Clare, what does Trump have to do with this article???
@Texas Clare
The issues concerning women who stay in abusive domestic relationships, or women who fail to protect their children from abuse by boyfriends, stepfathers and even fathers are not the same as those that prevent women, on or off college campuses, from reporting sexual assault or rape to campus authorities or police.
That you don't understand the behavior of these women doesn't mean it isn't understandable. Or that misogyny is so ingrained in our culture that many fail even to recognize how easy it is to ignore the behavior of men like Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, et al and then, when their actions come to light, begin to blame the victims for not coming out with their stories sooner.
1
My parents told me to learn to drink at home, with them, before drinking elsewhere. That was good advice.
Today it's appalling how much drunkenness there is among students. It isn't taken seriously because a multi billion dollar industry makes tons of money from drinking, and more money by starting drunkenness early. Beer pong and other drinking games promoted by industry pressure young people to swallow drink after drink after drink, whether they feel like it or not.
This is how we do human sacrifice today, in our corporate-commercial world.
20
Bill OReilly and Harvey Weinstein had mother’s, too. As a society we need to do a better job of rearing boys. Don’t you imagine Harv and Bill had dads or other role models who disrespected women? And maybe mothers who enabled their son’s poor choices. Little bullies grow up to be big bullies. And maybe rapists. Wake up mothers!! You are responsible for how you parent boys. Own it!!!
46
and fathers* it isn't just a woman's job to raise a child.
1
As a mother of a son, I know what it is to protect him. However, I hope he is fair to others and that matters, too. These mothers are not impartial enough to deliver justice in the same way colleges are not equipped. The legal system should handle these cases.
Who is the victim here? I’m not sure in part because the facts are so overshadowed by people with little expertise and too much blinding them. DeVos is, of course, the most clueless about fairness being a process.
22
When you have to comb through reams of evidence that was withheld due to the practice of school administrators, then you will understand being in my shoes. When you are forced to learn absolutely everything you can about what sexual assault is and is not though the rules of law and then some arbitrary judgement of an under skilled school investigator then you will know, if you don’t stand up for your child’s rights, NO one will. Accusation does not equal guilt. And until that is acknowledged, innocent students will continue to be punished for crimes or misconduct they did not commit.
6
If these mothers want justice, so be it. May the accused be brought to trial. May the guilty go to prison for a very long time without possibility for parole. Perhaps this would make the college’s punishment seem lenient by comparison.
If only those who enable and excuse sexual violence could be brought to trial as well.
29
What's lenient about permanently denying, without trial, the ability to entire the white collar world?
1
So if the accuser lies and breaks the law in the process,does she get arrested and put on trial too?
In real life. There are little to no consequences for making a false accusation.
3
If the alleged rapist has evidence that accuser committed perjury. Perjury is also a crime and should be handled by the proper authorities - the police and the courts not the school.
2
Stepping way back and looking at this, it seems like everyone wants bad things to be someone else's responsibility, no matter where the truth lay. Even when the facts are obvious, trying to claim "societal influence" as an explanation for egregious or irresponsible behavior is just another way to create total non-accountability.
Who can honestly say that they have NEVER known a man to take advantage of a grey situation, to win a prize he desired?
And who can honestly say that they have NEVER known a woman who played upon the inevitable public sympathy to win a prize she desired?
That these types of people exist makes similar situations even more untenable for those of us who would not dream of operating that way.
These women's point of departure -- insisting upon presumption of innocence -- is just, but the things that their gains will be used and twisted to justify will not necessarily be equally as just.
We need counseling people, badly. And we need to grow up, own our mistakes and violations, and take steps to make amends.
No ONE has a right to claim ANYONE'S life as a tool for gain.
This is -- or should be --the ultimate lesson of humanity.
8
You had me until you said own your violation. So what if you didn’t actually do it. Can’t you own your innocence and fight to defend it?
These men are adults and it's time for their mothers to stop "handling" things for them. If these men are not able to "keep it zippered" on their own, they should live at home under adult supervision until they are mature enough to act responsibly.
84
Agreed. The fact that the one mother said ““How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said is pretty telling.
62
As adult men they deserve the presumption of innocence and full due process.
3
It's pretty clear from the context that what this mother was advising her son in telling him to "keep it zippered" was to warn him about the fact that even in a situation where it seemed at the time that he was engaging a mutually agreeable act with a fellow consenting student, he is still vulnerable to having his life destroyed by false allegations. Somehow, many commenters seem to have to distorted this statement into a suggestion that her son raped someone. About the only way I would have sex as a student today would be with a camera rolling - until recently, there was no debate about cases where there are nothing more than uncorroborated "he said/she said" allegations, the accused had nothing to worry about as such allegations alone could never result in penalties under a system in which the burden of proof is on the accuser. These days, that previously sacrosant legal principle has been turned on its head, putting the accused in a situation in which they are guilty until proven innocent, so we are unfortunately in a situation where any man who does not have the means to prove consent is at risk of being railroaded by a kangaroo campus court. In fact, situation is so bad it is not beyond imagination that even a student that possessed video evidence of the consensual nature of a sexual encounter could still be found responsible by a University that would find some way to decide not to review the video in favour of accepting the accuser's claims at face value.
1
As the chair of an investigation into a claim of rape (male faculty, female student) I can tell you that colleges should not be put in the position of police and judge and jury, and yet this is exactly what happens.
In this case the female student refused to go to the police (understandable, of course) and the college had no recourse except to carry out a closed door 'hearing', testimony, character witnesses, photo graphs of the bedroom, telephone records and all.
The repercussions were endless and painful. This should not happen. There must be another way....... "he said, she said' is sordid, sad, and damages everyone.
260
Rape and sexual assault are crimes that need to be prosecuted. Colleges have no business interfering with the law. If the evidence is insufficient to charge someone with a crime the college or university should not run its own process to insure the "correct outcome". Some commenters here seem to believe one should always believe the accuser. Probably many of them also think Bill Clinton is a great guy and think Hillary Clinton is great even though she trashed every accuser.
18
Unless everyone is required to carry personal cameras, as police are now being increasingly asked to do, supplemented with cameras covering every possible space, how could we possibly record an act that by its very nature usually occurs when the two people involved are alone with each other? What other way can there be than she said, he said ?
"There must be another way..." Such as what? Making it even harder for all actual victims to prove -- or even report -- the rape?
"How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered." This man's mother actually repeated this quotation to a reporter? Wow. But her sweet baby doesn't need to face the consequences of - not just keeping "it" zippered, but using his greater physical strength to abuse another person sexually. Don't rapists have an average of eight victims each? When did he start hurting people?
Hi parents: if you're unable to teach you sons to behave by the time they go to college, you've failed. You blew it.
Anyone who is assaulted should, if they can, get support and go straight to the hospital to report the assault and have the evidence collected. Maybe the municipalities in which these victims reside will actually test the evidence and help remove predators from polite society.
57
The next article should be:
‘I Would Do Anything To Erase It From Their Memory’: Mothers Of Daughters who have been Sexually Assaulted
124
Right? Funny how no one ever talks about the women's lives are ruined by this. But we're supposed to cry a river for their precious, precious baby boys who can't "keep it zippered."
3
It's unfortunate that so many women don't understand how their husbands and sons behave in their absence.
55
Wow: all these comments that assume the guilt of the accused -- even the kid whose accuser is now wanted for filing a false police report -- kind of show how stacked the deck is against any boy accused of sexual assault.
52
College students are not "boys." They are men.
31
Welcome to the world of college adjudication where guilt is presumed at the point of accusation. And if when you prove it to be false/wrong as the accused you will forever be seen as an assaulter despite the evidence to the contrary. Lynch mob justice at work, just missing the noose.
2
And what about your grave concerns for their victims who have to live with the trauma? I’m sure you must have some—right?
2
Maybe they should have raised their sons to respect women and not sexually assault them instead of defending them after the fact.
46
You're assuming that the men were guilty. The legal system abides by the presumption of innocence. And for crimes such as rape, the legal system abides by standards of “clear and convincing evidence” and “beyond a reasonable doubt,” not “preponderance of the evidence."
The fact that you (and most other people) presume that the men were guilty even though they were never given a an actual fair legal proceeding demonstrates why the whole system is wrong.
32
Maybe accusers shouldn’t lie and colleges shouldn’t become agents perpetuating sentiments that accusers never lie and the concept of innocent until proven guilty is dead.
4
You have no right not judge these women. You do not have the facts to do so.
I find it interesting that the descriptions of the young men's behavior and emotional reactions to their circumstances sound very similar to those of young women trying to deal with having been assaulted.
8
It is horrifying for anyone to be accused of something they didn’t do. It’s just as horrifying as being raped.
2
I am saddened by these women's rationalizations. I have sons and I have told them wear condoms and if she wouldn't have sex with you sober don't cheapen yourself and her trying to lowering her defences by plying her with alcohol or drugs.
These women's sons used alcohol to get laid then got upset when the women didn't see it as consensual. Too bad, so sad. A drunk woman is wrong to cry rape because she had drunken sex she can't recall consenting to.
The drunk or sober male partner gets a pass because a intoxicated woman he met for the first time that night is absolutely a great choice for a guy looking for consensual, casual sex.
38
Yup.
8
In Texas, if a woman is so drunk that she cannot give or deny consent and the man knows she is intoxicated, he's guilty of sexual assault.
26
That is true in all states.
Part of the problem is that investigations into sexual assaults on campus are done by people who don’t know how to investigate anything beyond plagiarism. Sure, they probably attended a four-hour workshop, but that hardly gives them the credentials to interview people involved. That means there probably isn’t any legitimate gathering of evidence, witness statements, victim/perpetrator interviews. It amounts to peer courts that rule on rowdiness in the dorms and fights in the student commons. Professionals should handle these cases. They are sexual assault claims, for God’s sake
68
Just because a school or the justice system "clears" an accused rapist doesn't mean the rape didn't happen. Read Jon Krakauer's book "Missoula" for a truly chilling picture of sexual assaults at the University of Montana.
48
When a student has been found not responsible in a Title IX investigation conducted by a college, there has to have been a considerable amount of proof that the allegation was almost certainly false. Yes, the process is that victim friendly.
9
Just because a student is acquitted at trial doesn’t mean the girl was rapped. That’s why there is this thing called evidence. And sometimes it actually does prove that a false accusation was made.
Maybe because I went to a CUNY school, commuted there and also had a job and an apartment, I'm not getting this. If I had been raped, I was an adult. I would have gone to the police. Even if it was a fellow student I was accusing, I would never even have considered getting the university involved.
I would expect a university to supply health services and counseling, perhaps even a counselor to accompany the victim to the police, but beyond that, what is their role?
Did this start with over-burdened police forces refusing to do their jobs? Or parents sending their children to universities in backwards areas of the country where the police might not handle the complaints correctly? I'd like to hear that part of the story.
Really glad that I went to school in NYC, where, to the best of my knowledge, it would have been the NYPD Special Victims Unit that would have handled my case.
91
I understand why a victim would choose not to run straight to the cops. was raped in NYC by a man who got me to accept a ride his car, by telling me he was a friend of the bride at the wedding I’d Just attended, locked the windows and doors, and drove me to an isolated place. I was told— by a rape crisis counselor— not to bother going to the police because I was incapacitated by alcohol at the time of the assault, and because I would be “be put through hell all over again. Ditto if it ever got to court. This was almost 30 years ago, but it’s still common knowledge that rape victims are raked over the coals in legal interrogations.
5
In some cases a 3rd party could report it to the school. IE USC kicker and girlfriend. Once the snowball starts rolling, there is no stopping it.
This piece made me angry both as a rape victim and the mother of a college-aged son. "One mother, Judith, said her son had been expelled after having sex with a student who said she had been too intoxicated to give consent.
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
I am from Judith's generation and I call it rape. My rape happened exactly this way. As an 18 yo learning to drink, I was so inebriated, I experienced lapses in time. My rapist was my bartender who admitted to spiking my drinks with Everclear. And you think I should be embarrassed? Your son raped a drunk woman.
And I sure did raise my son to not rape women and he has never had to be told to "keep it zippered" because I raised him to respect women, sex and consent.
Too often in the "he said, she said" world of rape culture and patriarchy, the man gets the last word.
151
April C, your case was made very plain as an assault by the addition of a substance unknown to you. Someone set out to make you drunk and rape you. Many of the cases I know of are two heavily drinking teenagers having sex. And one of them feeling bad about it in the morning. This is not, in my estimation, a sex crime. But kids who "got stupid and embarrassed."
29
First, the accuser "said" she was too drunk.
Second, how is it that being drunk makes a woman unable to consent to sex, but a drunk young man is somehow completely capable of premeditating and committing a crime with intention?
There is a big difference between someone intentionally spiking drinks, poisoning, and raping someone than two impaired college kids, who BOTH consented to their impairment, fooling around.
To some degree I do agree with this mom. When you set put to get wasted - as these girls often do - you are responsible for the stupid things you do while drunk. You are not a victim. If you get hit by a car stumbling across the street, kill someone yourself behind the wheel, fall out a window, or have sex you later regret, etc, etc, you are not a victim.
That is not "victim blaming" that is just owning up to one's actions. No one forces you to get drunk and hook up in college. I managed not to for four years because I understood that bad things can happen when you are drunk, and yes, those things would be my fault.
4
Alcohol is clearly a factor in these kinds of sorry events. Zippers are naturally going to come down when you drink too much. But given that the drinking age is 21 and most university students are under that age it's not clear to me how alcohol has become such an integral part of the campus social
and learning experience.
How about universities first enforce the under 21 drinking age? Enact a policy that allows the university to perform a blood alcohol test on any student at any time. Any time during the day or night. Any student drinking under age who fails the test gets probation to start. Next one you're expelled.
Wait, that's not fun. Drinking and guzzling is part of the campus "learning" experience. Who says? Oh, the beer industrial complex.
Probably the number one policy universities can enact to ensure the safety of the majority of their students (women are in the majority but men are also the victims in alcohol-fueled fights and "scraps") is to enforce the "laws" against under age drinking. That's something that all parents could agree on.
It may be that Congress needs to enact a law ensuring schools enforce this. Sort of like a 21st century Title IX to further enhance female students' rights. Failure of colleges to do that that will mean a forfeiture of federal research to any scholar at that university. After such a law, rape and sexual assault may still occur but at least moms can't blame the booze rather than their son's upbringing.
20
Or maybe we could lower the drinking age to something more reasonable, like in other countries, so kids can learn how to properly drink with their parent's guidance, as an adult thing to do, rather than treat getting wasted like an immature rite of passage?
My husband is from Europe, and we absolutely will start letting our children drink wine with dinner when they are teenagers.
5
Prohibition worked really well in the past.
Would it perhaps be more fair to expel both the male and female student on the grounds that they both exhibited improper behavior? The aggressor for taking advantage and the other for stupidly putting themselves in the situation in the first place. Then its as unfair or fair to both, depending on your viewpoint.
Both individuals need to learn lessons about behavior and taking care of themselves.
12
So, according to you, an attempted murder victim should go to prison just like the person who tried to kill them? A person whose house is burglarized should face charges? Or is rape the only crime where the victim is guilty of asking for it?
26
One person got really drunk. One raped a really drunk person. I don't see these two things as being equally "improper."
54
If I stupidly leave my door unlocked at night, and I am robbed, or raped, I should go to prison because I risked my safety?
You can’t be serious.
44
I teach ethics at a college that has a very serious sexual harassment policy. Recently, my students and I were talking about the conditions required for moral autonomy, including competency. We were discussing how alcohol affected one's competency and I said, "this is why you don't have sex with a drunk person."
The students immediacy pounced on this. "What if both people are drunk?!" they asked, convinced that that had reduced my argument to absurdity. Legally, it's a conundrum, I admitted. Ethically, it's not.
Deciding when and with whom to have sex is one of the most important decisions we make, and hopefully a fully autonomous one. Very often in a relationship, I said, one person is pressuring for sex when the other isn't ready or doesn't want to. When sober, both parties can make competent decisions. Drunkenness, even when both people are drunk, creates a situation where the person who has been pushing for sex can take advantage of the lack of competency of the other person, creating a morally dangerous situation. This is all the more true in a situation where you have just met that person, where you have no idea the type of decision he or she would make were he or she competent.
So: if a person is afraid he or she just can't trust themselves not to take advantage of another person's lack of competency, the moral burden is on him or her.
Be a morally aware person who respects others' autonomy or lack thereof. Then the thorny legal issues will never arise.
408
Radical thought: not raping people is not only ethically correct, it’s also not that hard.
54
If two consenting adults decide to get drunk and have sex, it is absolutely none of our collective business to assume that they are acting unethically. Your students were spot-on in pointing that out: it is most definitely not ethically cut-and-dry, as you so glibly presume.
10
Your guidance should be read by college governing bodies and written into the codes of behavior kids should get at orientation.
3
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him.
In this day and age, yes you do! You teach your children about consent, the giving and receiving of said consent.
And wow, it's good to see what money donated to the Republican party can buy these days. Betsy DeVos is an evil woman.
70
Wow, you use your power and privilege to threaten the university financially to silence a young woman. And you think you are a feminist? I pray my daughter stays far away from young men with mothers like you.
195
So it turned out that through her power and privilege she righted an injustice, but you don't care?
13
Exactly what I was thinking Jeoffrey.
16
According to the article, an arrest warrant was issued for the particular young woman you are concerned about being "silenced" because she filed the false police report. The young man's life was derailed because of her false report, yet you seem more concerned about her. The empathy gap in some of these comments is staggering.
22
Is it me, or are all of the mothers that gave their testimony in this article married to wealthy men or have some sort of status in the system and can use that power to appeal for their sons? They have the money to throw a fit and make everyone do what they say, so it doesn't matter if their sons did commit a rape or not. Their child is better than the legal system.
62
Except these universities are not the legal system. Sorry.
14
I am a married woman who works hard to help provide for my family and am offended by your comment. I have a son who was falsely accused. I’m also a proud feminist and very liberal in my mebtality. I have given my life’s work to helping other as a licensed psychologist. I am completely for punishment for those who are raped and have helped many young women report and face this issue that truly have been sexually assaulted. There’s a big difference between those girls and the ones who are wreaking havoc on college campuses. There are many of these women who are mentally ill ruining it for those who are truly assualted and those eco are falsely accused. The system at the college level is not working. My son was falsely accused. This is one article. There are thousands of falsely accused men now in this country whose lives have been RUINED by false accusations and unfair trials in the university system. My son is doing ok and the charges were dropped, but he is a minority of those who are falsely accused. I’m not wealthy and never will be, but I am an American and I work hard and want justice for ALL.
4
You write, “I am completely for punishment for those who are raped”. Many people in this administration share that view and their policies have that goal.
"Their sons may not have been falsely accused, the mothers said, but they had been wrongly accused. They made a distinction. One mother, Judith, said her son had been expelled after having sex with a student who said she had been too intoxicated to give consent. 'In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,' Judith said. 'It was considered, "I was stupid and I got embarrassed."' And that's where I lost all sympathy for these women. They raised entitled misogynists, they don't understand the concept of consent, they are blaming victims, and they are shaming women. This is rape culture.
285
a woman who "says" she was too intoxicated to give consent is not the same as a woman who meets the objective legal standard for being too intoxicated to consent.
3
"I was too drunk to know what I was doing" is always problematic. We know it happens, but it is unverifiable and there is no way of saying at what point in intoxication (if at all) personal responsibility vanishes. In criminal jurisprudence the "intoxication defence" is subject to all sorts of conditions and does not usually fare very well. All this is relevant to campus rape and sexual abuse. For instance, forced or induced intoxication has been explored extensively in law. But how differently should we consider it when the issue is intoxication of the victim rather than of the perpetrator? Not being a legal expert, all I can say is that it does not look like the issue becomes less complicated. It needs work.
32
Being a legal expert, I assert that your argument holds no water. In the days when premarital sex was a crime, assessing the validity of an "intoxication defense" for the victim would make sense, but it isn't now, and being intoxicated is perfectly, thoroughly legal. It doesn't in any way waive a victim's right to bodily integrity.
Consent is required for sex. If it isn't given, it's rape- whether the victim is awake, asleep, drunk, high, or dead.
2
Thanks for your effort at clarification. But you haven't addressed the kind of situation briefly alluded to in the article, where the man asserts consent was given and the woman does not deny having "given in" but says she was too drunk to have done so knowingly and voluntarily. This is not a matter of the "intoxication defense" being used to deny responsibility for a criminal defense. All I am saying is that the problem of evaluating the validity of "I was too drunk" is the same when the alleged victim is making the claim.
People who drive while intoxicated are legally responsible for their actions, though often to a lesser extent (manslaughter instead of murder, for instance). Men who force sexual activity while drunk are also responsible. And women who engage in sexual activity they wouldn't have had they not been drunk should also be responsible for their actions. But there is a difference between "I was too drunk to know what I was doing" and "I was too drunk to know what was happening." Too often, the drunk women who are the target of non-consenting sexual activity are not doing anything at all but being passed out -- and they should not bear any responsibility for their molestation or rape while in that condition.
1
This passage made me just shake my head: "Their sons may not have been falsely accused, the mothers said, but they had been wrongly accused. They made a distinction.
One mother, Judith, said her son had been expelled after having sex with a student who said she had been too intoxicated to give consent.
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’” "
19
To be able to claim a false accusation you have to prove malice. So from a legal definition standpoint, unless the accuser is maliciously filing the report and you can prove it, wrongly accused is more accurate. Either way, accused students have a right to Due Process.
4
This is both sad and infuriating. These Women are protecting their Child, but they are also delusional. And unfortunately, they've convinced themselves, and others, that their poor little Boys are the real victims. Those nasty feminists and the politically correct, left wing Schools are conspiring against males. Just for fun, or something. Women, don't let your Sons grow up to be Rapists. Problem solved.
82
These animals will attack again. Mommy won't be able to shield them forever.
28
How would "not letting your sons grow up to be rapists" solve the problem of false accusations, such as those experienced by one of these families? These mothers taught their sons to do the right thing. In one of the cases mentioned in the story, the University cleared the student (despite using an ridiculously low standard of evidence), but the accused life was destroyed nonetheless. Try googling the names of any of those who have been cleared of rape allegations -- you will get dozens of results about the allegations, but none about the fact their name was cleared. In another, ONLY AFTER the University was pressured by these mothers did the University uncover exculpatory evidence, resulting not only in the accused's name being cleared, but criminal charges for filing a false report being brought against the accuser. What's "sad and infuriating" for both myself and these mothers is that this woman has apparently fled the state to avoid accountability. That's another problem that is by no means "solved" by a simplistic suggestion that men be taught not to rape. The solution to both the problem of rape and false allegations of rape is a fair and robust criminal justice system based on due process.
1
I like the quote in the story that ‘we don’t need to teach our sons not to rape.’ Yes, we do. It needs to be publicly discussed in high school. The earlier the better. The same with the quote where the mother talks about being drunk and getting raped: “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’” And so her conclusion is rape is justified, I deserved to get raped for being stupid and drunk. Nice.
91
"We don't need to teach our sons not to rape." What kind of madness has overcome these mothers? I can't imagine anything more important to teach their sons. They'd be singing a different tune if they had daughters.
45
Really?
Do we need to teach our sons not to murder?
Not to kidnap?
Not to commit armed robber?
Your post only makes sense if we presume are sons are somehow, by nature rapists.
1
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.”
I graduated from a big state University in 1997. That IS what THEY said, and it was wrong. Wrong then, wrong now. So many of us and our friends suffered from that thinking, I am horrified to see this as a justification. It’s WRONG. I say this as a mother of a son and a daughter.
96
That paragraph struck me instantly. These mothers are so eager (understandably) to defend their sons that they're missing where they failed in their parenting: They never taught their sons what "consent" means, and that drunken women are not capable of consenting. That's a simple concept, one too often ignored in the "so you're going to college now!" conversations.
Parents and K-12 districts (health classes, PE classes) need to teach and reteach the concept of consent. They also could do a good deal of teaching around binge drinking, by both genders.
42
Schools have NO business in " judging " or deciding punishment OR veracity in any cases of possible sexual assault. Call the police, the REAL police. That's their JOB. The school is only interested in their reputation and in MONEY. The more cases of rape, the less number of students. So, of course they want to brush aside, cover up and deny. Seriously.
93
And Ms. Seefoeld, mom of Caleb Warner used 'her connections' to get her sonny-boy off the hook. The victim probably isn't as 'well-connected', i.e. 'no money to college' and therefore was not important in the long run.
6
I believe the issue is that frequently the case will never be persued by the real police unless there is enough evidence of both physical contact and lack of a consensual agreement to have sex. If both parties are drunk, then it gets harder to take the case to court.
Schools are trying to fill in the gap where the case is not deemed fit to go to the police, or has and been dismissed.
Going further than this is a mistake, I agree. And schools really aren't equipped for this sort of thing. So I say, punish them both if its justified, both the participants made mistakes.
7
The school nullified the verdict AFTER mom threatened to bring a lawsuit and negative PR to the school. Hmmmm....
15
Unless you have had a son falsely accused of rape it if frankly impossible for you to understand the hell, fear, anxiety and shame that the false accusation brings. I have. My son’s life has been forever changed. His accuser, many of his classmates and the college administration had zero regard for his future. The presumption of guilt was real and it was powerful. I don’t expect any of you on the “other side” to give a damn about my son’s plight. I have learned that will not happen. Fortunately, those that matter bothered to consider the evidence. Unfortunately, a large segment of our population could care less about the evidence.
By the way and for those to whom it may matter, YES, I do have a daughter, and a mother, and a wife and plenty of other women in my life who I admire and love dearly. Further, I am quick to acknowledge the obvious fact that sexual assault is real and it is horrific. However, it is high time that some folks take a moment to at least consider the notion that there are false accusations and they too are horrific.
279
Being raped is horrific.
19
Your right in your anger that false accusations can damage a persons life deeply. And they do occur. But the majority of women who come forward were raped or abused, and they unfortunately represent the tip of the iceberg as most does not come forward. That doesn’t make your case any less painful though, and false accusations should be processed as a crime as well.
17
So is being falsely accused of rape.
19
I understand that a mother WANTS to believe her son is innocent.
I am disgusted by mothers who are not mature enough to recognize that young men, even their own sons, are likely to make major mistakes and lie about it.
The mothers as adults have a responsibility to show their sons that when you hurt other people you admit it and make amends.
Some mothers are not mature enough to be mothers and are not good role models for their children. I suspect these sons will have problems with their own children later in life....
39
If these mothers were better mothers or if these young men had better fathers, the young men wouldn't be raping anyone. People aren't born rapists. They are allowed to become them.
32
So one kid in the article was cleared, and his accuser has a warrant out on her for filing a false police report. And yet you are disgusted by the mother who managed to bring this out?
21
Again..don’t you think it’s a little weird that he was cleared AFTER the mother wielded her power as a Union leader threatening a lawsuit and negative PR against the School?
1
My female roommates and I learned the hard way to avoid being drunk at parties where men were present. We were perfectly safe to drink to our heart’s content at home and with female friends. Funny how none of us even once had to ward off unwanted sexual advances regardless of our blood alcohol level and sexual orientation.
38
True that in other countries women don’t travel alone and don’t get caught at parties in a room alone with men as a rule of thumb and it is best not to drink too much at a frat house if you’re a girl. We should teach that in high school or middle school though.
7
I would hope we would instead raise our boys to not take advantage of others, whether sober or in an inebriated state, so that girls can enjoy traveling and going to parties whether with someone or not.
17
If a Mom has to huff at her son for "not keeping it in his pants", as though it's in the same league as leaving his soggy towels on the bathroom floor, something is wrong. Sorry, maybe I'm old and behind the times, but thankfully my own son (now married with a teen son of his own) never gave me the need to even think about that sort of thing. What kind of vegetable did she raise,anyway? Oh--and by the way, colleges and their administrators do not care about their students unless they are elite athletes. I would tell a woman student that if she has been assaulted to go directly to the police. Administrators will close ranks to protect the institution---the university---and their 6-figure jobs. Let them find out when the cops show up.
99
My university president sent out a memo to the whole faculty that said, basically, “if you know anything, call the police first; call the uni after.” They are not all evil conspirators covering their own butts.
8
Of course these mom's raised innocent sons.
"They were always such good boys. How dare those nasty girls hurt them so? They just don't deserve it!"
Talk about entitlements.
And the cycle continues on and on ...
72
Male prerogative reigns. Why Trump is president despite being the most despicable public figure in recent memory.
32
The Sexual Revolution has morphed into the Reign of Terror.
14
You mean the horrors that women perpetrate on men these days? The ways men have to watch their surroundings, clothing, drinking, and behavior so a woman won't attack them? Yep, a reign of terror. True, it is.
2
I fully admit I've never had to walk the walk of having one of my kids accused of this kind of misconduct, in any context, but to see these mums praising Betsy DeVos is a bit distressing. This is a Trump nominee who barely conceals her intent to systematically undermine America's already floundering public school system. The fact that she has taken a position, rightly or wrongly, which just happens to hit upon a particular concern of these mums, all of a sudden makes them sing her praises.
I guess this is how single-issue voters are created.
31
Many of the responses here are assuming a rape occurred and goal of the group highlighted is to get "rapists" off. I think the point of the article is that every person -- whether male or female -- is entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty (beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases) and the rules promulgated under the Obama administration was shifting that burden where the accused has to prove his innocence - a difficult thing to do in any situation much less when both parties may have been impaired.
I don't condone violence against women in any form, but we need to be careful about convicting someone without a trial as well. Let's keep in mind sometimes the accused is completely innocent - i.e. a story several years ago appearing in Rolling Stone magazine which was a complete fabrication.
65
Here’s something to examine: why is your concern not for the 1 in 5 women who will be raped in college?
29
Because your assumption is that girls are never guilty of stupidity or wrongdoing.
5
One in four women is raped in America in her life time. There is nowhere near a similar risk that a man will be falsely accused of rape. If one in four men risked rape just trying to live his life, there would be zero concern for the rare false accusation. If men were at such enormous risk of rape, rape would headline the news every single day. Most men really and truly don't ever think about rape, joke about rape, won't ostracize, stop or report their rapist friends and want to pretend that the risk of being falsely accused approaches the risk of being raped. Here's an idea dudes: stop raping.
15
Wow!
Haven't we just gone through weeks, articles and campaigns trying to determine all the facets of why women hadn't previously stepped more forcefully forward to take down Harvey Weinstein?
So now we see the use of terms like "non consensual sex" instead of "rape" to soften the violent acts perpetrated against women as just boys being boys and doing nothing more than getting "20 minutes of action" (see Stanford rape case last year).
I guess it's no surprise in the Trump era to see no steps forward, two steps back.
60
"now we see the use of terms like "non consensual sex" instead of "rape" to soften the violent acts perpetrated against women"
Orwellian in its simplicity.
7
One in four of our daughters will suffer a horrifying sexual attack. That is the statistic. And we are worried about legislating on behalf of our girls? Every single college student should attend a class discussing this sordid mess and ante up to the fact that something must be done. Sex with an intoxicated girl should be illegal. If a male is assaulted while drunk, do we say that the perpetuator should not be charged? DeVos is a nightmare for education, a voice for only the most privileged, and will continue to work hard to ensure that today's statistics will never change. Thank you, America, for your continuing assault on our girls.
44
You are kidding, right? "Sex with an intoxicated girl should be illegal"? Really? Everyone should take responsibility for his or her actions. If you are the type of person who gives consent while drunk, and you are told that your drunk sex partner is responsible for determining what you "really meant", then that means a woman needs someone to take care of her - the very opposite of feminism. Both sex partners can wake up the next day and say, "OMG what have I done," without one being solely responsible for the other.
1
The comments here show we are still having the debate about what we consider to be real rape.
When a woman is walking down the proverbial dark alley, and is raped, it’s real rape, because she was merely walking from here to there; bonus points if she was carrying and still couldn’t fend off her attacker(s), because she was appropriately guarding against being attacked.
But when a woman drinks too much, and is raped, well, it’s not really rape, because she wasn’t appropriately guarding herself against being attacked, so her virtue is ripe for the taking, much like a twenty dollar bill carelessly dropped and left to be taken.
In sum, we still treat women’s reproductive parts as societal objects.
What a horrible reality for today’s youth.
126
Exactly. When young men at college are routinely counseled not to dress too "macho" and not to get drunk because they may then be assumed to be rapists, there will be some parity. Misogynistic assumptions are so deep these moms don't seem to have any awareness that they are utterly steeped in victim-blaming, including the moms who refer to themselves as "feminists." The woman who told her son to remember to keep it "zippered" --- uh....sounds like he and his mom are both highly conversant in rape culture to me. And btw, every rapist has a mother.
105
Michelle—but a woman is still suspect for walking in a dark alley. She must have wanted it, else she would have made sure her route kept her in a lighted area with people, right? Rape apologists always blame the victim for not geing “responsible.”
2
AMEN, Michelle!
2
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,”
To me, the speaks to a pattern of behavior of which this mother is already aware. If parents of sexually precocious young men could stop making excuses for them, or overcompensating for them, they might at last learn to behave responsibly and accept responsibility for their behaviors.
Absent here is any consideration of the life-altering, long-term effects of sexual abuse on young women.
119
Maybe she was just worried about unplanned pregnancies or STDs through consensual sex. Your gut presumption of guilt shows why these cases need to be handled by legal professionals.
3
I have mixed opinions on this subject. I am very much against sexual abuse, rape and sexual assault. I despise Trump and his supporters disgust me. I believe they put a racist sexual predator in office. On the other hand, I think there are circumstances were adult women are responsible for their behavior. Women are not victims when they are drinking and partying with men and both parties are intoxicated. It is sexist to say if both parties have sex when both are intoxicated, that only the woman must consent. Many men have regrets the next day too. I hear men tell me all the time they slept with a woman while intoxicated and regret it. Maybe women should get consent too.
39
It called double standard, and from the last sentence, it sound like you didn't know or even consider that men can be raped by women, too.
5
Caryn, men can be raped by men as well. It would be interesting how these mothers would feel if their sons were the victims not the alleged perpetrators. I don't think they would be running to Devos looking for better treatment of perpetrators.
2
Every "oops" rapist and every predatory rapist on Earth has a mother.
30
So much for a presumption of innocence. Women do lie about such things. Please search for and read, "Photographer's 2 Sexual Assault Cases Dropped After Videotape Viewed."
It is sexist to believe a woman and not the man with no other evidence.
15
And, I might add, every predatory rapist has a Father. And where is he? And what part has he played in all of this?
11
See: RAINN and DOJ's Criminal Stats. False accusations by women are rare. Also, my statement said nothing about false accusations. Do you deny that every man who has raped has a mother??
3
Colleges are not courts. College staff members are not prosecutors or defense attorneys. Are there any other entities which have been allowed to take on this judicial function for themselves? The young men who stand accused and who are penalized by these kangaroo courts have every reason to be incensed by these outrages. These matters should be handled by the courts only. I suggest families looking at colleges for their sons should ask prospective colleges whether they allow police and courts to handle crimes or whether college tribunals do.
22
If a woman is intoxicated, she is in no condition to think clearly or not able to resist a stronger man. Consent is not possible. Decent men do not taken advantage in this situation, period. And parents who do not make it perfectly clear to their sons are neglecting their responsibility.
Schools have a responsibility to protect students from this situation. First, the casual tolerance of underage student drinking undermined their authority. Those caught drinking should bear consequences. And drugging or getting a woman drunk to get sex without consent deserves suspension, whether or not criminal charges are brought.
Without consequences, this continues. College students are adults and parents should not get directly involved, except for hiring legal help. Pulling strings perverts justice.
15
I would really like to see statistics about how many college students have sex completely sober. I doubt that it accounts for the bulk of intercourse. I'd have difficulty recounting the number of times I've rejected the opportunity, not because the women were beyond the ability to consent, but simply because I don't find drunk women attractive because my mother was an alcoholic. People drink and have sex for a reason.
12
In this #MeToo moment we're having, it is apparent that the vast majority of women across the globe have experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault. Some of the men responsible for these are predators like Weinstein, and others are probably less aware of the damage they inflict. They all have mothers. None of these mothers is likely to have witnessed their sons behaving badly. Behavior is situational. I understand their desire to protect their sons. However, our culture has been protecting (and rewarding) men who behave badly for too long.
According to RAINN, 23% of female undergraduates and 5% of males are raped in college, but only 20% report it. Of those reported, only 3% are ever prosecuted. According to Quartz, false reports are estimated to be 2-10% of all reported rapes, and half the time are made by someone else, usually a parent who coerced a lie from a teenage daughter trying to avoid punishment for having sex or coming home late. Other false reports are elaborate stories told by unstable individuals often with a history of lying or criminal behavior.
The kind of rape accusations that are not likely to be false are stories of consensual kissing that escalate into coerced sex. Most women avoid reporting rapes because they fear being blamed or not believed. They may be embarrassed and perhaps the rapist is a part of her social group. They may not want others to know they were raped.
It is most likely that women are telling the truth. Believe them.
433
These are police matters - and should be handled by police. And to the mother that said something about "keeping it zippered" doesn't sound like any of these kids weren't guilty - just that the mother's were able to work the system to get their kid off.
15
THANK YOU.
1
That is what due process and the court system is for. I am inclined to believe anyone, assuming best intentions, but colleges are creating extrajudicial zones that distort the rights of the accused.
Yes, the accused have rights. I'm sorry if this offensive to so many of you.
(And, no, I'm not interested in the whataboutism of accusers' rights; of course they have rights. That is what courts, law enforcement, and the rule of law are for.)
6
Helicopter mothers deploying every means possible to protect their sons from the consequences of their bad behavior.
And this is why young women who are victims of this crime - because that's what it is - cannot find justice on campus in the year 2017.
We have met the enemy, and they are us.
56
As burdensome and ludicrous as it may sound written consent may now be needed. An app for young adults might make this process less intrusive.
None of the above is perfect but makes a dodgy situation maybe better.
6
"An app for young adults might make this process less intrusive."
When would this app be used? Before or after getting drunk?
2
As stated there is no perfect way to acquire consent regardless of the situation.
Written consent if you agree is a legitimate form of obtaining consent can be converted into an app.
If not, perhaps written consent is the only least worst option.
The issue here is to formulate a process whereby vulnerable people are made to think about things.
No solution is perfect and criticisms can be had of any process given the nebulous world of agency.
"He said, she said", when will we ever learn? Two drunk people alone is a lose/lose situation. Do we remember Jameison Winston from FSU? Teenagers drinking and having drunk sex; nothing good can ever come from that!
10
I wonder if Ms. Seefeld and the other mothers reviewed the transcripts of the campus hearings, interviewed the victims or other witnesses, or undertook any other kind of investigation. Indicting the process is not the same as negating a finding, no matter the standard of proof. I also suggest that she broaden her crusade by investigating the tens of thousands of adolescents falsely placed on sex offender registries for teenage sex (often consensual), who face the kinds of lifetime scars and suffocating restrictions that are far more cruel and disproportionate than what her son and the others have suffered. Her son's punishments pale in comparison to these other young men. Those boys face real injustices, including incarceration and lifetime stigma.
12
If a woman can be "too drunk to consent," why can't a man also be too "drunk to consent"? Two people could be having sex and be very drunk. I don't understand why the guy is the obvious aggressor in such cases. I'm a woman and I think there's a problem with the sheepish feminism that sees all men as violent, and all women as victims.
81
They can be. No one is saying it’s only women; women are the predominant victimized in that scenario. Calling these survivors sheepish is disrespectful - they have the strength to stand up for themselves knowing that they will be told they were asking for it, that they deserved it, that their memories aren’t even real, that they aren’t to be trusted on what happened in their own lives. And now to do so in the face of rapid mothers like Ms. Seefield.
12
That's exactly what everyone is saying. If both people get hammered and hook up, the guy is the one that should be worried. Sometimes it's truly assault. Sometimes it's regret.
16
Rape apologists have fever dreams where they hear that. And now you say it. But no one actually involved in adjudication says that.
3
As a lawyer, part-time college teacher, feminist and the mother of a son in his twenties, I see this as a matter of due process. The preponderance of evidence standard is too low, and college officials are not qualified to decide these cases. The cases are criminal matters that should be handled by law enforcement, with the accuser's legal rights enforced and the accuser afforded due process. No woman should be sexually assaulted. Yet an accusation, supported by the lowest standard of proof and evaluated by college deans rather than police, prosecutors and a jury, should not be sufficient to ruin a life.
The arguments among these comments center on sexism, drinking, drugs and personal responsibility --all important issues. Yes, women are too often not believed. Yes, mothers are biased in favor of their sons. Yes, young men assault women, particularly when the young men are high or drunk. The bottom line for me, however, is fairness. Life-altering decisions regarding allegedly criminal behavior should not be made by accusers, accuseds, deans, mothers, or political advocacy groups. They should be made in the courts.
1003
Be a better lawyer - the courts are much, much worse at this than colleges have ever been.
5
I agree, but this does not solve the problem because it isn't a compromise and therefore it isn't a solution. Perhaps it would help gain convictions, or at least findings of harm and wrong doing, if the punishment fit the crime. From what I understand, many young women avoid criminal charges, not only because they dread the personal humiliation and possible waste of time they represent, but because sexual assault is often treated as a felony, in the case of a college proceeding, as an expel-able offense. There are alternative punishments that are simply not being explored.
2
Those “alternatives” are PART OF TITLE IX ADJUDICATIONS. They were part of the “Dear Colleague” letter guidelines. For those of us who understand and know this issue, I cannot describe the frustration of a handful of loud rape apologists having so fully shifted the conversation and made the letter seem so extreme as to have the moderate compromises suggested be what it originally said.
7
It's about time some sanity is brought to this insanity. No doubt that in the past pretty much all schools swept many terrible events under the rug. Changes were needed. But these mother's challenging the process is the correct thing. The problem is many, if not most, of those on the left are not looking for justice, they are looking for payback. Just like in their racist attacks, anyone who questions them are not rational humans engaging in debate about a volatile topic, but inhuman beasts. There is more than sufficient evidence that the system as conceived is flawed. Failing to acknowledge and act on that is every bit as horrible as the acts they are supposed to punish. Unfortunately that is a common feature of the American judicial and penal system.
15
Since when is rape a left/right issue?
20
"Their racist attacks"?
Please explain that line
7
Couldn’t have articulated it better myself.
I think what may be shocking to these mothers (and even to myself being 10 years out of college) is that men are now 100% liable when it comes to questions of consent. Because of the prevalence of more clear-cut campus rape and assault, even situations that previously may have been considered a drunken mistake on the part of two consenting adults now need one party to shoulder all of the responsibility - universities have little other recourse in a "he said, she said" situation. We need to make this new standard very clear to young men. Gone are the days of drunkenly hooking up - just as young women have unfairly had to watch out for each other and protect themselves from being assaulted, young men must now protect themselves (perhaps unfairly) from being accused.
46
Men have just discovered consequences and they are terrified.
27
It's not just "men discovering consequences." It's that, on many college campuses, if two drunk students have sex, the man is considered to have raped the woman because she was drunk. Query: What if he was also too drunk to properly consent? What if he was actually more drunk than she was? In the eyes of many campus investigative panels, it doesn't matter; the woman was drunk and couldn't consent, therefore it's rape.
It's cases like that, I think, that have led the growing backlash against the Obama-era regulations for investigating campus rape. There's a real, very serious problem with sexual assault on many campuses, and I don't want to minimize that by any means. But in addressing that serious problem, some campuses have gone too far the opposite direction and are automatically assigning blame to a man even when there was alcohol on both sides and both parties might have been too drunk to consent. Those are the cases the mothers of the accused come out fighting most strongly against. That doesn't necessarily make them "rape deniers," IMO.
Also notice how even the one young man in the article (Alison's son) who was cleared by both a campus panel and a grand jury was ostracized and called names on campus and had to drop out. Let's assume, as Alison does, that he is in fact completely innocent -- is that a just result for him?
Justice is hard. Even harder with crimes like sexual assault that usually don't have witnesses. A mess all around.
12
Oh please, get a grip on reality: We have simply shifted from one thoughtless extreme to the other. First it was never rape, and now it's too easy to make that claim, and in addition the wrong people are enforcing the rules. And the rules are that if a crime has been committed then the proper forum is the criminal court system. Not some administrators office and rules. The defense of drinking too much to consent is really a pretty good one, by the way, as it lets both parties off the hook, which is probably what should be done...Assuming there is some basis for claiming consent.
6
I find Ms. Seefeld's actions horrifying. She has admitted to such a blatant misuse of power. It's a wonder she's not indicted.
28
How so?
5
I agree that the "preponderance of the evidence" standard is a terrible way to evaluate those accused of rape or sexual assault. This is an issue of fairness. If someone is accused of rape, that is a serious accusation. Our country has a legal process that demands a high standard of proof for that kind of accusation ("beyond a reasonable doubt"). In our country, it is better for a guilty person to go free than for an innocent person to be falsely convicted. This is basic fairness that anyone--male or female--should be able to expect when accused of a terrible crime. These cases should be tried in the legal system using the highest burden of proof and in a way that gives defendants access to their full legal rights.
Creating safer campus environments is also a crucial goal. Far too many women (and some men) are raped or sexually assaulted, and many of these actions go unreported. However, a campus process that is fundamentally unfair to defendants, and that operates in a way that is radically different than our legal system, is an extremely unhelpful and terribly unfair way of tackling what truly is a very serious issue that needs attention.
27
Thanks Ms. Seefeld your actions have reinforced my view that American justice is about connections, power and influence and not about fairness.
67
That’s what our legal system is about. We don’t have justice here.
8
And where is this wonderful place in the world where there is actually "justice," in your opinion? The problem is that you figure that "justice" is so clear cut, but "justice" is as much like sausage-making as the rest of the system, and that means justice and the system are imperfect at best, with the aim of punishing only the plainly guilty. Women are not always angels either, and very likely equally at fault as the men in many of these cases, and you seek to ignore that.
7
It's certainly not news that mothers are defending their children. That's biology, that's maternity. It seems that every other local crime report that I see has a segment where a mother stands up for her son, leading me to wonder why the news producer bothers to show something so predictable. So, what makes this story news? Because the crime is sexual assault of some type, of course, which seems to make a lot of well-intentioned people forget their principles about presumption of innocence and the rights of the accused. It appears that educational institutions are not good at adjudicating this issue, which is not surprising, considering that they are educators, not members of the judicial system. The answer? Why turn these cases over to the police and the courts, and have the colleges and universities take their cue from them. Is that too simple?
17
Yours is the perfect and appropriate response to a lot of blather. Rapists should be punished, and no one denies that. But saying someone had too much to drink and thus could not consent is in many cases absurd: So the victim was compelled to drink to much? Um, probably not? The rapist forced his way on the claimed victim? No, of course not. Or was the so-called rapist equally drunk, and his judgment impaired, and thus unable to form some criminal intent?
9
In the trump era a civilized society must take the accusation of women seriously. Not to mention the apparently greater use of drugs and drinking. The hit to a boys life is no greater concern than that of a girls. I agree with those that say the investigations should not be in the hands of the school. The police and prosecutors are trained to ferret out - as best one can - the truth in these matters. The school admin's sole purpose is the reputation of the school and they be defintion will have much less know how and experience. Actual rape must be punished properly. The excuse that 'this one slip up shouldn't ruin his life' is absurd. That rationale is not applied to blacks, or most whites, for other crimes, and should not be.
17
Oh just go ahead and videotape the entire event and have proof - one way or another. God, I am so glad I grew up decades ago.
21
I find it VERY peculiar - if not suspicious - that at a time when we are finally hearing of a longstanding pattern of sexual misconduct at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, abuse which had been covered up for and excused by the majority of his peers, the NEW YORK TIMES has chosen to devote its attention not to an analysis of the longstanding impact of sexual abuse on women; but rather, to the mothers of those accused of sexual assault, and to their dispersion on the victims.
The attitude that "this was just someone who had regrets after the fact" and "she was asking for it" and such are already pervasive in society, and are precisely the reason who Harvey Weinstein's victims didn't come forward for years. Did you REALLY think they needed yet ANOTHER airing? Really?
56
Exactly! Was the lesson not that the accused have plenty of protections?
2
The NYTimes ran the story because of what Betsy deVos just did, not to divert attention from Weinstein.
14
I think the NYT has published a huge amount about Harvey Weinstein and sexual assault, and this article was well-timed and interestingly presented, although I don't agree with more relaxed rape laws.
6
I can’t begin to count all of the #metoo posts I’ve seen on Facebook and Twitter the past week followed by claims that “but my son, my husband are the ‘good guys’.” Well, some women have to have married or mothered the “bad guys,” haven’t they? (Or married men who passed their abusive ways to their sons.) Rather messy and conflicted, isn’t it?
35
"In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault...It was considered,'I was stupid and got embarrassed." is exactly the problem. Getting too drunk may be "stupid" but is it not criminal to take advantage of a woman's incapacity to have sex with her? Maybe you should have raised a better man who was capable of respect and compassion for women, even "stupid" ones.
187
And if he had been drinking as well - then she would have been guilty of rape?
44
To drunk people having sex and only the guy is responsible for his behavior. That is kinda sexist isn’t it?
72
So totally agree with this. Assault is assault. BTW as the mother of a son and daughter, I get the “protect the son” thing. But based on physical strength, my daughter is far more vulnerable in these situations. She is no match for a 6 foot some odd man. And that scares the stew out of me.
27
Educational institutions are tied neither to binary judicial standards of proof - civil ('more likely than not') or criminal ('beyond a reasonable doubt') - nor rigid legal remedies.
I'd like to see creative drafting on a whole range of sanctions, from 'you behaved at least questionably and someone got hurt, so watch yourself', to 'move to a different dorm and never show up in your old one', to 'no more parties at this fraternity', to, of course, 'you are expelled and probably going to jail for a long time.'
The mantra 'rape is rape' has been extraordinarily destructive to justice and fairness, preventing us from imposing the range of sanctions that the complexities of bad decision-making by young people away from home for the first time require.
24
It’s no secret that the Title IX adjudication system in place at most schools is woefully unbalanced, especially when any touch (no matter how slight) can constitute sexual harassment. Devos was correct in retracting that 50.01 guidance. The reality is that a claim of sexual assault is very serious, and similar in stigma to a number of heinous crimes. If there is no proof that a sexual assault occurred, or the evidence is weak, then the state is not likely to press charges, so why should a University? Believing a victim while also doing due diligence doesn’t constitute rape culture. At the same time, you can’t invalidate due process because ‘she’ said ‘he’ did X and that is bad. These matters belong to the police, and none of these mothers indicated their sons were in jail.
23
The Title IX adjudication system literally does that, with outcomes from expulsion to rearranging schedules so as to prevent the victim from having to take classes with their assailant to findings of not responsible.
3
“'We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,' she said." I have 3 sons. I absolutely believe that it is my moral obligation to teach them not to rape. Teaching men to "respect" women or to hold women "sacred" is not keeping women safe. If my husband and I don't teach our sons not to rape, then who will?
113
I believe she was referring to her self and her own sons, meaning "we don't need to, we already have"
6
It's not about holding women "sacred". It's about holding people sacred. Then , nobody would do anything to anyone else without their 'sacred' consent. Forcing one's will upon other is always about power and the worst kind of self gratification.
5
If the accused is cleared by preponderance of evidence, then by preponderance of evidence, the accuser filed a false accusation. A false accusation, like assault, can ruin a life. So if the accusation is found false by preponderance of evidence, should the accuser be expelled?
31
Obviously yes, a false accusation should lead to expulsion and criminal sanctions. And that's what the women are afraid of.
2
Seems to me the obvious solution here is for young men to not get themselves into such a situation to begin with. Maybe they should start traveling in packs, not go out partying late at night, stop trusting every woman who smiles at them, make an attempt to not be alone with them. Definitely they need to watch what they drink. Stay safe, young college boys!
244
I had a close friend who went through this and like the women here, she pursued every legal avenue available. But at the end of the day, the question that haunted her was “where did I go wrong”. We are not told if the women discussed here had similar self-doubts. But if they didn’t it appears to me that their advocacy on behalf of their sons was fueled by self-centered denial.
32
Judith, what generation could that be? I'm 64. If a person is incapable of giving consent for any reason, it's not sex it's rape. I learned this simple, unambiguous standard from MY PARENTS who, as biology would have it, are even older than I am.
207
If a person is incapacitated that is one thing. But there is ambiguity when it comes to drunk sex. What if the boy is equally wasted? Are he and she both rapists and rape victims simultaneously? Unless you're viewing rape through a retrograde lens where only men can be perpetrators and only women can be victims and everyone is heterosexual, there's no way to avoid this problem.
I work at a University and consider myself a supportive colleague to professionals who work in violence prevention and victim advocacy. Even if it's not something I work on 40 hours a week, I've jumped at the chance to materially improve sexual violence services available to the student body.
For those outside looking in, this is my word to the wise. Universities are getting better at preventing violence and are making strides when it comes to supporting victims.
But when it comes to *justice* and *investigation*, Universities are comically inept. That did not improve after the "Dear Colleague" letter issued by Obama's DOJ/DOE. When you see punishment doled out for male students accused of sexual assault, you should not assume that things are improving. You should assume that the same clumsy, dysfunctional system is doing what it has always done: protect the reputation of the University.
As I like to say to friends and family engaged in this issue: rape is not "non-academic misconduct," rape is a felony.
372
Yes, it is, and it should never have been made the education system's job to handle it. It's a difficult investigation with quite specific legal determinations to be made; and there is the issue of delicacy: Victims of rape have been assaulted in the most humiliating manner imaginable and must not be further victimized by the investigation.
23
Why isn't it both?
I’m a current campus sexual assault review board member.
First point, about 90% of all cases involve alcohol and drugs. These young folks are engaging in several high risk behaviors.
Second, we are trained to assess whether *every* sexual act was consented. For instance, students must ask and get an overt message of consent before *each* kiss, pat, rub, and so on. When I asked the trainer about how most sexual interactions do not follow this unnatural, legally designed protocol of consentual sex, the response was: welcome to college life.
Thirdly, having participated in investigations, everyone involved is worse off during the investigation and afterwards.
73
In other words, the imposed "system," despite good intentions, is terrible in its effect. There is a certain road, as I recall, paved with good intentions...
It is part of the schools job to make sure that students understand the rules that apply to them and to the administration AND to make sure that proper standards of behavior are in place and enforced. But finding out what amounts to guilt and innocence in these matters? Not what colleges do best.
1
Wish I could recommend this 500 times.
Great, Ms. Seefeld leveraged her connections, money and a PR firm to victim blame a young woman which led to the police bringing charges against her for filing a false report. The charges were filed against her for inconsistencies in her statement. An inconsistent timeline of events and difficulty remembering traumatic events is one of the signs of PTSD, which she would have if she were raped by her son. There is no just reason for these charges, the young woman's inconsistencies are only more evidence that he did something wrong.
54
It’s not just a sign of PTSD; it’s characteristic of the neurobiology of all traumatic memories.
24
So the more inconsistencies in an accusation, the more likely that the accusation is true? Franz Kafka, meet George Orwell
10
its also a characteristic of liars. That's why you need due process - to determine which of these potential causes of such behaviour is responsible
“How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered,” she said she told him.
Yes, I'd like to know the answer to that one as well. How many times?
343
Hearing these mothers speak reminds me of a story from about a year ago when a father convincingly plead for the judge to not ruin his son's promising future because of one brief moment of poor judgement. During that brief moment, the son was caught molesting an unconscious woman in an alley.
It appears that, in this case, due process is code for "drag the accuser through the mud."
91
Well geez I should hope so. I raised my son properly, and know his character, and would believe him implicitly and explicitly should, God forbid, he ever be accused of wrongdoing. Any sort of wrongdoing.
Show me incontrovertible evidence before you ask me to doubt my own child.
12
This story honestly feels like a description of rape culture from the perspective of rape apologists. Making the distinction between "falsely accused" and "wrongly accused"? Arguing that sex with an intoxicated and unconscious woman isn't rape? Persecuting traumatized rape victims for having the audacity to come forward with an imperfect recollection? Most rape is committed by a limited number of serial rapists, and this is the process by which they remain free.
114
The mothers of victims are right to be upset with DeVos.
The mothers of the wrongfully accused are right to be happy with her decision.
There's no easy answer.
10
Maybe I missed it, but none of the women interviewed are identified as also having a daughter. That speaks for itself. I suspect I am of the same generation as "Judith," who said that in her day "...it was considered, 'I was stupid and I got embarrassed" -- yes, of course that's what we were taught to say and to think and to feel. And women of just about all ages STILL react that way or are made to feel so when they are assaulted. Look how long it took for women to come forward about harassment and assault by Bill Cosby, Bill O'Reilly, Harvey Weinstein.
79
Apparently at least of the women interviewed does have a daughter: "Gloria Davidson, whose daughter, Jessica, runs End Rape on Campus, ...". That noted, I agree with you that victims must feel empowered to report, and thereby eventually to reduce, harassment.
6
I don’t believe the article identified Ms. Davidson as a mother whose son was accused. The article only said she has a 21-year old son, in addition to her daughter.
3
I believe what she meant when she made the comment about being stupid and embarrassed was that back in her day the women took responsibility for their poor decisions (drunken sex) and moved on, not that they were made to feel that they should feel shame
1
Any woman can accuse a man of rape. This is one of the reasons that in our justice system suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty and the standard of proof is higher. What the accusers want is a system where we just take their word for it and punish these men and forget the proper due process to which they are entitled.
73
No, what these men want is for authorities to simply take their word for it that the sex was consensual and the women were lying. A rape accusation is an extremely difficult thing to make—maybe we should start telling these men to keep it in their pants.
41
William Stuber - do you know what the facts were in any of these cases? Could it be that the college's action in expelling a student was justified. A college does not willy nilly hold a hearing and throw a student out.The process is formal and people sit as jurors to arrive at a decision. Yes, the standard of proof is different than that of a criminal case but in criminal cases the stakes are a lot higher, imprisonment being the main difference.
It does not much matter anyway. Colleges and universities have grown accustom to the previous rules. I don't think you are going to find many colleges going back to the old way of doing things. The only thing Betsy did was to take away federal penalties.
4
No, what these men want are for these cases to be adjudicated by professionals, the police and the criminal justice system - and not by 24 year old, predominately female recent college grads who are employees of the school. These are crimes, not 'violation' of the Student Code of Conduct.
13
Jessica Davidson says, "I think it's the wrong thing for them to do to try and push back an entire movement." But what if the movement violates due process for the accused? Think about the current process to investigate campus sexual assault. Would you want a college staffer investigating a murder? Embezzlement? A hit and run? Why are they considered qualified to investigate (and make final judgement!) on a rape?
The current Title IX guidelines are overreaching and need improvements. The California Law Review has said "the conduct classified as illegal on college campuses has grown substantially, and indeed, it plausibly covers almost all sex students are having today. Read the background on current federally mandated practice in 3 articles in The Atlantic by Emily Yoffe.
“Even if the accused is cleared … schools can issue a standing no-contact order between him and the accuser. In the Harvard Law Review, Janet Halley, a Harvard law professor, describes an Oregon college case when a male student was investigated and told to stay away from a female student, resulting in the loss of his campus job and a move from his dorm. He didn’t know why he was being investigated. It turned out he resembled a man who had raped the female student “months before and thousands of miles away.” Found “innocent of any sexual misconduct,” the no-contact order was not lifted!
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-bad-science-be...
56
Wow, that's a stunning article from The Atlantic. Much food for thought. Thank you.
I doubt many mothers know anything about their sons' sex lives. Mine didn't. Nor did I know anything about hers. Sex was a taboo subject between this son and his mother. I would extend my ignorance to my five siblings. Would she have defended me had I been accused of assaulting a woman? Probably. Would she have believed me had I sworn my innocence? Probably and regardless. And how is that different from mothers in this article and elsewhere? Not much, I'll bet.
36
Interesting to see so little sympathy for young men framed for sexual assault - their lives and careers destroyed by an administrative system where there is no due process. A chorus baying for blood - what are we, in the Colloseum?
75
There was no one “framed” for anything - two of these men were suspended and one expelled. Their lives were ruined by their own actions.
22
There you go-guilty. You just assumed it. Three times as many women in college suffer from depression as young men. Could there be a link?
6
The framing is here:
“A spokesman for the university declined to comment. But university documents provided by Ms. Seefeld show that the school did review the verdict, and nullified it because of a new development: The police said that they had found inconsistencies in the accuser’s account and that some witnesses had contradicted it. They issued a warrant for her arrest on a charge of filing a false police report. (The woman left the state and has not been arrested. She did not respond to telephone messages.)”
14
Here is a question. If 2 intoxicated college students of different gender have sex, then who is guilty? The male? The female? Both? Neither?
146
If you use the tea-drinking analogy, then the person who actively pushes the other person to drink tea is the aggressor. Of course it is difficult for intoxicated people to figure out if someone else still wants to drink tea, especially if they had previously agreed to drink said tea. If someone is unconscious, one should assume he doesn't want to drink tea anymore, and not funnel it down his throat.
Intoxication seems to be the crux of the issue. There is a tendency to blame sexual assault victims for being drunk because it was stupid, but in that case, people who do stupid things while drunk (whether it is rape, steal, or murder) are equally at fault.
Let's use another analogy. Let's say someone is intoxicated and lets another intoxicated person into their home. This intoxicated guest then steals from the home. Who is more at fault? Did the person who stole something just assume that they had permission to take the item? Should the person who owned the home not have invited anyone to her home unless she was sure she wanted to give away said items?
Of course the analogy is not perfect, because it assumes that a woman owns her body and its use--wait, that's not such a crazy statement, is it?
8
Good question! But the experts all agree. About 25% of our girls will be sexually abused before 25 years old. How do we address that? Do we care to address that as a society. Should DeVos have acted to eliminate protections for our girls with these awful statistics? We elected a man who is morally revolting and his staff reflects his vision for our girls. Put out and shut up.
5
The person who, due to intoxication, ignores the lack of consent of the other party and forces or coerces sex. If both partners are consenting adults there is no crime whether alcohol was consumed or not.
7
Avoid drunken parties.
27
Anecdotal evidence is useful for starting a conversation or formulating hypotheses. Such stories are much favored by the Trump so-called Administration for setting policy; witness Trump's fondness for stating that "Many people have told me,"... vaccines, highest taxes, illegal voters, etc.
Actual evidence however is founded on something more rigorous, data. Of course moms are gong to stick up for their sons. Of course some are innocent or less guilty than accused, or somewhere in between. The facts originating from collected data however, tell us that we have a national problem with sexual assualt; males are the perpetrators by far over females, including when females acquire buyer's remorse after a consensual encounter.
Secretary DeVos is giving comfort to the offenders. Her fundamentalist religion-based frame of reference for policy making and her publc relations centered response has warped the Department's ability to look at the facts and apply the law. Sound familiar?
26
Since when is due process a "fundamentalist religion based frame of reference"?
14
Since when is due process something you are entitled to outside of a courtroom?
7
Your words, not mine: "males are the perpetrators by far over females, including when females acquire buyer's remorse after a consensual encounter". How is anyone a perpetrator in a consensual encounter?
4
I acknowledge that not all men who are accused of rape are actually rapists... However, many men who are accused did commit a crime... It is interesting how few men admit or acknowledge or apologize for their crimes... And it is disturbing how many women enable men who are rapists... These men are their sons and husbands and the women in their lives enable them because they defend them when they are guilty.
48
Rolling Stone? Duke Lacrosse - yeah - it never happens.
8
Who was expelled in those cases? No one.
1 in 5 college women will be sexually assaulted and you have two examples.
2
You can't prove a counterfactual.
Although it would be interesting if Universities would record the number of assault allegations that are thrown out as a percentage of the total. Some less-than-great studies say it is 20%.
And your 1 in 5 rate is like the $.78 pay gap - a unicorn myth. Universities are demonstrably safer for young women than the surrounding neighborhoods.
8
First response to her son calling to say he has a problem: "How many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered." Sounds like she already knew her son doing things that would shame her as a mother. This group strikes me as at least partly an effort to defend the members' parenting.
780
Yes, that stood out to me too.
3
Would make the same assumption if the story featured a father or mother who said to their daughter "how many times have I told you, you need to keep it zippered"?
If not, then why?
3
It’s possible that she was just worried about an unexpected pregnancy through unprotected but consensual sex. Your gut response highlights the need for a due process.
1
Irrespective of both sides of this argument, it's depressing how easy it is to lobby members of the executive branch.
I understand how mothers would want to protect the few sons who may feel they have been overly punished for making bad decisions, but I'm hoping there's a backlash from mothers and fathers of the women who have been assaulted, a much larger group. Make some noise.
29
Not "depressingly easy" at all; quite the opposite. The fact that a small handful of the hundreds of wrongly accused students had parents who had the political savvy, connections and financial resources to fight back effectively does not provide a basis for criticising these families; we should be even more concerned about the overwhelming majority of falsely accused students -- particularly minorities and foreign students -- who have to face these kangaroo courts without the benefit of legal counsel and the ability to effectively defend themselves.
Judith, what these girls are going through is considered assault. If it is our sons who foolishly allow the heat of the moment to override the decency we tried to instill in them, then it should be they who admit, "I was stupid."
And by instilling decency, I mean doing more than just telling them (how ever many times), "you need to keep it zippered."
138
Mothers protecting their sons? Where are their fathers? Do they agree with their sons’ behavior? Do these mothers have daughters? What if it was one of their daughters calling a sexual assault? Would they be so protective of the male students?
37
Father here. Have a son and a daughter. They both went to the same university. Daughter was active in Women's Health Center and counseled victims. Son was accused of sexual assault and expelled. He knew to ask for affirmative consent at every step of the encounter, and he did. Accuser changed her account of events after ex-boyfriend got upset at the hook up. BWCA - What would you do?
17
Scott, I wish I had the answers. I too am a father, but of two sons. Both went to college. You are a father of a son and daughter involved in sexual assaults situations. I ask you, how much has your daughter suffered? How many women would make up a story of being sexually assault? How many women would go through life being called names with for accusing someone of sexual assault if it wasn’t true? Probably very few. Maybe the woman that accused your son is one of the few, but odds are she’s not. Please bare with me, im not accusing or defending you or your son or daughter, but is there a possibility that your son hasn’t told you everything?
3
@Scott:
In a healthy relationship, people get to know each other first beforehand. Do NOT get drunk and "hook up" with someone you don't know well enough to trust one hundred percent!
That is an excellent way to avoid being charged with rape.
1
This story does not go into any detail that would allow
a reader to agree that 'hey, this young man's been framed.'
It just says these moms want to protect their boys
from uncomfortable allegations.
That doesn't cut it.
I have two sons.
If either of them ever raped a woman,
I would want them to face all the consequences
such a heinous act clearly calls for.
Why? Because I love them,
and sheltering your kid from the consequences
of physically and psychologically harming another human being
isn't an act of love. It's an act of denial, or worse, an act of condoning.
Sheltering your kid out of denial
or condoning such ugly behavior
is a habit habit which may well have clouded
these boy's moral judgement in the first place.
If your kid was framed, protect them.
If they did something awful, they --and you --must face up to it.
What if it was your daughter?
1087
As you eloquently stated, you have a moral obligation to come forward if you have knowledge that your son or daughter has committed a sexual crime.
And if it's morally right for a parent to out their beloved teenager, then all the adult men and women in Hollywood whose silence enabled Harvey Weinstein to prey on more victims, have proved to be less than honorable.
8
There are now 65 successful lawsuits against universities for violating the rights of the accused. What if it was your son?
5
The sons were accused; until they confess or are convicted, they are not "guilty". Much of the problem comes from the way we "educate" our children about sex. We need to educate our children about sex, including "desired behavior" and "undesirable behavior". If we think parents who were never educated about sex will educate their children about the real world of sex, we are betting on a long shot. Don't lie to your children about sex.
3
Only when the naive feminists of my generation became, usually in their middle ages, the mothers of sons and daughters did they really start to grow up and mature as women.
5
My son, who is now 46, told me when in college at Madison, U of Wisconsin that he helped the drunk girls back to their rooms because he feared for their safety. Excessive drinking still seems to be the issue with the women. Both men and women are at fault.
53
Today your son could be taking his life in his hands. He might have behaved honorably and the woman agree. Another person who sees them could disagree and report him. Its happened.
The kicker of the USC football team was accused of beating his girlfriend by an onlooker. He wasn't. They were roughhousing and she tried to stop the charges by saying so. She's still with the guy. USC not only didn't believe her, they told her to shut up about defending him or face being kicked off the sports team she was on.
12
@dogpatch: Many years ago a friend and I happened upon a man beating a woman in an alleyway in front of a bar.
We were both young and quite horrified. My friend went into the bar and asked the bartender to call the police.
When the police arrived, the woman, who was quite battered and bleeding, refused help and insisted that the man was not mistreating her in any way. According to her, they were just having a regular old fight.
The police went away, and the man started hitting her again -- this time because it was her fault the police showed up.
I was utterly flabbergasted that she did not press charges, but I am older and wiser and have since learned many things about domestic abuse
Some women are inextricably tied to men who abuse them, feeling that there is no way out, because their "partners" control every aspect of their lives, and they are very liable to wind up dead. Statistically, when women are murdered, it is usually by their so-called partners.
Since that night, I have always taken these "he didn't mean to hurt me" stories with a very large grain of salt. He clearly intended to hurt her, and did so, very badly. But for whatever twisted reason, she was convinced that the violence was justified.
Abuse is a complex problem.
4
“We don’t really need to teach our sons not to rape,” she said.
- And there, dear mothers and fathers, is your problem. A boy can be raised to be "respectful of women" and still pressure her for sex, or worse.
I wonder if these same women had daughters who were raped, if they would jump in to "protect" them as ardently (probably, yes), and how "understanding" they would be toward a rapist's mother who insisted on her son's innocence, or worse, used her considerable political connections to make sure the college made the accusations go away.
326
You don't have to teach average person not to murder, assault, rob or steal. There are lots of things we know as parents what needs teaching when you have provided them with clear models of even approaching an average upstanding character. To teach someone who has never even come close to make you suspect you need such lecture is to insult him (or her).
If you read the context in which it was said, you would know why she said this.
4
Arif - I disagree. We do absolutely have to teach children not to assault (don't hit) nor to steal (that is not ours, don't take it). Parents fo need to have the rape talk with the kids the same as the above. Here is how sex works, you may get (a girl) pregnant, pay attention that you both want it.
Certainly this needs to happen before they go to college.
4
Apparently you failed to read the story carefully, mare. The police "found inconsistencies in the accuser's account and that some witnesses had contradicted it. They issued a warrant for (the accuser's) arrest on a charge of filing a false police report."
In this case, the young man's mother righted a wrong. She did not "ma(k)e the accusations go away" as if by magic. She played hardball with the university. That's a game they understood.
This case illustrates what several other commenters have said, which is that sexual assault is a matter for police and the courts, not university administrators, whose lack of legal training and conflicts of interest are obvious.
1
Women who drank too much and had sex and regret it the next day do not cry rape. Women who were raped cry rape. (If you don't believe that, consider for a moment what accusers go through... would anyone put herself through that if she hadn't been attacked??)
659
In most cases you're right but there are women who do regret the next day. Or in the next week or, its happened, 6 months later.
12
exactly. I came of age in the seventies; I have been sexually active since age 16. I had some great encounters with some great guys; fell in love a handful of times; married a guy with whom I had both (still do!); had some mediocre sex with some not so great guys. it was all part of learning about me and my needs and desires. I took personal responsibility for every encounter. these girls crying rape and their enablers need to get a copy of Our bodies ourselves; read it; embrace the joy of human sexuality; and own their outcomes. save the term rape for the reality of the vicious attack/assault that it is.
13
Rape is a criminal offense punishable in a court of law. If someone is accused of rape they should arrested, and face legal proceedings. However, in the cases mentioned here, that is not what happen; apparently the universities in question did not believe that a criminal offense occurred.
10
So another GOP victory. The very few instances in which young men are wrongly accused, overrides the many, many more legitimate instances in which young women justly accuse young men of assault. So somehow, a few instances are seen as "balancing" the many times over legitimate instances in which young women are assaulted by young men. A chilling effect on campuses will follow.
500
Absolutely! Let's abandon altogether the concept of innocent unless proven guilty before a jury of one's peers in a properly constituted criminal court and all that unnecessary garbage. Instead, just assume guilt from the outset with the onus on the accused to prove their innocence. Better still, in order really to speed things up and ensure justice for the victim, let the accuser be the prosecutor, jury and judge in her own case.
22
Since when has due process been a "GOP victory?" Due process serves the progressive aim of making sure sure findings and sanctions are just and proportionate. Everyone loses if we fail in that effort.
23
These are not criminal trials; they are civil rights violations. Sexual assault and harassment are a violation of civil rights as well as crimes when occurring at school, per federal law. The preponderance of evidence standard is one used in all civil rights proceedings.
The only thing making these proceedings special is the number of people doing semantic acrobatics to defend their empathy for people commuting civil rights violations.
9
I have the unique position of being both sexually assaulted in college and the mother of sons. I see both sides of this issue. What is disappointing to me is the lack of discussion about the role that alcohol and drugs plays in these assaults. Why are we demonizing these young adults, many of whom who have worked hard to get to college? I let me sons know that alcohol and drugs can turn anyone including them into rapists and murderers. Thinking that they are somehow not at risk because they do not have apparent moral defects is foolish. Any thing can happen when your frontal lobe is temporarily halted in functioning. I believe we need to be doing more to protect both our sons and daughters by monitoring how drugs and alcohol are used on campuses and our homes for that manner.
761
Alcohol is a drug.
5
Alcohol and drugs can turn anyone into rapists and murderers? Huh? Unless you're talking about driving while under the influence or some such, how do you figure that? Even drunk or high people don't go around raping and killing other people as a matter of course. Sometimes, more often with alcohol, it seems to be an excuse to behave the way young men want to anyway. With young women the danger is in not being sharp enough and strong enough to get away from a dangerous situation but you rarely hear or drunk or high women or killing anyone.
34
Alcohol does not create a demon, it only permits one's demon to be unleashed.
37
Weighing in: would these moms put as much energy into helping schools come up with enlightened policies and practices that protect both female and male students? While I can understand their agony -- putting the energy into prevention that keep parties safe seems like a much better approach. If their sons were the victims -- wouldn't that make the most sense?
36
They are interested in protecting their sons, period. And they are operating from an “all women are sluts out to frame men” mindset, so female victims aren’t real victims in ther eyes.
3
Preponderance of the evidence is whatever the chair of the English department wants while live-action role-playing a judge.
If you're going to have a tribunal it must comport itself in a manner that reflects any other legitimate decision-making body in this nation: Accountability, transparency, and the chance to defend against accusations.
53
"In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault, Judith said. "It was considered, 'I was stupid and I got embarrassed.'"
And that's supposed to make it okay?
264
It’s hard to fathom she actually said that out loud.
Disgraceful.
65
Yeah, it was a remarkable comment. Watch how it's entirely from the woman's point of view and puts the onus on the women even though it's the men doing the assaulting.
36
To the mothers of a sons who were not, in her own words, falsely accused: I feel for you, as parents. Unfortunately, the first step towards bringing young men to a position in which they experience equal responsibility for the consequences of their actions must be to hold them equally responsible in such a way that real consequences are felt by them and observed by other young men, and by society in general. It is uncomfortable. It may even be, as you say, unfair. I am sorry for you and I can understand that it felt like what you experienced was an overreaction to your sons' stupid actions. However, we as women have too long participated in the perpetuation of an assumption that we alone, as Judith points out, bear the burden of responsibility in situations such as these. If your sons need to be held to example, the next class of young men may not feel the same degree of license to take advantage of young women without impunity.
474
If someone is innocent, he or she is innocent. No one should have to be a victim in service of a desired social change. Grotesque.
10
I understand your desire for broad social change. But we live and make choices as individuals, which is why the legal system - as opposed to public opinion - is based on the specificity of individual acts and circumstances. A humane legal system does not try people as categories. Many black slaves were hung from trees so that other slaves would “learn”. Legal rigour is important because you have a strong sense of likely offenders and deterrent justice, not in spite of it.
3
Firstly, it is men who have suffered under the assumption the responsibility is theirs alone, that their role is to pursue, and the woman's role is to "consent" or not, and hence if there is non-consensual sex, the male needs to be punished for it. Based on an ignorant and offensive attitude that men are sexually insatiable, and hence can never be considered to have not given consent -- the attitude and belief is that men's consent can always be safely assumed. More importantly, you raise one of the most troubling aspects of the advocacy of more aggressive enforcement of Title IX, the belief that its OK to throw a few innocent men under the bus because it will serve to put fear in the hearts of other men, and the bigger purpose will be served. Assuming all theft allegations as true would undoubtedly reduce theft. But it is not acceptable to say "it's OK to jail a few innocents if that's the price of holding more actual thieves accountable". For some reason, there are voices like yours out there that apparently believe that rape accusations need to be treated differently than allegations of other crimes.
4
These cases are strictly a matter for law enforcement. Victims should contact police rather than college officials, who are more interested in protecting their colleges.
1035
Wholeheartedly agree. Imagine if your workplace, for example, held a similar such tribunal and avoided outside, REAL, law enforcement?
This boggles the mind.
21
I agree in principle, but in practice the wheels of law can move slowly, and meanwhile the accuser and the accused may live in the same dorm, may take the same classes, may be members of the same extracurricular clubs, and so on. I don't have an answer to how much responsibility a college should have for making a victim feel safe on campus, but there are some problems that remain even if colleges are removed from the role of judge and jury.
9
YES!
7
There is indeed an absolutely huge generational difference between women born before the early 1980s and after, when it comes to socially understanding the role of each person's responsibility in these cases of "sex while intoxicated". I was born in the mid-70s, and when I was in high school and college, it was understood there were situations where women were unfairly taken advantage of because they were extremely intoxicated, but it was also understood to be a gray area. There aren't two conditions- stone cold sober, and black-out drunk here, there are a range of circumstances and motivations, and varying degrees of the ability to consent. It seems bizarre to me to absolve a woman who has willingly become extremely intoxicated of any responsibility for her sexual behavior, and to place all responsibility on the man- who may also have been intoxicated.
148
You obviously have not seen "The Hunting Ground."
8
Where did this article say that all the alleged victims were willingly intoxicated? I must have missed that part. That you made that assumption speaks volumes about the burden of proof placed on the victims in coming forward in the first place.
25
If women can claim rape merely because they were intoxicated, and even if they agreed to sex, then every drunken frat boy in this country has been raped multiple times. There should be no double standards here.
5
These young men are entitled to what everyone accused of a. Time is entitled to: a presumption of innocence and due process.
These inquiries should not be held be educators, who have no training in the law or the rules of evidence. All this belongs in a court of law, being handled by people who are experts in these matters.
202
If you really think people who aren’t white, wealthy, and male have ever received those things, you don’t know anything about our “justice” system.
27
Like uninformed and biased juries? Cause that's what happens when rape cases go to trial, there's a long drawn out event on full display to the public where the victim has to recount the unpleasant events that they dealt with to everyone, they're challenged and nitpicked and told that they must have done something to deserve what happened to them, and then a jury of generally biased people sit around for a while before determining that it was all the victims imagination or they should have done something more to tell the assailant to stop. Yeah, the courts do a bang-up job.
25
This would be true if the young men were jailed. Then there should be a trial. But guess what? They were expelled. You can get expelled for having bad grades. Getting expelled for having sex with an "intoxicated" woman who said she'd been too intoxicated to give consent seems like the college is doing the responsible thing. The boy seems to be getting off extremely easy, seems to me.
I definitely wish the women had been profiled in more depth. Were they Republicans? Because they seem to come from the same culture as DeVos. Or for that matter from the Affluenza mother, Tanya Couch.
3
The Weinstein defense:
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault, it was considered “I was stupid and I was embarrassed.””
182
This piece is chilling. Though I understand that a mother will always advocate for her child, it seems as though none of these women have never really bothered to consider that their sons might actually be rapists, preferring to spew misogynistic canards about 'loose', seductive girls. The personal struggles that these young men experienced after the fact might not be the result of being falsely accused, but the manifestations of a guilty conscience. If DeVos and the women of FACE get their way, there will be no protections at all for victims of campus rape. (I'm also disturbed by the way that Seefeld abused her political connections to make her son's case go away).
It is also worth mentioning that alumni of St. Paul's School raised a very large sum of money for Owen Labrie after he was accused of raping a female classmate there in 2014. The 15 year old girl who accused him of rape did not get her own fundraiser. There is already plenty of support for men who are accused of rape.
437
I used to work at a university. Very liberal, white males were on the defensive, considered to be oppressors until proven otherwise. This includes 18 year-olds who've never done anything to anyone.
Reason gives no answer here. If the standard of evidence is too low, innocent men will be unjustly punished. If it is too high, guilty men will be unjustly exonerated.
This is about power, pure and simple, about who has the power to set the standard of evidence. The two sides will fight it out, but I don't believe either side wears the white hat here.
89
That is why colleges and universities should stay out of it. Give unfettered access to the cops and DA's and let the justice system work.
21
What does their whiteness have to do with anything?
6
“In my generation, what these girls are going through was never considered assault,” Judith said. “It was considered, ‘I was stupid and I got embarrassed.’”
That is so disgusting.
666
absolutely disgusting. judith, it is NOT your generation any more. we have evolved beyond that, thank God.
64
I am older than all of these women and they are not speaking for my generation or my mother's generation or my daughter's. That goes double for my father's and son's.
51
Isn't it amazing how one can read something and spin it to whatever they want it to say? No one disputes there are legitimate victims of rape; Judith assumed I think that this doesn't need to be said. "These girls" refers to the cases FACE is involved in where young men have been falsely accused. It was not meant to refer to all women. It's too bad we have to take up time to address this obvious fact.
7
While I agree wholeheartedly with what these women are doing, I am extremely disappointed that men are not doing more to defend each other and defend their sons. It's almost as though men are afraid to stand up for themselves against one of the social justice warrior brigade's favorite causes. It needs to be said: there is an entire dimension to this issue that the Times, and other outlets like it, ignore.
Women are entitled to be free from sexual coercion in all forms, but that story has been told, and retold ad infinitum in recent years. Men are entitled to due process, to freedom from false accusations, and freedom from a kind of sexual "buyer's remorse" the day after. This story has barely scratched the surface.
44
maybe when men stop raping women you won't be burdened with this story "ad infinitum."
126
"Women are entitled to be free from sexual coercion in all forms, but that story has been told, and retold ad infinitum..."
Apparently, it hasn't been said quite forcefully enough.
Ad infinitum? As even our commander in chief brags about sexual abuse, comments like this--suggesting we've 'been there done that' on women's bodily rights-- are nothing short of appalling.
67
Women with "buyers' remorse", as you so charmingly put it, do no make an effort to go in and say, "Bobby took advantage of me being drunk." They are far too embarrassed to do so. What happens is that the boy brags to his friends, and then she has to talk about what happened, and don't try to convince me differently. I'm old and did this kind of investigation for over 20 years. You and I both know boys.
21