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'A victims' advocate who previously voiced her contempt for due process on college campuses is back again, this time writing in the Washington Post that if colleges are "doing what is right" for accusers, then "due process" is not necessary.
In an article titled "College administrators should help rape survivors, not their school's public image," Sarah Merriman, spokeswoman for Students Active for Ending Rape, dismisses the notion that colleges have made strides in addressing campus sexual assault while arguing that due process shouldn't be part of the equation.'
'We’ve heard it over and over again: rape is epidemic on college campuses, and it’s being committed by sociopathic, serial rapists. “This cannot be emphasized enough,” says Amanda Marcotte at Slate. “The high rates of campus sexual assault are due mostly to a small percentage of men who assault multiple women.”
Al Jazeera reported that serial rapists commit 9 out of 10 campus sexual assaults, citing a 2002 study by psychologist David Lisak. The problem is, Lisak’s work has now been debunked. His study, as Linda LeFauve at Reason discovered, is seriously flawed, relying on survey data Lisak didn’t collect and having no direct connection to campus sexual assault.
'At a hearing last week on campus sexual assault, a Senate committee considering changes to higher-education law only allowed certain witnesses to testify – those who believe that alleged victims currentlyget a raw deal in campus investigations, relative to accused students.
The hearing was carried live on C-SPAN and the committee’s own Web page, giving a national audience a very skewed impression of a problem that’s largely caused by a combustible mix of alcohol, miscommunication and celebrated sexual permissiveness.
It was so tilted that a Democratic senator, the former attorney general of Rhode Island, had to jump in at the last minute, to cast aspersions on the ability of campus administrators to run a system with any semblance of competence or fairness.
'The doctor, the MA, and the “buyer” all observe the contents in the pie plate, joking around about various organs they see. Coming across an intact kidney the doctor determines it’s “good to go” as the MA exclaims, “Five stars!”
The sifting continues. The doctor is curious as to any usefulness the brain might have. Before the “buyer” can answer her question, she eagerly asks, “Do people do stuff with eyeballs?” as an eyeball of a tiny baby is pushed around on the plate.
The doctor and the MA continue to huddle over the plate, noting there are lots of organs available, identifying several by name, as Ginde says: “Here’s a stomach, kidney, heart, adrenal. I don’t know what else is in there. Tiny.” The MA says, “I don’t see any legs. Did you see any legs?”
After searching for a few more moments, she finds the legs she was so eagerly looking for and enthusiastically announces: “And another boy!”
Yes, my best friend really did proffer those priceless words of wisdom as we sat having a drink during one of my periodic lows. The fact that I had been made redundant recently – that it had actually happened! - didn’t seem to have occurred to him.
Forget the shame, drop in income, bout of depression and all-round disillusionment, he was implying. What mattered was that a few drinks, reminiscences of teenage escapades and some immature banter would easily rectify things. And he was right – too much introspection does no one any good.
...
We might think we have a higher tolerance of physical pain but, when it comes to emotional pain, we’re genetically stunted. It’s not that we can’t handle it, just that we seem unable to share in others’. We’re not indifferent to people’s predicaments but our instinctive reaction is selfish: rather than "poor you" we want to say "thank God that didn’t happen to me" and then proceed to mistake false cheeriness for empathy.'
'As more information slowly seeps out about Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old who murdered nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, one fact should surprise exactly no one: Roof came from a broken home. Roof’s parents divorced three years before he was even born, later reuniting just long enough to produce a child who would later become a mass murderer.
The media loves to find an easy scapegoat for mass shootings, whether it be the pharmaceutical industry, the National Rifle Association, or even Donald Trump. Of course these scapegoats are designed to fit the politically correct narrative, and they are an easy sell (especially when it’s all Donald Trump’s fault, as Americans increasingly love to blame the proverbial 1 percent for their sorrows). Scapegoats serve another purpose, too: they ensure the media can avoid the uncomfortable truth that unstable homes produce unstable individuals.
'A major victory for a family from Brighton, torn apart by what they say were false allegations of child abuse. On Wednesday morning, a judge decided not to terminate the parental rights of baby Naomi’s father, Joshua Burns.
"The court does find by a preponderance of evidence that it is not child's best interests to terminate the respondent father's parental rights," said Livingston County Probate Judge Miriam Cavanaugh.
Burns broke down in tears, with his wife Brenda next to him. Both were crying with relief.
“Naomi’s mother does not support termination, does not believe it is in her best interest, but rather will be a profound loss for her, and this court agrees,” said Judge Cavanaugh.'
Across the board, data show that women are better students than men. From test scores to college graduation rates, females outperform males in almost every metric of educational achievement.
Now, two economists from Texas A&M University report that schoolgirls do even better than their male counterparts when they are taught by female teachers. Specifically, the authors found a significant change in female test scores in math—long considered the last bastion of male educational dominance—when taught by a woman instead of a man.'
'So if the student is found responsible for sexual misconduct when he’s 19, then applies for a job that requires his transcript 30 years later when he’s married with two children, his transcript would still mark him as a rapist. One would hope that an employer would care a lot less 30 years later, but that company will surely have a concern about its own liability for sexual harassment from that employee. This transcript note could effectively end a person’s career before it even starts.
If these transcript notes came in an unambiguous area of the law where the processes were full and fair, this scarlet letter may not be troubling. It’s also ironic that these laws are being proposed at the same time President Obama is urging companies to hire people who were convicted in real courts of real crimes. There is a legitimate question about how long a person’s past should haunt his future.
'The Michigan appeals court has upheld the conviction and sentence of a woman who was charged with falsely accusing two men of rape in the Port Huron area.
It’s one of two cases that have put Sara Ylen, now 40, in prison. In another case, she tricked an insurance company and generous donors into believing she was dying of cancer.
In a decision Friday, the appeals court says a judge made no errors last year in sending Ylen to prison for at least five years. She was convicted of lying about being attacked in her Lexington home in 2012. She was also convicted of tampering with evidence after police said she used makeup to create what looked like bruises. She did not testify in her own defense.
Ylen’s story resembled a “cheap novel,” prosecutor Suzette Samuels told jurors. “She’s lying through her teeth. … This was unreal.”
'"The price of a college education should never be the risk of a sexual assault," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., told a Senate hearing Wednesday. Too many colleges don't treat rape, she observed, as "the violent felony that it actually is." Her solution is the bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act, or CASA, which would require college campuses to designate confidential advisers to victims of sexual assault and establish rules for campus investigations of sexual assaults.
Gillibrand means well; there's no question about it. But Congress telling American universities how they should handle campus rape truly is an instance of the blind leading the blind. If the goal is to treat campus rape as the violent felony it is, don't expect deans and assistant deans to conduct investigations -- unless you want to over-politicize the process. If you want to treat rape as a crime, leave assault investigations to the police.'
SAVE has a summary of the Safe Campuses Act here. Excerpt:
'The Safe Campus Act was introduced on July 29, 2015 in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Act provides a Safe Harbor to a college that follows the provisions of the Act from being sanctioned by the Department of Education for not following policies of the Office for Civil Rights such as the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter. The complete text of the Safe Campus Act can be seen HERE.
The Safe Campus Act delineates a series of procedures and protections designed to balance the interests of the alleged victim and the accused student:'
'Zach was arrested last winter after having sex with a girl he met on the dating app “Hot or Not,” who claimed she was 17. But she admitted to police that was a lie. She was really 14.
If he had known she was so young, Zach said, he never would have met her.
“I wouldn't even have gone to her house, like I literally wouldn't have gone to her house at all,” he said.
As a convicted sex offender, the terms of Zach’s probation are incredibly strict. For the next five years, he is forbidden from owning a smart phone or using the Internet. He is not allowed to talk to anyone under age 17, other than immediate family. He is banned from going to any establishment that serves alcohol and he has to be home before 8 p.m. every night.
“They make me out to be a monster,” Zach said. “I can't even look at life regularly.”
His parents say his punishment is cruel and unusual, and they are waging a very public fight, even setting up a Facebook page, hoping to rally support for their son.
'An anti-domestic violence group led by men has apologized for standing up for former Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice. In an interview with ESPN’s Adam Schefter earlier this week, the co-founders of A Call to Men said they “feel strongly about him having the opportunity of having a second chance.”
“He’s deserving of it,” said Tony Porter and Ted Bunch, noting their experience with Rice who they’ve worked with since November “has been tremendously positive.” The two also referred to Rice knocking out his then-fiancee in an Atlantic City casino elevator as a “mistake.”
On Thursday, however, the group, rolled back its comments, which the leaders admitted to making “without consulting the community.”
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