Article here. Excerpt:

'"Cheer up, it might never happen."

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.
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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.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'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.

Story here. Excerpt:

'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.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sorry, boys, but the news only gets worse.

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.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'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.

Story here. Excerpt:

'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.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'"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:'

Story here. Excerpt:

'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.

Article here. Excerpt:

'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.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Campus Sexual Assault Defense

If you are a student who has been accused of sexually assaulting another student, please get help quickly.

Too often students who are accused of serious misconduct in a student disciplinary proceeding keep silent, assuming that if they just tell their version of what happened, everything will work out fine.

This is a mistake.

I have represented students in school disciplinary proceedings who have been accused of sexual assault. It is impressive how many resources a university can bring to investigate and discipline its own students.
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The school's interest is not in being fair. The school is not trying to make sure that the truth comes out. Rather, the school is trying to make sure it protects itself.

Article here. Excerpt:

'On April 4, 2011 the Department of Education issued its disastrous “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities across the United States, requiring administrators who had neither the investigative nor prosecutorial prowess of the criminal justice system to determine the guilt and innocence of students accused of felony sexual assault, and to reach their conclusions independent of whatever the police and courts decide.

Worse – the Department of Education demanded these schools determine guilt via a radically low standard of evidence for sex-assault cases: the “preponderance of evidence” standard. Under this model if an administrator feels that there might be a 50.01% chance that the alleged crime occurred, he/she must find the student guilty (“responsible”) for sexual assault. This is further complicated by the lack of numerous other procedural safeguards and methods of evidentiary examination.

Predictably, a wave of lawsuits soon erupted as young men wrongly accused of sex crimes found themselves hustled through a vague and misshapen adjudication process with slipshod checks and balances and Kafkaesque standards of evidence. This page is dedicated to cataloging their legal challenges against schools which – they allege – have violated their rights to due process, unjustly destroyed their names, deprived them of educational opportunities, and committed various other injustices against them in the name of “just following orders.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Lawmakers in Washington, DC have proposed the idea of having a ‘scarlet letter’ that would permanently mark the transcripts of students who are investigated by campus authorities for sexual misconduct. If they are introduced, these markers would ‘follow [the accused] to new schools [and] into the workforce’.

Considering the Kafkaesque nature of campus sexual-assault proceedings, which infamously lack even the most basic elements of due process, and the vague (not to mention unromantic) definitions of consent that are often used in them, one would think requiring men who are convicted in these tribunals to be branded for life was a recipe for injustice. But that’s not even the worst part.

Article here. Excerpt:

'An Iowa appeals court has dismissed an appeal from Iowa State University that would have overturned an earlier ruling regarding a campus sexual assault accusation.

In May 2012, Yempabou "Bubu" Palo, an ISU basketball player, was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student. Palo and another man, Spencer Cruise, had been friends with the accuser — listed in court records as H.B. — since high school. Palo and H.B. had engaged in sexual activities years earlier.

H.B. accused both men of raping her, and Palo was criminally charged with second-degree sexual abuse. But after an investigation — which included the discovery of fabricated evidence — the charges were dropped. H.B. had claimed that the blouse she had worn the night of the alleged attack had been torn during the encounter but that she had lost it. About seven months after the alleged incident, she found the torn blouse, but said she had washed it a week after the event.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new state law and a $1.7 million study aim to make the University of Texas a safer place for students when it comes to sexual assault

The new state law mandates all Texas schools inform students of their sexual assault policy and go over it with them every two years

"It's a long time, it is four years," said UT grad student, Omar Awapara. "It is good to have more than one reminder of that."

University of Texas System is also spending $1.7 million to study sexual assault, harassment and dating violence over the next four years. The study will include things like student surveys and focus groups. They'll also track a select group of students through their four years on campus. University officials say this will be the most in-depth study ever conducted at a college campus.'