Rape on Campus: Guilty until Proven Innocent

Article here. Excerpt:

'Megyn Kelly recently interviewed the attorney for "John Doe," a pseudonym for a young man who was charged with sexual assault when he was a sophomore at Amherst College by "Sandra Jones," another pseudonym. Evidently, colleges and universities now have panels or tribunals to judge charges of sexual assault. This began in 2011, when the Obama administration issued an edict claiming that one out of every five women in college has been sexually assaulted and warning that schools who didn't crack down and reduce the numbers of sexual assaults could lose federal funding. Colleges and universities rushed to set up panels and tribunals to "judge" these accusations in order to keep the cash flowing.

Now it appears that all any woman has to do is accuse a male of sexual misconduct of any type, and this tribunal process begins.  John Doe was a victim of this edict.

K.C. Johnson, author of Until Proven Innocent, in a interview with Megyn Kelly, had the following to say about the tribunal system:

`Once the complaint is filed, an investigator, who lacks subpoena power, interviews the accuser and the accused student; beyond that, the college promises only that the investigator will make a "good faith effort" to speak to relevant witnesses, and will "try" to obtain relevant physical or medical evidence. If the investigator's "good faith" effort doesn't track down relevant witnesses, the policy presumes that the accused student won't be able to call those witnesses before the hearing.

"Attorneys cannot participate in the Hearing Board process" at Amherst (although, the college helpfully notes, the accused student can hire an attorney—at his own expense—and have the attorney present on campus the day of the hearing, perhaps for a very expensive form of virtual, moral support). The attorney-less accused student does receive an "advisor" from the campus community, but this advisor "is not an advocate for the student."

Amherst does not permit the accused student to directly cross-examine his accuser; he can only submit questions to the panel chair, who may ask or reject the questions as the chair chooses. Effective cross-examination under such circumstances is all but impossible—even more so since the accuser is allowed to write responses, rather than respond to questions orally. Any guilty finding is "permanently noted on the student's record."`

Although there have been other examples where the lives of young men have been ruined in similar circumstances (Duke Lacrosse, Tawana Brawley), in 2014, the Obama administration doubled down and said the colleges weren't doing enough.  Sexual assault as defined by the administration now includes verbal threats.'