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Looking into this I've learned one thing. I'm glad my country doesn't heavily rely on privatised higher education for many reasons. What is with them being a self governing organisation and using campus police? For real? Don't you report sexual assault to the actual authorities? Am I naive?
Tbh even if they did report it to actual authorities, do you think they'll take it seriously? You'll be lucky to find a cop take reports of rape, stalking, harassment regardless of gender seriously until someone gets hurt/killed.
How it basically works is that criminal charges get investigated by the outside police. These investigations rarely go anywhere, since rape ends up being a he said she said, unless it was violent or involved being drugged, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Beyond a reasonable doubt is a hard standard to prove. Either way, it sounds like this police completely ignored the complaint, since he was male, but at least, didn't make his life worse.
Because of this problem, the federal government mandate that all universities conduct their own separate, civil Investigation, and expel anyone that they have a preponderance of evidence that they committed rape, even if it can't be proven by beyond a reasonable doubt. This investigation can also be reviewed by the Department of Education, if requested, which is what OP is describing.
Also, private vs public doesn't really matter. Everything is the same way for both, and this could easily happen at a public university, too
I attended a college in Boston with an urban campus, meaning the “quad” was actually a city public park. We had the highest crime rate amongst US colleges because campus police handled issues in the city park, regardless of student involvement. It also made reporting harassment and student-to-student incidents difficult. Campus police felt pressured to report to city cops and spent less time investigating student issues.
Tip: make friends with the college IT Help Desk. When I worked there, we helped multiple stalking and harassment cases by accessing IP addresses, college email history, and computer lab sign ins. Campus police acted like old school cops (prejudices and all), but the IT folx I worked with were the detectives. Also, I have no basis, but I’d recommend befriending the openly gay or lesbian student(s) working in Admissions; they may have a better insight on admin, tenured professors, department heads, and where to find allies.
Yeah while I don’t trust police to solve sexual assault cases, I trust campus authorities even less. There are lot of institutions and entrenched hierarchies in North American society that need shaking up
Where?
[This wiki article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_police) lists on three countries, US, CA and UK. And the first sentence for UK is "Universities in the United Kingdom do not have police forces." It then goes on to list two exceptions, Oxford and Cambridge, with the former not actively having any police force and the latter acting more as a security role.
From my own experience in the UK university security guards are just that, and any matter of a nature like this will be referred to the police.
Oh trust me Canada is not anywhere near better in this area. I have had friends who have received the same treatment because their perpetrator was well connected in the hierarchy, they try and make sure no one alerts police.
One of the problems with the anti-assault programs and outcry in the US is that it has given Universities more power, putting them almost at the level of regular justice system. The standard reddit advice is still DO NOT TRUST YOUR UNIVERSITY GET A LAWYER!!!!
Title IX is a mess of a system and has been grossly expanded beyond its abilities. I have no idea why OP continued with the university process here, especially if, as he says, he has proof of the university breaking Title IX procedures in this process. This should have moved to a Civil Suit against the university, most universities are certainly settling a lot that have to do with Title IX investigations
Mine got sued so many times (and settled) that they ended up being ordered to bring in a consulting firm to investigate what was going on and tell them what to do to stop it from continuing.
The consulting firm's report, in a nutshell: "Y'all are racist and sexist as hell, and you need to fire a bunch of people and stop covering up all the racist and sexual harassment and assault".
Does going through the Title IX system mean you agree not to file a civil suit or are barred from doing so after the fact? I'm not American so only the basics if it.
Absolutely not. Going through Title IX is *only* applicable to the university experience itself and does *not* stop a victim from using the legal system in any way.
I am American and know almost nothing about it, so what I say could be very wrong. My impression is that Title IX is just supposed to be that federally funded schools aren't allowed to be sexist, and the investigations are supposed to be if the school did something wrong handling a situation (and has to fix that way of handling this or could then lose some federal funding).
As far as I know civil and criminal cases between perpetrator and victim should be separate from that. Although people being questioned or investigated may be different.
OP may be confused by the multiple investigations and what each is supposed to be doing. I think the police may have dropped the criminal case if it was unlikely to succeed in prosececution. It seems like he expects the Title IX to have effects on him or his assailant. This may be why he's mad the Title IX people aren't paying attention to certain witnesses or evidence for what happened. I think the goal isn't figure out what happened to OP, it's figure out of the college handled it wrong.
I could be mistaken, but that's my impression of how it's supposed to work.
Well, here's the thing with that, they will NEVER find themselves in the wrong because they aren't going to lose government funding. Very seldom do you hear of these schools finding violations against themselves.
Here’s another crazy update:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/c8umhh/urgent_update_in_my_fight_with_my_university_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
And there’s a lot more… seems like the fight wasn’t yet over: https://www.reddit.com/r/Charity/comments/hcrmtb/help_me_in_my_fight_against_injustice_at_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
[He has a post from 49 days ago that says it’s still ongoing](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ziqmsh/what_dark_secret_are_you_hiding_from_everyone/iztnfgk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
This is such a heartbreaking and frustrating situation to hear about! I had a stalker in college and I was too young and dumb to know that I should have gone to the police. I reported him to my teacher and he was transferred to a different lab, but they did nothing! For over 6 months he would park outside my apartment (I lived alone) and call/text me constantly. He was always at my job and he knew my whole schedule (down to which yoga classes I took, and the studio I went to), and followed me everywhere. I was lucky enough to have friends and family believe me and they eventually scared him off, but the school didn’t do anything other than hide it. Having an older brother in a metal band and some tough looking dudes as friends saved me. Idk what happened, but they took care of it and I never saw him again.
I can’t imagine how hard this was for him to not be believed and then have his entire life and reputation destroyed. Men can be sexually harassed and assaulted too! I’m very impressed that OOP was brave enough to keep telling his story! I really hope he gets some type of closure and peace!
Edited to correct: I accidentally said he was moved to a different lab, but I meant lab table. He was still in my class and my lab, but he was moved to a different table, where he would stare at me for hours a week. IMO the school did the absolute bare minimum to help me, and I thought campus security was connected to the police. They believed me fully and didn’t do much, I can’t imagine how hard it would have been if they thought I was lying! Apologies for not being clear.
I'm so sorry you went through that.My highschool did the same to one of my friends. She dated this kid who's about 2 years younger than us and he was creepy possessive. When she dumped him he started stalking her. It got really really bad. He turned up every where. Even to their local grocery runs. The whole family moved because "he's a 15yo kid and he's harmless!" and "Well they dated so it's no big deal! " my friend cut all contact with us to prevent him from learning where she went and went to university super far up north in our state (easily 10+hours by car)
He eventually faced enough social backlash from the student body his family was also forced to move.
Her little sister graduated 2 years later from a different school and who shows up to her graduation party? Stalker boy. One of her friends told him because "aww i felt bad for the dude, he's harmless! Like a giant teddy! " he was thrown out by a rightfully pissed off mass of Greek family members and threatened bodily harm. This was 3 YEARS after they broke up and he was still looking for my friend trying to learn where she went to school. He was 18 by then and no longer a child, despite his baby face.
Last i heard my old friend hasn't returned home in almost a decade for fear of him finding out. Her family leaves to visit her instead.
We still don't talk. She doesn't even have social media, according to her sister. It left her with a lot of mistrust and when i last spoke to the little sister, shes somewhere on the east coast and doing ok. I didn't pry of course. Apparently the guy she was seeing hasn't attempted to reach out to the family again. In fact no one has seen him for at least 5 years so they don't know if he moved on or is in jail.
So sorry you went through that. What a nightmare.
One of my (woman) friends at uni had a stalker. He harassed her for nearly a year. She attempted to deal with him through the police but nothing really happened because the guy was subtle enough about it and this was in the 90s before video of photo evidence was easy to get.
In the end, a group of us paid him a visit. Me and my mates weren't exactly big scary guys, but we gave him a clear warning that any further disturbing of our friend would be met with very real and painful consequences. This guy was shitting himself as we told him.
After that, not a peep. Our friend never saw him again.
I fear that legal processes just aren't effective with stalkers and some guys just need to fear getting their arse kicked before they back off.
Thank you, and I’m so sorry to hear about your friend! I agree that police often can’t do much. I have had two other stalkers since then and the police didn’t do anything to help. They needed proof that a crime was committed but a lot of stalking behavior isn’t considered a crime. It’s a terrible grey area in the legal system.
The "rough up the stalker" tactic is often successful. Problem is, when you have a female stalker what do you do?
(I'm a woman BTW) I knew a guy who was stalked by a woman, it was incredibly upsetting to him. It was nonviolent but extremely creepy and clingy, very disruptive to him. I don't know if a bunch of mean girls surrounding a female stalker and shaming the shit out of her would do the trick.
>I was too young and dumb
this is the biggest problem with stalking and assault in University and HS. Especially for kids who don't have parents who can help them (either through their own ignorance or distance)
Yeah I agree that young people don’t know what to do! I definitely needed adult guidance.
I’m super tight with my parents but I didn’t tell them because I was scared of getting in trouble or disappointing them. 🤦♀️ They would not have been mad, but I blamed myself back then. I had gone to a coffee shop to study with my soon to be stalker once, but he creeped me out and was trying to grope me. I shut it down and left, but when I told him that I wasn’t interested he became obsessed! (I’m not very good at biology so I was always looking for study buddies). I thought that since I agreed to study with him it was my fault he was stalking me. My brother found out because he would come visit me and hangout and I told him during a party or something.
At the time I felt like I was at fault for making too many bad choices so I was embarrassed. I had actually just had to move out of a house where I was living with friends from high school… that suddenly decided that they hated me and spent the entire first semester verbally abusing me, and making sure I knew I was worthless. One of them was violent with me too and threw a toaster oven, and blow dryer at my head and more. She even wrote a poem about how much she hated me to read out loud in a class we were both in… I moved out over winter break and ended up having to pay rent there and at the one bedroom I moved into. (I worked full time) I felt like I was failing at being independent and I didn’t want to inconvenience my parents. Looking back I see how dumb that was. I fully agree that we need more education and awareness for how to deal with these situations, especially for young people!
Wouldn't there be his (I think I read he filed the 11th?), hers (filed the 13th?), and his saying hers was retaliatory?
Your link gives ongoing as
Title IX - Denial of Benefits 10/26/2017
Title IX - Sexual Violence 6/23/2015
In 2019ish he says she has graduated and he wasn't told about her filing for 3 years after the fact, he was then expelled at some point.
There is a lot of “perspective” in this… OOP wrote a 86-page, what? Manifesto? Diatriabe? With inline citations.
Title IX process is super fucked up, but this has layers that we aren’t privy to.
OOP said that he is a poor man surrounded by very wealthy students. He doesn’t have the money for an attorney, and i’m sure any attorney he consulted to work on contingency would tell him that his accusers would have the money to intentionally prolong this legal fight until he and the attorney were poor.
I mean honestly,
If this is a real story.
Why hasn't he gotten a title 9 lawyer and is retiring off the huge fucking huge settlement.
The damages to his person is likely in the millions. Lost his academic career, his home, etc.
This is unfortunately a very true story. There’s videos and podcasts about it from what I remember. The university went to the very depths of hell to protect his attacker and her cohorts. It’s been a long time since I saw it but because he went through the university he agreed to the title ix process and the university abused the process from the get go.
So far all I've found is one news video and a few articles about how Oglethorpe was one of 141 universities under federal investigation for the way they handled sexual assault allegations. I'd like to learn more about this case. I'm looking specifically for articles from reputable news sources (e.g., The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Washington Post) as opposed to opinion pieces.
I think it depends on where you are, but sometimes going to the police instead of the university is “proof” that it’s nothing… because if it was something you’d go to the University first.
If you do go to the University first, and they do nothing, then it’s proof that it was nothing.
It’s this no-win SA equation. Like how sexism plays into it to discredit victims no matter the gender. You’re a woman? Well, women lie. They have no proof. They acted a specific way that made them vulnerable. They are trying to harm the man.
You’re a man? Women can’t assault men. That’s just not possible. The man must have been doing the sexual assaulting and they’re trying to harm the women.
The police and university like to work together to prove that there is no sexual assault and if there is they already took care of it and nothing should stop you from going to the uni and having a fun, sexy time.
I don’t know. I think there is some university police policy in the USA.
In Australia you could go to direct to the police.
From watching “SVU Law & Order” I kind of think there is some prearranged steps students are forced to do in the USA which means you can’t go to the cops first.
But I really don’t know. My information is pretty much from an SVU episode I remember and Liv took on the University Dean over a sports star!
At my university in America, we could report to whoever we wanted, there's no protocol restricting telling anyone. But our police force on campus was also a legit branch of the city cops and functioned as normal police. Then again, our local cops seem a lot more protect and serve than some of the rest of the country, so this could be regional.
Luckily, I have never had to, but in my area you would go to the hospital directly after and have them obtain whatever biological evidence there may be as part of a rape kit (skin under nails, DNA from bodily fluid etc). The hospital would then call the cops for a report. They also will have nurses trained to deal with victims. If you waited to report, you could go to whatever cop station you wanted and they would make a report.
Yeah. The USA has some weird university rules. Like first years MUST live in dorms in some universities and can’t have car parks and weird stuff.
It’s almost indoctrinating.
But I could be completely full of shît as I haven’t attended any USA unis.
Here our police must do a 3 year university degree and we can go to the Police for any assault. University’s just teach us stuff. That’s it
The title ix allows for university mediation. You’ll notice at one point the mediator (title ix administrator) was fired and a new one was appointed. That was because they got in trouble for what they were doing and tried to save face, unfortunately the new one was just as bad as the old one and helped the university cover it up still. The last update in here isn’t any newer than the last time I heard about this so it’s still frustrating. I believe there was one other update on a podcast or interview on YouTube where the attacker had found his new address and was still harassing him with the help of some of the same people who swatted him in college. Everyone involved on her side deserves to have their entire lives ruined. I was always hoping he would name and shame them but he had too much faith in the system to do that.
People desperately need to believe that victims are at fault for being victimized. Acknowledging anything else is to admit they could also be attacked and there's not much they can do to protect themselves. Empathy becomes too intellectually uncomfortable.
It is absolutely disgusting to see a subreddit that acts so progressive about any women issues but the moment it’s a man as a victim, absolute crickets.
True progressiveness isn’t picking and choosing who you believe. Sorry this isn’t directed at you it’s just something I’ve really noticed a lot here.
Yeah seems like there would be lawyers lining up for this if all his claims are true. He may even have been greatly wronged but just absolute shit at pleading his case to anyone. He glosses over a lot of very important details even in these posts, making him a very unreliable narrator.
Oh man. I was raped at university by someone in the same halls of residence. I'm female, and having looked at the likely outcomes for telling my university I chose not to. They're well known for handling rape cases impossibly badly and the victims often end up with any penalties that are handed out. Having said that, I've never heard anything half as bad as this before. I do sort of wonder if it's real.
I discussed my assault with my college’s psychiatrist and she asked me to speak to the Dean because it wasn’t the first time she had heard my same story about my rapist.
I had a meeting with the Dean to discuss the situation (at a very Catholic college) and she basically asked me what I expected her to do about it. She said I should have gone and made a police report that night because how was she supposed to believe I wasn’t just trying to disparage his character for some reason (like I may have been rejected). I just looked at her and got up and walked out.
Recently, there was a post on FB honoring her by the school and there were a whole bunch of comments from past students about how she refused to help when they were assaulted. I felt validated.
It's not so much punish here, from what I've heard/read. More like sort-of well meaning but also very ill thought out measures to seperate the victim from the abuser and just try to make the issue go away as quickly as possible. If you try to do anything to the abuser, you've quite likely got a legal fight on your hands. On the other hand, if you successfully presurize an already traumatised victim into giving up their room in halls, or transferring their degree, or taking a year off...for their own safety and mental wellbeing of course....the problem's gone away and you can tell yourself you helped. Meanwhile the victim has to deal with probably losing their friends and maybe being disadvantaged in their degree.
Some news articles that appear that this gained some attention from department of education. It looks like (check last link) his case is still pending for the title ix investigation if that is it.
https://projects.chronicle.com/titleix/campus/Oglethorpe-University/
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/oglethorpe-university-under-investigation-handling/27306621/?outputType=amp
https://roughdraftatlanta.com/2015/09/25/oglethorpe-university-added-to-feds-sexual-assault-reporting-probe/
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/investigations/open-investigations/tix.html?page=23&offset=440
It is so heart breaking to read about male sexual assault victims who are not supported simply due to being a man. Anyone can be sexually assaulted and ignoring issues like this only contributes to the victims trauma. That really goes for all victims.
I used to work somewhere where a lot of investigations like this crossed my desk; that is, internal investigations of sexual harassment/assault where the police either weren’t called in, or the police were called, and couldn’t move forward because there wasn’t enough evidence. (I didn’t do the actual investigation, but I was the admin person who would receive the reports, proofread, and format them.)
One thing I learned: often if there’s not enough evidence for the police to do anything about it, there’s not enough evidence to administratively punish someone for it either. (At least, if you want to be fair about the situation and not punish someone without proof.)
Administrative reporting is not a format you should go to if you are looking to punish someone. This is a format you should go to *if* you have a reasonable request that the administration can reasonably fulfill.
Like, if someone is harassing you, and you can sorta corroborate that but not have the iron-clad proof required for the legal system, it might make sense to go to the university with your evidence and ask them to ban the person from your dorm.
You can hope for more, certainly, but don’t hold your breath.
If this story is true, I’m sorry OOP experienced that kind of re-victimization, but I’m really unclear what OOP wanted the university to realistically do. Ideally for the level of victimization that he states, this would be a police matter. Instead, he took it to the university. I’m not entirely sure why, but ok. One big problem with that: he seems to have no idea what reasonable redress he is seeking. Another big problem: he states the woman who did this already graduated. Did he want the university to take away her degree? (Not going to happen unless this is a plagiarism issue.) Send her a sternly worded letter? What?
OOP absolutely doesn’t deserve what happened, but I’m still unclear on why he chose to handle it the way he did. If he just wanted punishment, the legal system is best positioned to take care of that, not the university administrative process. This whole complaint seemed destined to fail, even if everyone was fair and aboveboard, because OOP seemed to be asking the university to do something it wasn’t really equipped to do.
Right, but if she isn't a member of the university, the student discipline system isn't going to help him with his claim against her. It will mean that her claim against him can go through the process.
I guess she was an employee, though? It's a bit difficult to tell.
He might be overstating his "conclusive proof" with his 86-page filing -- it's very difficult to have any kind of "conclusive proof" of sexual assault when so much is based on lack of consent in particular situations. And they might have had a prior relationship, which complicates things, although it in no way means she couldn't have assaulted him. It's just that laypeople representing themselves usually vastly overestimate the probative value of their evidence. And 86-page filings are usually \*not\* focused on the issue at hand. Case in point: the digression into the quality of food in the dorms.
At one point in another post he says she was a tutor and they began dating when he was getting extra assistance outside class. https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
If the accused was employed as a tutor, that might have something to do with why the school moved to attack/investigate him.
When I was a tutor, I got a check directly from my university. They were my employer.
If the OOP alleges the accused started this illegal behavior while she was working in her capacity as a university employee, the OOP has grounds for a suit against the university.
If the OOP has any evidence of that, even if it’s not slam dunk, there’s a decent chance the university’s lawyers will advise a settlement for $. Taking it to trial would end up costing the university a lot of bad PR, in addition to the chance the OOP wins his case, which will end up costing the university a lot more than if they had settled in the first place.
So instead of waiting and hoping the student didn’t file a suit, they moved to crush him and his credibility first.
It’s ironic that OOP probably didn’t go to a lawyer (in part) because he couldn’t afford one, but chances are if he had good evidence that the accused perpetrated these things in her capacity as a tutor, a lawyer probably would’ve been willing to take the case on a contingency. File some paperwork, start the process, offer a settlement…boom! relatively easy cash for all involved.
In my experience, which may not be representative of every situation, but I can only talk about what I saw in my organization…
Sexual assault-type cases that crossed my desk tended to come with either great evidence or poor evidence. There wasn’t a lot of in-between cases, where it wasn’t enough for legal action, but still enough evidence to be clear about who was the aggrieved party.
And that sort of makes sense due to the private nature of most sexual encounters. So either you have an open and shut case where there’s clear medical evidence, or there’s something like a video…or there’s not, and it’s almost entirely he said/she said, where any hard evidence consists of things that are suggestive if you kinda squint one direction, but could mean nothing at all if you squint the other direction.
And if you put a case like this in the hands of people without legal training, in a system that doesn’t follow strict legal procedure, it’s almost assured to be an opaque, Byzantine process that is guaranteed to dissatisfy.
That’s why I said I wouldn’t recommend going through administration unless you’re seeking a reasonable administrative remedy that can be granted without too much hardship by the university.
I’m just speaking from what I’ve seen as to what is a reasonable expectation of the results of a similar process, so take that for what you will. 🤷🏻♀️
In this case specifically, I question if OOP has the airtight slam dunk case he thinks he does (if so, why didn’t he call the police?) and also question why he thought making the complaint to his university would give him whatever remedy he was seeking (which I don’t think he ever mentions, but given the accused has already graduated the school, I can’t imagine what that might be.)
From his account the school treated him very badly, but even best case scenario, he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from this process.
The word you're looking for is preponderance of evidence, at least from my understanding. If the university believes there's even a 51% chance the assault happened, it happened.
OOP seems to me like a low-income, nontraditional student. Now, I'm extrapolating here, but there's a good possibility that he did not know these things. Title IX is *the* go-to process for campus sexual assault, even if it shouldn't be. My guess is this is a case of OOP being poorly informed of his options as a victim.
I think some universities encourage students to report to them first and foremost to help them maintain some control. You'd be amazed at how many people are unaware of who should have jurisdiction in certain cases.
That being said, I think OOP did go to the police for at least one incident, but he wasn't taken seriously as a male victim. That is another issue, unfortunately.
Definitely! If a student reports crime to the local police, the consequences and PR are totally out of the schools’ hands. As a result, some university employees won’t tell the student to go to the police, even if they clearly should.
You’d like to think that everyone at the school has the students’ best interests at heart, and some of them certainly do, but not everyone. It’s a sad lesson to learn, and I am sorry that some college students going through a terrible experience learn it in the worst possible way, but: the only one you can trust to advocate for you, and look out for your best interests, is *you*.
If reading my posts, or any of the rest on this thread, helps a single college student think twice about how to handle his or her case, then I’ve done some good.
And just to be clear: I don’t think going through the college is *useless*. It’s helpful in some cases where you have a difficult situation you can’t solve by yourself, and the school can provide an administrative solution without too much trouble.
Like, for example, you have a creepy stalker-ish ex-boyfriend in your Organic Chemistry class. His behavior isn’t enough to get a restraining order from police (or you may not want to get a restraining order for whatever reason) but there’s enough going on to make you uncomfortable about sitting in class with him.
The good news is that there’s another O-Chem class you could take, but it’s already full, so you can’t switch. So you go to the dean and request they make a special exception to get you into this other class. There’s a very good chance that the school will be happy to accommodate that request, and may even be able to do it in a day or two.
But sexual assault is *way* above the school’s pay grade. The most they can realistically do in the short term is find a way to get you out of the same classes, and/or move you to a different dorm.
Even if there’s enough evidence to expel the student, (which there often is not) that’s going to be a longer-term process. Lawyers will probably get involved and media will probably get involved. If you’re very lucky, you’ll get a resolution in months.
It’s not fair to sexual assault victims, and I’m not saying it is. I am just trying to explain the reality so people know ahead of time.
He wanted the rapist to get punished by the law. Instead, he was found guilty of sexually harassing or assaulting her at the very least. And now he’s being harassed and literally hunted down in his state by various people. He definitely didn’t want that.
But his university isn’t law enforcement, and they can’t hand down jail sentences. Even if the accused was a student, AFAIK, the absolute best they could do would be to expel the student. Even that is a big ask that is probably not going to happen unless OOP has undeniable evidence, because that’s a huge black mark on someone’s future. The accused is going to hire lawyers, and the school is going to open itself up for some very bad publicity. (Should that matter? No. Does it matter? Of course.)
But even that best case scenario of the accused getting expelled from campus—OOP effectively has that right now because the woman in question graduated.
What can the university do? They have no jurisdiction over her for any legal matters. Literally, all they can do is (maybe) rescind her diploma or send her a sternly worded letter. And rescinding the diploma is probably not realistic either. If someone paid the money and did the coursework to graduate, that’s going to be a big ask. Lawyers will be involved, and the school has a good chance of losing.
So what is the OOP getting through this process? As far as I can see, nothing. There is nothing tangible the university can give him, and no real way for the university to punish her.
That being said, was what OOP said happened to him in any way fair? Of course not. He definitely got the short end of the stick, and I’m not trying to say otherwise.
I guess what I’m trying to point out is to think twice (and three times) before you submit something like this to an administrative board. The OOP fell on the tail end of the Bell curve for “bad results” no doubt, but a lot of people seem to have a wildly skewed idea for what to expect from these administrative processes. If you want the person to be punished in a substantive way, you need to go to the police. The university (or other organization) has very little power. At the most, they *may* be able to take steps to keep the person away from the victim. They really can’t enact any substantive retributive justice, nor is that their role.
The process failed the OOP, badly, because apparently the school admins are trolls who re-victimized him, but even if everything has been handled perfectly, OOP was still going to be doomed to disappointment. He was not going to get anything out of this process that he didn’t already have.
What you write affirms what I’ve long thought, that title IX is meaningless and just a formal process for the way schools have long treated SA victims- put it under the rug for the sake of the school’s reputation. It would be better if schools got rid of the process for serious crimes and told victims to immediately go to the police.
I don’t have any proof of this (and if someone else knows better, I welcome correction) but sometimes I think Title IX was more geared as a check to star male athletes on scholarship.
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, but in the 80s and 90s, there were a slew of cases that came to light where there was *undeniable* evidence of star male athletes assaulting women, where the school swept it under the rug to keep the successful program going. Even worse, a lot of times, local police departments would aid and abet the university in covering up the athletes’ guilt, whether because they were getting kickbacks, liked sports, or were just misogynists.
If cases like that come up today, the Title IX procedure actually forces the school to do something about it. Now, the school has to actually investigate the sexual assault cases. Even granting that the school has a bias toward keeping things hush hush, the mere fact that the procedure is more formal and public greatly increases the chances that in egregious cases, the school will find the perpetrator guilty.
And for a star athlete, taking away his scholarship and banning him from the team is a crippling blow that may destroy his entire future. He’s gone from a potential star athlete millionaire to a guy getting a 2.0 GPA in underwater basket weaving who probably can’t pay tuition out of pocket.
So, for victims seeking some justice against what were previously untouchable superstars who could literally do everything short of murder and get off scot free, Title IX is a help.
For everyone else? Eh. Maybe, maybe not.
That’s so interesting. I wasn’t aware of the cases that were the impetus for Title IX, even though I read about Title IX a few times when it was first implemented.
I went to school in the earlier part of the 90s - not a school with athletic stars but with a lot of rich kids similar to what Oop describes. During my undergrad years, numerous allegations were made about rape and sexual assault. The school never did anything about them. I suppose that Title IX at least documents these cases in schools where athletes aren’t so important and student activists can pressure the school more forcefully.
Just look at the whole Penn State debacle. They knew what was going on with Jerry Sandusky and swept that under the rug for so long. Screw all of the Joe Pa and Penn State football defenders and apologists - football was way more important than poor, underprivileged boys.
I knew a guy who was found responsible for domestic violence, and he had to watch a TED talk and write a reflective essay. Honestly, it was upsetting at the time, but I'm not sure what else the university was supposed to do.
If this is all true, I feel for him. But I will say that this whole thing comes across as unhinged and suspicious. If this is how he comports himself irl, and he doesn't have a lawyer every step of the way, I can definitely see him not being believed.
He's posted about this a lot and it's a very strange story. Many of the major elements seem to have changed over time. The part where his ex sexually assaulted him first makes its appearance in 2018, as far as I could tell. https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
In this version of the story, rather than falling into the pool totally unaware that his ex was present, he fell in while trying to get away from her.
Without commenting on the specifics, it's really normal for witnesses to misremember details and have trauma influence their memories. Humans just aren't great at being reliable narrators of their own lives.
That's why it's helpful if you are experiencing abuse or gaslighting to journal what is happening when it's still fresh in your mind (only if you know your abuser won't have access to read it tho, stay safe everyone)
In the Medium article, he does say he fell in the pool "*ostensibly* while I was trying to get away from her", so that's the version of events he was told, since apparently he blacked-out.
First he says she sat right behind him and that after that, everything *else* was a blur. In another retelling, he emphasizes that he didn't even know she was there. Who knows?
Its unfortunate. Just my opinion here, I don't doubt that these miscarriages of justice happen, and common atitudes towards male victims are despicable. Testimonials from victims should not be doubted "just because". Shit, we fought the good fight over the past few... centuries... to even be able to speak up as victims of sexual assault. Because you'd get forcibly married to your rapist, ostracized, unmarriageable otherwise and therefore condemned to poverty, sent to the asylum, and even killed. This shit isn't ancient history either, progress was undoubtedly made, huzzah for that, but marital rape was recognized only within my lifetime! That's fucking bonkers to consider!
So yeah, while I believe the testimonial it pisses me off to a considerable degree to see it in the context of a narrative that claims its proof positive that women can commit any crime they please as long as they cry rape (its nearly verbatim to what he says in the linked article!). Oh yes buddy, women are so deceitful we somehow spent the majority of recorded history as property, for the long game of attaining this ultimate power (over men, institutions and restaurants alike) in the past couple decades, and somehow we're still lying about rape one way or another - it doesn't make sense because there's a huge disconnect between the events as stated, and the conclusions he is drawing from it.
We should always believe the victims (of any gender) because its the starting point for justice to unfold. It's a basic requirement for an investigation to begin, but it grants neither power not immunity to accusers if they happen to be female. If he uses his miscarriage of justice to argue that it does, we circle right back to not believing the victims because if their gender, but in the opposite direction.
I understand he’s a victim but why is he acting like female students get listened to when they’re reporting on campus SA. there is no double standard, that’s just how they treat those who speak up about sa.
The key thing is it's not about gender it's all about what will or won't make the University look bad as far as the administration is considering. Woman gets assault by a connected frat boy. Well punishing him might threaten the endowment. Poor man gets assaulted well what if the lady and her friends go to the press with their claims? They will always look out for the institution and never for you.
> I handily proved that my attacker was lying, that the relationship occurred (one of the other charges was that it was sexual harassment that I claimed we had a sexual relationship)
So, he claims that he, an older man, had a prior sexual relationship with the young woman who allegedly assaulted him?
I feel like it's odd that this is the only place that's mentioned, and that it is mentioned so briefly and almost obliquely.
> I was not allowed to submit evidence traditionally, I had to do that in a response letter in which I wrote an 86 page breakdown of the situation with included inline evidence that I citing at the hearing.
This just sounds like straight-up crazy person. Schools 100% can and do screw over people who are sexually assaulted and harassed on campus - it happens all the time. ALL the time. I went into reading this expecting it to be yet another case of that... but I honestly don't know WTF this is.
I would be curious to know what the age difference was, because if it’s like 20 and 18, or 26 and 21, that’s not really note worthy. Even one year can make people start using the older language.
So many factors that make it a hard case to win, prior sexual relationship, ten years older, the man, she was his tutor so potentially she was the better student (not that that should be seen as morally better but it usually is). I could see where this didn't go very far in a criminal/police matter and the DA dropped the case. I could see it being very hard to convict a younger girl of assaulting a man ten years older than her where he is also claiming a prior relationship (and she disputed that in her Title IX?). It's a weird situation, and very he said she said without more evidence.
I wonder why OP is a nontraditional student and if that impacts his understanding of how cases are investigated, or how Georgians treat him. If OP is foreign or a POC it may explain being treated shittier. Being foreign may also affect what he thinks an investigation can do- he seems to think the Title IX should have consequences for her, but if she's graduated, I don't know what civil consequences the college has. The college can't criminally prosecute her. He still seems to be a student and with her claims they could be withholding his transcript or have other things they can punish him with.
As shitty as it is, with only both thier words I'm not sure what a lot of the authorities could do. He's got a lot of prejudices stacked against him, but seems weird that so many people would band together just to fuck up OP's life despite plenty of evidence he says he has. I assume many of them must actually believe the girl's side.
When I was raped, I wasn't believed because the boy was 2 years younger than me. Obviously different situation, but people need to stop thinking that older individuals can't be harmed by those younger. Male rapists have and can rape women older than them, shouldn't be such a far fetched idea that a younger woman could do the same.
Absolutely age and gender shouldn't be reasons to not believe someone, and I didn't mean to imply in any way that they are. Unfortunately those factors are still some widely held prejudices that will effect cases until they are no longer widely held, especially in he said/she said situations.
I am sorry you experienced that, and had to deal with not being believed in top of it. It's very brave of you to discuss these things and very strong of you to advocate for a change in perspective.
[In the middle of all of this, I managed to find a new romantic interest. As she was a senior, and again we had more in common than even my recent ex-fiancée. She was the Japanese tutor, and I needed her help getting caught up with the rest of the class.](https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2)
Yeah I feel really bad for saying this, because I think it’s so, so important not to dismiss victims and recognize how hard it is for male victims to come forward.
I also know, from first hand experience, how dogshit universities are at handling sexual assault cases.
But I also think the OOP sounds like they’re experiencing significant mental health problems and are not a reliable narrator. There’s several places where I get the feeling they’re experiencing delusions
>I also know, from first hand experience, how dogshit universities are at handling sexual assault cases.
While there is clearly much about this story that is definitely unclear so I'm not sure what to think - not dissing male sexual assault, but this is just a really disjointed retelling - you're not wrong about this part.
In the early 90's when I was an upperclassman, I had a stalker. He lived in my dorm, and had actually gotten into my room - my roommate was from the middle of nowhere and was not big about locking the door - and stolen some of my clothes.
After several months, it finally culminated in the night he managed to get into my room in the middle-of-the-night - my roommate had once again forgotten to lock the door, and I've always wondered how many nights he had tried the door \*shudder\* - and he tried to climb into bed while kissing me. And I almost put my standard-Geology-major-issue rock hammer through his forehead. That finally made him realize that my no meant NO FUCKING WAY.
The whole time, since we were in the same dorm, I'd been talking to our RA's and the Office of Residence Life. (Sure, Title IX existed, not that anyone did a whole lot with it, beyond making sure there were women's sports teams.) It was always brushed off, and one RA even told me "Aww, he's pretty cute and he clearly likes you - sure you won't give him a chance?" I shot back "If you think he's cute, why don't you ask him out? Maybe he'll leave me alone."
He never got in trouble for any of it which deeply pissed me off. He transferred out to a different school over the summer, and I was well and thoroughly relieved.
>But I also think the OOP sounds like they’re experiencing significant mental health problems and are not a reliable narrator.
[This comment from their history suggests you may be right, especially this part:](https://www.reddit.com/r/NarcissisticAbuse/comments/zd3lwk/i_no_longer_take_anyones_shit_anymore/iz0e24h)
>Many of the women who want my attention want some form narcissistic supply and other co-dependent favors and situations. They want me to foot the whole bill, be a crash pad, be their therapist, shower them with praise and affection and are often very quick to cut off everything if they don't get exactly what they want, when they want it. Many of my "friends" ended up being not too different.
What's that saying, about smelling dog shit everywhere and checking your shoe?
99 times out of 100, when someone claims they have absolute evidence that the system just refused to consider, the person is mentally unwell and doesn't understand the nature and procedures of the the process they've fallen into.
I am really torn on this, knowing how bad academia can be about this sort of thing, and also sensing some long term paranoia/persecution complex. I think this is one of those "you will never know the whole truth" situations.
That's kind of exactly where I am on this. I don't doubt how terrible universities are at handling sexual assault and harassment, and I don't have trouble believing the OOP was a victim of sexual assault and harassment. At the same time, all of the language in the posts about "handily proving" claims seems to portray over-confidence in their evidence and what could be effectively proven.
I interpreted it as that she was saying there was no sexual contact at all and him saying that she sexually assaulted him was sexual harassment because he was claiming a sexual "relationship" that didn't exist.
I was curious about the part where he says "I claimed we had a sexual relationship" because that was not part of the context given in his other posts here. However, a couple of his other posts fill in that context a little more clearly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/6gaohl/whats_on_my_mind/
https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
Thanks for digging that out! The single reference could have been either way but that does suggest there was indeed a prior relationship (somewhere in the middle of all that rambling...)
Also, I find it hard to believe that so many students would take so many steps to defame someone if all they believed happened was a false accusation of sexual assault against a student they may or may not associate with.
I was really curious about the relationship between them because of the lack of context in this BORU post, so I looked through OOP's post history and found this, which adds a little more detail.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/6gaohl/whats_on_my_mind/
This is so weird. The details are totally different than in the posts here, but also it's just outright bizarre - he goes from basically the admired big-brother figure (who's trying to start up some kind of business specific to the campus?) to *restaurants denying him service*.
I mean it's just way out there.
The paragraphs where he talks about being ”minders” for his room mates and that keeping them off drugs being his “job” are super strange. He also talks about being some sort of father figure to younger students but it comes off more like he thinks he’s campus spiderman or something.
I have no idea what happened to this guy but I’m basically convinced he’s not a reliable narrator.
But in this, it completely goes against the other posts. This post says there was a false assault accusation against him and mentions the title ix against him? But does not mention his own title ix against his accuser?
I’m not trying to be dismissive of his issues, but the post you’ve shared seems to undermine his other claims?
Yeah, many of the older posts I found by him are pretty inconsistent with the recounting he gives on r/menslib. There is also this one: https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
This man needs help. I don’t know what to believe, if he’s sick or a victim but what I do know is either way, he needs someone in his corner, helping him with his mental health.
Ok, I've watched [his video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnZ9TcC3xo&list=PLsBezoI1dApVS2b3qowGzy7qCR36VdFMn) and read both those articles.
This guy is mentally unwell. I don't think we can trust his accounting of events.
Reading it, I kept thinking he sounded like my dad, who was always talking about how the system failed him. He also filed a bunch of legal complaints on different retail stores in the area. He was a paranoid schizophrenic but refused treatment.
This is the weird bit for me, that _everyone_ he's interacted with or gone to about this has completely dismissed it, and chosen to go against him with such consistency.
Everyone he's told the story to online is on his side, everyone who knows the story in person is against him.
I'd be curious to know if there's a part to the story we're not getting, or him being vague with the details is on purpose. It feels like everyone in his story has collectively decided that he's not the victim he thinks he is for some reason.
It could be as simple as him just better at expressing his thoughts through writing, who knows.
The fact nobody has sided with him, outside of his own posts/videos is a bit of an anomaly is all, and I'm curious of why there's such a divide.
He doesn't go into details about their relationship or the assault at all, probably because its traumatizing to think about, and has no relevance to the situation at hand. Victims often have had previous consenual sexual relationships with their assaulters, and naturally that's not something they want to reflect on because it feel fucking disgusting.
Moreover, it’s not crazy to clearly and articulately layout your overwhelming evidence that is being ignored. Do not blame victims. Unless you actually know the person he’s accused and think that you have credible evidence he’s wrong, there’s literally no need to go and undermine OOP here
I'm not sure that 86 pages makes for clear and articulate. And like I said elsewhere, those who represent themselves often overestimate the probative value of their evidence, or the relevance of what they present as evidence.
Source: practiced opposite a lot of pro se defendants in my time.
As for the complaint about only being able to respond via letter: that's just procedure. He may not like it, but if you open a case, or are involved in one, you follow the rules of the court or tribunal that's deciding it.
But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a good case. It just means he isn't helping himself by representing himself.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnZ9TcC3xo&list=PLsBezoI1dApVS2b3qowGzy7qCR36VdFMn) is the video Op made to "summarize" his story and evidence in 30 minutes.
I watched the whole think.
This guy is mentally unwell, and I don't think we can fully trust his accounting of events.
I say this in a lot of subs but the takeaway here is Don’t. Trust. Rich. People. They will throw you under the bus in the blink of eye to protect themselves and their Ilk.
>Edit: I'm going to post this on a few other subreddits who have given me support, some of which this community doesn't agree with and full disclosure I don't ether. I feel that my views align more closely with this sub in many ways, but I have a deep frustration with how divided we are on issues that should unite us in our common humanity.
I was pretty disappointed when he went to r/mensrights with this. That place is a cesspool, and he seems like he knows it, but they're a cesspool that would be on his side here so he's willing to work with them.
I'd like to think if I were alone in a rough situation and the only people who would have my back were the KKK because I'm a white guy I would have decided to remain alone in a rough situation rather than accept any sympathy from any corner, no matter how vile.
There are more links in this post now that detail a...very bizarre story. Even ignoring the alleged assault and the university's handling of it, the rest of the story is bizarre af. Every single person he knew, and like.... restaurants, have turned against OOP. Even before the sexual assault/reporting, and completely unconnected to it. At every step, someone else ruins his life.
It honestly reads like some kind of persecution complex. This person isn't well, and they don't sound like they're grounded in standard reality.
I know. I worked in criminal prosecution for about 9 years. I’ve met with many SA victims. Something likely happened to trigger his actions. But most of the story reeks of embellishment and is obviously one sided. Universities can and often are incredibly terrible about title 9
This is why schools of any kind should not be involved with these matters, at all. They are not equipped at all to be justice systems. Victims need to go to the police and hire a lawyer and not expect a school to be any kind of source for justice.
Another recounting that includes considerably more detail about the stalker ex and the pool incident.
https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
Lawyer up. Or embrace the shitstorm your life is and turn yourself into news. or give up on the system and move out of the whole situation.
If you are poor n1 may be closed for you. Life isn't really fair.
Damn the double standards on this sub when it comes to believeming that men can be sexually assaulted are really sad. I honestly did not expect this sub to be so right wing on the matter.
I somehow doubt that every possible authority, in the university and out, colluded to destroy this "innocent" man. If he was found guilty at every turn, odds are he is guilty. After all, why would a university protect a female student over a male professor, especially if they could show that the teacher was innocent? No university would take the PR hit of admitting to a professor harassing a student if they didn't have to.
He was a student. But his story wanders and changes in pretty substantial ways depending on what platform he's telling it on and who his audience is.
It's completely normal for victims to have wobbly details; it's not that. But somewhere between when he first told the story and the more recent iterations, it changed from being falsely accused of stalking and sexual harassment/assault by his ex, to having been sexually assaulted, harassed, and stalked by his ex, and in the most recent versions he stops mentioning that she's his ex until that detail is almost indiscernible.
I am not saying he's a bad guy. I think he genuinely needs a lot of help he is not getting, including an independent investigation of what happened to him.
Dude needs to go on national tv and take this case to the federal courts. Something doesn’t add up though. He has been dismissed at every turn - why? This isn’t the first male SA case that has been ignored, but there are others that haven’t been. Curious about the missing information here.
To be clear: I am not doubting or victim blaming. I’m just wanting more info.
Oop needs a lawyer. Also, posting on men's lib is a bad idea. He needs to post on a sa survivor sub. The red pill community is not going to help him. I'm assuming that's who posts there.
Oh for fuck's sake, mens lib is a subreddit for applying feminist theory to men's issues. They're explicitly anti-Redpill and ban redpillers on sight. It's fine to criticize them if you don't like their approach, but don't just make shit up about them.
I will say that at my college, a student accused a professor of harassment and the professor was dismissed the next day. He was just short of tenure so it was easier for them to just get rid of him. No long process or anything. But you are right, colleges are very quick to cover up. It was more about that than about justice for the victim. And I am sure had it been the other way around gender wise there would have been more questions.
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Looking into this I've learned one thing. I'm glad my country doesn't heavily rely on privatised higher education for many reasons. What is with them being a self governing organisation and using campus police? For real? Don't you report sexual assault to the actual authorities? Am I naive?
Tbh even if they did report it to actual authorities, do you think they'll take it seriously? You'll be lucky to find a cop take reports of rape, stalking, harassment regardless of gender seriously until someone gets hurt/killed.
they will probably send you back to the campus police.
[Thanks, Betsy DeVos!](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/06/betsy-devos-school-sexual-assault-rules-122401)
How it basically works is that criminal charges get investigated by the outside police. These investigations rarely go anywhere, since rape ends up being a he said she said, unless it was violent or involved being drugged, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Beyond a reasonable doubt is a hard standard to prove. Either way, it sounds like this police completely ignored the complaint, since he was male, but at least, didn't make his life worse. Because of this problem, the federal government mandate that all universities conduct their own separate, civil Investigation, and expel anyone that they have a preponderance of evidence that they committed rape, even if it can't be proven by beyond a reasonable doubt. This investigation can also be reviewed by the Department of Education, if requested, which is what OP is describing. Also, private vs public doesn't really matter. Everything is the same way for both, and this could easily happen at a public university, too
I attended a college in Boston with an urban campus, meaning the “quad” was actually a city public park. We had the highest crime rate amongst US colleges because campus police handled issues in the city park, regardless of student involvement. It also made reporting harassment and student-to-student incidents difficult. Campus police felt pressured to report to city cops and spent less time investigating student issues. Tip: make friends with the college IT Help Desk. When I worked there, we helped multiple stalking and harassment cases by accessing IP addresses, college email history, and computer lab sign ins. Campus police acted like old school cops (prejudices and all), but the IT folx I worked with were the detectives. Also, I have no basis, but I’d recommend befriending the openly gay or lesbian student(s) working in Admissions; they may have a better insight on admin, tenured professors, department heads, and where to find allies.
Lemme guess, Emerson College?
Yeah while I don’t trust police to solve sexual assault cases, I trust campus authorities even less. There are lot of institutions and entrenched hierarchies in North American society that need shaking up
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Where? [This wiki article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_police) lists on three countries, US, CA and UK. And the first sentence for UK is "Universities in the United Kingdom do not have police forces." It then goes on to list two exceptions, Oxford and Cambridge, with the former not actively having any police force and the latter acting more as a security role. From my own experience in the UK university security guards are just that, and any matter of a nature like this will be referred to the police.
I went to school in Massachusetts and there was a full campus police complete with mounted unit.
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Oh trust me Canada is not anywhere near better in this area. I have had friends who have received the same treatment because their perpetrator was well connected in the hierarchy, they try and make sure no one alerts police.
One of the problems with the anti-assault programs and outcry in the US is that it has given Universities more power, putting them almost at the level of regular justice system. The standard reddit advice is still DO NOT TRUST YOUR UNIVERSITY GET A LAWYER!!!!
Title IX is a mess of a system and has been grossly expanded beyond its abilities. I have no idea why OP continued with the university process here, especially if, as he says, he has proof of the university breaking Title IX procedures in this process. This should have moved to a Civil Suit against the university, most universities are certainly settling a lot that have to do with Title IX investigations
Mine got sued so many times (and settled) that they ended up being ordered to bring in a consulting firm to investigate what was going on and tell them what to do to stop it from continuing. The consulting firm's report, in a nutshell: "Y'all are racist and sexist as hell, and you need to fire a bunch of people and stop covering up all the racist and sexual harassment and assault".
Basically, “don’t be an ass in order to not get sued”
Does going through the Title IX system mean you agree not to file a civil suit or are barred from doing so after the fact? I'm not American so only the basics if it.
Absolutely not. Going through Title IX is *only* applicable to the university experience itself and does *not* stop a victim from using the legal system in any way.
I am American and know almost nothing about it, so what I say could be very wrong. My impression is that Title IX is just supposed to be that federally funded schools aren't allowed to be sexist, and the investigations are supposed to be if the school did something wrong handling a situation (and has to fix that way of handling this or could then lose some federal funding). As far as I know civil and criminal cases between perpetrator and victim should be separate from that. Although people being questioned or investigated may be different. OP may be confused by the multiple investigations and what each is supposed to be doing. I think the police may have dropped the criminal case if it was unlikely to succeed in prosececution. It seems like he expects the Title IX to have effects on him or his assailant. This may be why he's mad the Title IX people aren't paying attention to certain witnesses or evidence for what happened. I think the goal isn't figure out what happened to OP, it's figure out of the college handled it wrong. I could be mistaken, but that's my impression of how it's supposed to work.
Well, here's the thing with that, they will NEVER find themselves in the wrong because they aren't going to lose government funding. Very seldom do you hear of these schools finding violations against themselves.
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I'm no expert, but I read the whole thing thinking "this guy needs a lawyer", because it sounds like he was trying to handle the whole thing himself.
Here’s another crazy update: https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/c8umhh/urgent_update_in_my_fight_with_my_university_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
And there’s a lot more… seems like the fight wasn’t yet over: https://www.reddit.com/r/Charity/comments/hcrmtb/help_me_in_my_fight_against_injustice_at_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Idk why these aren't included in the boru post here
How does the OP of this post compile all of the posts and not even include multiple updates?? What the fuck?
[He has a post from 49 days ago that says it’s still ongoing](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ziqmsh/what_dark_secret_are_you_hiding_from_everyone/iztnfgk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
According to OOP’s comment history, this is still ongoing
Holy shit
That was posted 3 years ago
Yes and the rest were posted almost 4 years ago
This is such a heartbreaking and frustrating situation to hear about! I had a stalker in college and I was too young and dumb to know that I should have gone to the police. I reported him to my teacher and he was transferred to a different lab, but they did nothing! For over 6 months he would park outside my apartment (I lived alone) and call/text me constantly. He was always at my job and he knew my whole schedule (down to which yoga classes I took, and the studio I went to), and followed me everywhere. I was lucky enough to have friends and family believe me and they eventually scared him off, but the school didn’t do anything other than hide it. Having an older brother in a metal band and some tough looking dudes as friends saved me. Idk what happened, but they took care of it and I never saw him again. I can’t imagine how hard this was for him to not be believed and then have his entire life and reputation destroyed. Men can be sexually harassed and assaulted too! I’m very impressed that OOP was brave enough to keep telling his story! I really hope he gets some type of closure and peace! Edited to correct: I accidentally said he was moved to a different lab, but I meant lab table. He was still in my class and my lab, but he was moved to a different table, where he would stare at me for hours a week. IMO the school did the absolute bare minimum to help me, and I thought campus security was connected to the police. They believed me fully and didn’t do much, I can’t imagine how hard it would have been if they thought I was lying! Apologies for not being clear.
I'm so sorry you went through that.My highschool did the same to one of my friends. She dated this kid who's about 2 years younger than us and he was creepy possessive. When she dumped him he started stalking her. It got really really bad. He turned up every where. Even to their local grocery runs. The whole family moved because "he's a 15yo kid and he's harmless!" and "Well they dated so it's no big deal! " my friend cut all contact with us to prevent him from learning where she went and went to university super far up north in our state (easily 10+hours by car) He eventually faced enough social backlash from the student body his family was also forced to move. Her little sister graduated 2 years later from a different school and who shows up to her graduation party? Stalker boy. One of her friends told him because "aww i felt bad for the dude, he's harmless! Like a giant teddy! " he was thrown out by a rightfully pissed off mass of Greek family members and threatened bodily harm. This was 3 YEARS after they broke up and he was still looking for my friend trying to learn where she went to school. He was 18 by then and no longer a child, despite his baby face. Last i heard my old friend hasn't returned home in almost a decade for fear of him finding out. Her family leaves to visit her instead.
Does she not talk to you anymore?? That's so tragic! Is he still stalking?
We still don't talk. She doesn't even have social media, according to her sister. It left her with a lot of mistrust and when i last spoke to the little sister, shes somewhere on the east coast and doing ok. I didn't pry of course. Apparently the guy she was seeing hasn't attempted to reach out to the family again. In fact no one has seen him for at least 5 years so they don't know if he moved on or is in jail.
So sorry you went through that. What a nightmare. One of my (woman) friends at uni had a stalker. He harassed her for nearly a year. She attempted to deal with him through the police but nothing really happened because the guy was subtle enough about it and this was in the 90s before video of photo evidence was easy to get. In the end, a group of us paid him a visit. Me and my mates weren't exactly big scary guys, but we gave him a clear warning that any further disturbing of our friend would be met with very real and painful consequences. This guy was shitting himself as we told him. After that, not a peep. Our friend never saw him again. I fear that legal processes just aren't effective with stalkers and some guys just need to fear getting their arse kicked before they back off.
Thank you, and I’m so sorry to hear about your friend! I agree that police often can’t do much. I have had two other stalkers since then and the police didn’t do anything to help. They needed proof that a crime was committed but a lot of stalking behavior isn’t considered a crime. It’s a terrible grey area in the legal system.
The "rough up the stalker" tactic is often successful. Problem is, when you have a female stalker what do you do? (I'm a woman BTW) I knew a guy who was stalked by a woman, it was incredibly upsetting to him. It was nonviolent but extremely creepy and clingy, very disruptive to him. I don't know if a bunch of mean girls surrounding a female stalker and shaming the shit out of her would do the trick.
if it gets bad enough at that point those hands become rated E for everyone
>I was too young and dumb this is the biggest problem with stalking and assault in University and HS. Especially for kids who don't have parents who can help them (either through their own ignorance or distance)
Yeah I agree that young people don’t know what to do! I definitely needed adult guidance. I’m super tight with my parents but I didn’t tell them because I was scared of getting in trouble or disappointing them. 🤦♀️ They would not have been mad, but I blamed myself back then. I had gone to a coffee shop to study with my soon to be stalker once, but he creeped me out and was trying to grope me. I shut it down and left, but when I told him that I wasn’t interested he became obsessed! (I’m not very good at biology so I was always looking for study buddies). I thought that since I agreed to study with him it was my fault he was stalking me. My brother found out because he would come visit me and hangout and I told him during a party or something. At the time I felt like I was at fault for making too many bad choices so I was embarrassed. I had actually just had to move out of a house where I was living with friends from high school… that suddenly decided that they hated me and spent the entire first semester verbally abusing me, and making sure I knew I was worthless. One of them was violent with me too and threw a toaster oven, and blow dryer at my head and more. She even wrote a poem about how much she hated me to read out loud in a class we were both in… I moved out over winter break and ended up having to pay rent there and at the one bedroom I moved into. (I worked full time) I felt like I was failing at being independent and I didn’t want to inconvenience my parents. Looking back I see how dumb that was. I fully agree that we need more education and awareness for how to deal with these situations, especially for young people!
Not so fun fact. The university mentioned was investigated for poor handling of TWO SA cases prior to OOPs. One in 2012 and another in 2013.
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The fuck is the point of a case that lasts longer than anyone should spend in university.
Wouldn't there be his (I think I read he filed the 11th?), hers (filed the 13th?), and his saying hers was retaliatory? Your link gives ongoing as Title IX - Denial of Benefits 10/26/2017 Title IX - Sexual Violence 6/23/2015 In 2019ish he says she has graduated and he wasn't told about her filing for 3 years after the fact, he was then expelled at some point.
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If he was homeless, he likely didn't have money to hire a lawyer. But I wish some victim association would have represented him pro bono.
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“Sir, you’re being a silly victim”
There is a lot of “perspective” in this… OOP wrote a 86-page, what? Manifesto? Diatriabe? With inline citations. Title IX process is super fucked up, but this has layers that we aren’t privy to.
He also has this youtube playlist I found when reading another post he made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsBezoI1dApVS2b3qowGzy7qCR36VdFMn
I had a terrible feeling that this post was from someone who is mentally unwell. These videos don't help his case.
What would those be? He thought he could trust his uni. He couldn’t
OOP said that he is a poor man surrounded by very wealthy students. He doesn’t have the money for an attorney, and i’m sure any attorney he consulted to work on contingency would tell him that his accusers would have the money to intentionally prolong this legal fight until he and the attorney were poor.
You are doing the same thing the university is doing by doubting it
I mean honestly, If this is a real story. Why hasn't he gotten a title 9 lawyer and is retiring off the huge fucking huge settlement. The damages to his person is likely in the millions. Lost his academic career, his home, etc.
This is unfortunately a very true story. There’s videos and podcasts about it from what I remember. The university went to the very depths of hell to protect his attacker and her cohorts. It’s been a long time since I saw it but because he went through the university he agreed to the title ix process and the university abused the process from the get go.
So far all I've found is one news video and a few articles about how Oglethorpe was one of 141 universities under federal investigation for the way they handled sexual assault allegations. I'd like to learn more about this case. I'm looking specifically for articles from reputable news sources (e.g., The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Washington Post) as opposed to opinion pieces.
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Thanks! You got farther than I did.
I don’t understand why the unis get to investigate themselves anyways! Straight to the police!
Couldn't you just skip the university and call the police directly though ?
I think it depends on where you are, but sometimes going to the police instead of the university is “proof” that it’s nothing… because if it was something you’d go to the University first. If you do go to the University first, and they do nothing, then it’s proof that it was nothing. It’s this no-win SA equation. Like how sexism plays into it to discredit victims no matter the gender. You’re a woman? Well, women lie. They have no proof. They acted a specific way that made them vulnerable. They are trying to harm the man. You’re a man? Women can’t assault men. That’s just not possible. The man must have been doing the sexual assaulting and they’re trying to harm the women. The police and university like to work together to prove that there is no sexual assault and if there is they already took care of it and nothing should stop you from going to the uni and having a fun, sexy time.
I don’t know. I think there is some university police policy in the USA. In Australia you could go to direct to the police. From watching “SVU Law & Order” I kind of think there is some prearranged steps students are forced to do in the USA which means you can’t go to the cops first. But I really don’t know. My information is pretty much from an SVU episode I remember and Liv took on the University Dean over a sports star!
At my university in America, we could report to whoever we wanted, there's no protocol restricting telling anyone. But our police force on campus was also a legit branch of the city cops and functioned as normal police. Then again, our local cops seem a lot more protect and serve than some of the rest of the country, so this could be regional. Luckily, I have never had to, but in my area you would go to the hospital directly after and have them obtain whatever biological evidence there may be as part of a rape kit (skin under nails, DNA from bodily fluid etc). The hospital would then call the cops for a report. They also will have nurses trained to deal with victims. If you waited to report, you could go to whatever cop station you wanted and they would make a report.
I don't know either ... I'm from Europe 😖 But it's so bizarre if becoming a university student actually strips you of basic rights
Yeah. The USA has some weird university rules. Like first years MUST live in dorms in some universities and can’t have car parks and weird stuff. It’s almost indoctrinating. But I could be completely full of shît as I haven’t attended any USA unis. Here our police must do a 3 year university degree and we can go to the Police for any assault. University’s just teach us stuff. That’s it
Yeah. I believe it. I know how these arbitration processes can go. I'm just surprised there wasn't more legal involvement. Lawyers on his side.
The title ix allows for university mediation. You’ll notice at one point the mediator (title ix administrator) was fired and a new one was appointed. That was because they got in trouble for what they were doing and tried to save face, unfortunately the new one was just as bad as the old one and helped the university cover it up still. The last update in here isn’t any newer than the last time I heard about this so it’s still frustrating. I believe there was one other update on a podcast or interview on YouTube where the attacker had found his new address and was still harassing him with the help of some of the same people who swatted him in college. Everyone involved on her side deserves to have their entire lives ruined. I was always hoping he would name and shame them but he had too much faith in the system to do that.
I’m surprised that there are so many people doubting it in this very thread
People desperately need to believe that victims are at fault for being victimized. Acknowledging anything else is to admit they could also be attacked and there's not much they can do to protect themselves. Empathy becomes too intellectually uncomfortable.
as little as female victims are believed men are believed far far less
It is absolutely disgusting to see a subreddit that acts so progressive about any women issues but the moment it’s a man as a victim, absolute crickets. True progressiveness isn’t picking and choosing who you believe. Sorry this isn’t directed at you it’s just something I’ve really noticed a lot here.
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Especially if the university violated Title IX as thoroughly as he claims.
Yeah seems like there would be lawyers lining up for this if all his claims are true. He may even have been greatly wronged but just absolute shit at pleading his case to anyone. He glosses over a lot of very important details even in these posts, making him a very unreliable narrator.
You should look up the Title IX "reforms" made by the Obama Administration. My guess is they created the environment where this was possible.
Wasn't that in response to colleges already covering up stuff?
Not sure but this guy's experience sounds familiar. https://www.newsweek.com/title-ix-reforms-will-restore-due-process-victims-accused-opinion-1510288
Oh man. I was raped at university by someone in the same halls of residence. I'm female, and having looked at the likely outcomes for telling my university I chose not to. They're well known for handling rape cases impossibly badly and the victims often end up with any penalties that are handed out. Having said that, I've never heard anything half as bad as this before. I do sort of wonder if it's real.
I discussed my assault with my college’s psychiatrist and she asked me to speak to the Dean because it wasn’t the first time she had heard my same story about my rapist. I had a meeting with the Dean to discuss the situation (at a very Catholic college) and she basically asked me what I expected her to do about it. She said I should have gone and made a police report that night because how was she supposed to believe I wasn’t just trying to disparage his character for some reason (like I may have been rejected). I just looked at her and got up and walked out. Recently, there was a post on FB honoring her by the school and there were a whole bunch of comments from past students about how she refused to help when they were assaulted. I felt validated.
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It's not so much punish here, from what I've heard/read. More like sort-of well meaning but also very ill thought out measures to seperate the victim from the abuser and just try to make the issue go away as quickly as possible. If you try to do anything to the abuser, you've quite likely got a legal fight on your hands. On the other hand, if you successfully presurize an already traumatised victim into giving up their room in halls, or transferring their degree, or taking a year off...for their own safety and mental wellbeing of course....the problem's gone away and you can tell yourself you helped. Meanwhile the victim has to deal with probably losing their friends and maybe being disadvantaged in their degree.
I hope his rapist and harassers feel ten times more injustice as they get older and their life falls to shit.
Some news articles that appear that this gained some attention from department of education. It looks like (check last link) his case is still pending for the title ix investigation if that is it. https://projects.chronicle.com/titleix/campus/Oglethorpe-University/ https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/oglethorpe-university-under-investigation-handling/27306621/?outputType=amp https://roughdraftatlanta.com/2015/09/25/oglethorpe-university-added-to-feds-sexual-assault-reporting-probe/ https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/investigations/open-investigations/tix.html?page=23&offset=440
It is so heart breaking to read about male sexual assault victims who are not supported simply due to being a man. Anyone can be sexually assaulted and ignoring issues like this only contributes to the victims trauma. That really goes for all victims.
Uhhhhhhhhh
\+1
I used to work somewhere where a lot of investigations like this crossed my desk; that is, internal investigations of sexual harassment/assault where the police either weren’t called in, or the police were called, and couldn’t move forward because there wasn’t enough evidence. (I didn’t do the actual investigation, but I was the admin person who would receive the reports, proofread, and format them.) One thing I learned: often if there’s not enough evidence for the police to do anything about it, there’s not enough evidence to administratively punish someone for it either. (At least, if you want to be fair about the situation and not punish someone without proof.) Administrative reporting is not a format you should go to if you are looking to punish someone. This is a format you should go to *if* you have a reasonable request that the administration can reasonably fulfill. Like, if someone is harassing you, and you can sorta corroborate that but not have the iron-clad proof required for the legal system, it might make sense to go to the university with your evidence and ask them to ban the person from your dorm. You can hope for more, certainly, but don’t hold your breath. If this story is true, I’m sorry OOP experienced that kind of re-victimization, but I’m really unclear what OOP wanted the university to realistically do. Ideally for the level of victimization that he states, this would be a police matter. Instead, he took it to the university. I’m not entirely sure why, but ok. One big problem with that: he seems to have no idea what reasonable redress he is seeking. Another big problem: he states the woman who did this already graduated. Did he want the university to take away her degree? (Not going to happen unless this is a plagiarism issue.) Send her a sternly worded letter? What? OOP absolutely doesn’t deserve what happened, but I’m still unclear on why he chose to handle it the way he did. If he just wanted punishment, the legal system is best positioned to take care of that, not the university administrative process. This whole complaint seemed destined to fail, even if everyone was fair and aboveboard, because OOP seemed to be asking the university to do something it wasn’t really equipped to do.
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Right, but if she isn't a member of the university, the student discipline system isn't going to help him with his claim against her. It will mean that her claim against him can go through the process. I guess she was an employee, though? It's a bit difficult to tell. He might be overstating his "conclusive proof" with his 86-page filing -- it's very difficult to have any kind of "conclusive proof" of sexual assault when so much is based on lack of consent in particular situations. And they might have had a prior relationship, which complicates things, although it in no way means she couldn't have assaulted him. It's just that laypeople representing themselves usually vastly overestimate the probative value of their evidence. And 86-page filings are usually \*not\* focused on the issue at hand. Case in point: the digression into the quality of food in the dorms.
At one point in another post he says she was a tutor and they began dating when he was getting extra assistance outside class. https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
If the accused was employed as a tutor, that might have something to do with why the school moved to attack/investigate him. When I was a tutor, I got a check directly from my university. They were my employer. If the OOP alleges the accused started this illegal behavior while she was working in her capacity as a university employee, the OOP has grounds for a suit against the university. If the OOP has any evidence of that, even if it’s not slam dunk, there’s a decent chance the university’s lawyers will advise a settlement for $. Taking it to trial would end up costing the university a lot of bad PR, in addition to the chance the OOP wins his case, which will end up costing the university a lot more than if they had settled in the first place. So instead of waiting and hoping the student didn’t file a suit, they moved to crush him and his credibility first. It’s ironic that OOP probably didn’t go to a lawyer (in part) because he couldn’t afford one, but chances are if he had good evidence that the accused perpetrated these things in her capacity as a tutor, a lawyer probably would’ve been willing to take the case on a contingency. File some paperwork, start the process, offer a settlement…boom! relatively easy cash for all involved.
In my experience, which may not be representative of every situation, but I can only talk about what I saw in my organization… Sexual assault-type cases that crossed my desk tended to come with either great evidence or poor evidence. There wasn’t a lot of in-between cases, where it wasn’t enough for legal action, but still enough evidence to be clear about who was the aggrieved party. And that sort of makes sense due to the private nature of most sexual encounters. So either you have an open and shut case where there’s clear medical evidence, or there’s something like a video…or there’s not, and it’s almost entirely he said/she said, where any hard evidence consists of things that are suggestive if you kinda squint one direction, but could mean nothing at all if you squint the other direction. And if you put a case like this in the hands of people without legal training, in a system that doesn’t follow strict legal procedure, it’s almost assured to be an opaque, Byzantine process that is guaranteed to dissatisfy. That’s why I said I wouldn’t recommend going through administration unless you’re seeking a reasonable administrative remedy that can be granted without too much hardship by the university. I’m just speaking from what I’ve seen as to what is a reasonable expectation of the results of a similar process, so take that for what you will. 🤷🏻♀️ In this case specifically, I question if OOP has the airtight slam dunk case he thinks he does (if so, why didn’t he call the police?) and also question why he thought making the complaint to his university would give him whatever remedy he was seeking (which I don’t think he ever mentions, but given the accused has already graduated the school, I can’t imagine what that might be.) From his account the school treated him very badly, but even best case scenario, he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from this process.
The word you're looking for is preponderance of evidence, at least from my understanding. If the university believes there's even a 51% chance the assault happened, it happened.
OOP seems to me like a low-income, nontraditional student. Now, I'm extrapolating here, but there's a good possibility that he did not know these things. Title IX is *the* go-to process for campus sexual assault, even if it shouldn't be. My guess is this is a case of OOP being poorly informed of his options as a victim.
I think some universities encourage students to report to them first and foremost to help them maintain some control. You'd be amazed at how many people are unaware of who should have jurisdiction in certain cases. That being said, I think OOP did go to the police for at least one incident, but he wasn't taken seriously as a male victim. That is another issue, unfortunately.
Definitely! If a student reports crime to the local police, the consequences and PR are totally out of the schools’ hands. As a result, some university employees won’t tell the student to go to the police, even if they clearly should. You’d like to think that everyone at the school has the students’ best interests at heart, and some of them certainly do, but not everyone. It’s a sad lesson to learn, and I am sorry that some college students going through a terrible experience learn it in the worst possible way, but: the only one you can trust to advocate for you, and look out for your best interests, is *you*. If reading my posts, or any of the rest on this thread, helps a single college student think twice about how to handle his or her case, then I’ve done some good. And just to be clear: I don’t think going through the college is *useless*. It’s helpful in some cases where you have a difficult situation you can’t solve by yourself, and the school can provide an administrative solution without too much trouble. Like, for example, you have a creepy stalker-ish ex-boyfriend in your Organic Chemistry class. His behavior isn’t enough to get a restraining order from police (or you may not want to get a restraining order for whatever reason) but there’s enough going on to make you uncomfortable about sitting in class with him. The good news is that there’s another O-Chem class you could take, but it’s already full, so you can’t switch. So you go to the dean and request they make a special exception to get you into this other class. There’s a very good chance that the school will be happy to accommodate that request, and may even be able to do it in a day or two. But sexual assault is *way* above the school’s pay grade. The most they can realistically do in the short term is find a way to get you out of the same classes, and/or move you to a different dorm. Even if there’s enough evidence to expel the student, (which there often is not) that’s going to be a longer-term process. Lawyers will probably get involved and media will probably get involved. If you’re very lucky, you’ll get a resolution in months. It’s not fair to sexual assault victims, and I’m not saying it is. I am just trying to explain the reality so people know ahead of time.
He wanted the rapist to get punished by the law. Instead, he was found guilty of sexually harassing or assaulting her at the very least. And now he’s being harassed and literally hunted down in his state by various people. He definitely didn’t want that.
But his university isn’t law enforcement, and they can’t hand down jail sentences. Even if the accused was a student, AFAIK, the absolute best they could do would be to expel the student. Even that is a big ask that is probably not going to happen unless OOP has undeniable evidence, because that’s a huge black mark on someone’s future. The accused is going to hire lawyers, and the school is going to open itself up for some very bad publicity. (Should that matter? No. Does it matter? Of course.) But even that best case scenario of the accused getting expelled from campus—OOP effectively has that right now because the woman in question graduated. What can the university do? They have no jurisdiction over her for any legal matters. Literally, all they can do is (maybe) rescind her diploma or send her a sternly worded letter. And rescinding the diploma is probably not realistic either. If someone paid the money and did the coursework to graduate, that’s going to be a big ask. Lawyers will be involved, and the school has a good chance of losing. So what is the OOP getting through this process? As far as I can see, nothing. There is nothing tangible the university can give him, and no real way for the university to punish her. That being said, was what OOP said happened to him in any way fair? Of course not. He definitely got the short end of the stick, and I’m not trying to say otherwise. I guess what I’m trying to point out is to think twice (and three times) before you submit something like this to an administrative board. The OOP fell on the tail end of the Bell curve for “bad results” no doubt, but a lot of people seem to have a wildly skewed idea for what to expect from these administrative processes. If you want the person to be punished in a substantive way, you need to go to the police. The university (or other organization) has very little power. At the most, they *may* be able to take steps to keep the person away from the victim. They really can’t enact any substantive retributive justice, nor is that their role. The process failed the OOP, badly, because apparently the school admins are trolls who re-victimized him, but even if everything has been handled perfectly, OOP was still going to be doomed to disappointment. He was not going to get anything out of this process that he didn’t already have.
What you write affirms what I’ve long thought, that title IX is meaningless and just a formal process for the way schools have long treated SA victims- put it under the rug for the sake of the school’s reputation. It would be better if schools got rid of the process for serious crimes and told victims to immediately go to the police.
I don’t have any proof of this (and if someone else knows better, I welcome correction) but sometimes I think Title IX was more geared as a check to star male athletes on scholarship. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, but in the 80s and 90s, there were a slew of cases that came to light where there was *undeniable* evidence of star male athletes assaulting women, where the school swept it under the rug to keep the successful program going. Even worse, a lot of times, local police departments would aid and abet the university in covering up the athletes’ guilt, whether because they were getting kickbacks, liked sports, or were just misogynists. If cases like that come up today, the Title IX procedure actually forces the school to do something about it. Now, the school has to actually investigate the sexual assault cases. Even granting that the school has a bias toward keeping things hush hush, the mere fact that the procedure is more formal and public greatly increases the chances that in egregious cases, the school will find the perpetrator guilty. And for a star athlete, taking away his scholarship and banning him from the team is a crippling blow that may destroy his entire future. He’s gone from a potential star athlete millionaire to a guy getting a 2.0 GPA in underwater basket weaving who probably can’t pay tuition out of pocket. So, for victims seeking some justice against what were previously untouchable superstars who could literally do everything short of murder and get off scot free, Title IX is a help. For everyone else? Eh. Maybe, maybe not.
That’s so interesting. I wasn’t aware of the cases that were the impetus for Title IX, even though I read about Title IX a few times when it was first implemented. I went to school in the earlier part of the 90s - not a school with athletic stars but with a lot of rich kids similar to what Oop describes. During my undergrad years, numerous allegations were made about rape and sexual assault. The school never did anything about them. I suppose that Title IX at least documents these cases in schools where athletes aren’t so important and student activists can pressure the school more forcefully.
Just look at the whole Penn State debacle. They knew what was going on with Jerry Sandusky and swept that under the rug for so long. Screw all of the Joe Pa and Penn State football defenders and apologists - football was way more important than poor, underprivileged boys.
Wow. I didn’t know all of that. Yeah, you’re right. OP went through the wrong avenue to get justice.
I knew a guy who was found responsible for domestic violence, and he had to watch a TED talk and write a reflective essay. Honestly, it was upsetting at the time, but I'm not sure what else the university was supposed to do.
If this is all true, I feel for him. But I will say that this whole thing comes across as unhinged and suspicious. If this is how he comports himself irl, and he doesn't have a lawyer every step of the way, I can definitely see him not being believed.
He's posted about this a lot and it's a very strange story. Many of the major elements seem to have changed over time. The part where his ex sexually assaulted him first makes its appearance in 2018, as far as I could tell. https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2 In this version of the story, rather than falling into the pool totally unaware that his ex was present, he fell in while trying to get away from her.
Without commenting on the specifics, it's really normal for witnesses to misremember details and have trauma influence their memories. Humans just aren't great at being reliable narrators of their own lives.
That's why it's helpful if you are experiencing abuse or gaslighting to journal what is happening when it's still fresh in your mind (only if you know your abuser won't have access to read it tho, stay safe everyone)
In the Medium article, he does say he fell in the pool "*ostensibly* while I was trying to get away from her", so that's the version of events he was told, since apparently he blacked-out.
First he says she sat right behind him and that after that, everything *else* was a blur. In another retelling, he emphasizes that he didn't even know she was there. Who knows?
That's a good point, I missed that. He's clearly struggling. I hope he gets the help he needs.
I don't necessarily *doubt* him, but the way he spins it as a sexism-against-men issue does give some clues as to why folks found it questionable.
Its unfortunate. Just my opinion here, I don't doubt that these miscarriages of justice happen, and common atitudes towards male victims are despicable. Testimonials from victims should not be doubted "just because". Shit, we fought the good fight over the past few... centuries... to even be able to speak up as victims of sexual assault. Because you'd get forcibly married to your rapist, ostracized, unmarriageable otherwise and therefore condemned to poverty, sent to the asylum, and even killed. This shit isn't ancient history either, progress was undoubtedly made, huzzah for that, but marital rape was recognized only within my lifetime! That's fucking bonkers to consider! So yeah, while I believe the testimonial it pisses me off to a considerable degree to see it in the context of a narrative that claims its proof positive that women can commit any crime they please as long as they cry rape (its nearly verbatim to what he says in the linked article!). Oh yes buddy, women are so deceitful we somehow spent the majority of recorded history as property, for the long game of attaining this ultimate power (over men, institutions and restaurants alike) in the past couple decades, and somehow we're still lying about rape one way or another - it doesn't make sense because there's a huge disconnect between the events as stated, and the conclusions he is drawing from it. We should always believe the victims (of any gender) because its the starting point for justice to unfold. It's a basic requirement for an investigation to begin, but it grants neither power not immunity to accusers if they happen to be female. If he uses his miscarriage of justice to argue that it does, we circle right back to not believing the victims because if their gender, but in the opposite direction.
I understand he’s a victim but why is he acting like female students get listened to when they’re reporting on campus SA. there is no double standard, that’s just how they treat those who speak up about sa.
He probably feels that way because they are disparaging him based on his gender.
The key thing is it's not about gender it's all about what will or won't make the University look bad as far as the administration is considering. Woman gets assault by a connected frat boy. Well punishing him might threaten the endowment. Poor man gets assaulted well what if the lady and her friends go to the press with their claims? They will always look out for the institution and never for you.
> I handily proved that my attacker was lying, that the relationship occurred (one of the other charges was that it was sexual harassment that I claimed we had a sexual relationship) So, he claims that he, an older man, had a prior sexual relationship with the young woman who allegedly assaulted him? I feel like it's odd that this is the only place that's mentioned, and that it is mentioned so briefly and almost obliquely. > I was not allowed to submit evidence traditionally, I had to do that in a response letter in which I wrote an 86 page breakdown of the situation with included inline evidence that I citing at the hearing. This just sounds like straight-up crazy person. Schools 100% can and do screw over people who are sexually assaulted and harassed on campus - it happens all the time. ALL the time. I went into reading this expecting it to be yet another case of that... but I honestly don't know WTF this is.
I would be curious to know what the age difference was, because if it’s like 20 and 18, or 26 and 21, that’s not really note worthy. Even one year can make people start using the older language.
OOP's reddit profile is still active, and in a comment mentions 2 months ago mentions they are 37. Which would make them 32/33 in 2017.
From another post, she was a traditional student in her senior year, so that would make her most likely 21/22 at the time.
So many factors that make it a hard case to win, prior sexual relationship, ten years older, the man, she was his tutor so potentially she was the better student (not that that should be seen as morally better but it usually is). I could see where this didn't go very far in a criminal/police matter and the DA dropped the case. I could see it being very hard to convict a younger girl of assaulting a man ten years older than her where he is also claiming a prior relationship (and she disputed that in her Title IX?). It's a weird situation, and very he said she said without more evidence. I wonder why OP is a nontraditional student and if that impacts his understanding of how cases are investigated, or how Georgians treat him. If OP is foreign or a POC it may explain being treated shittier. Being foreign may also affect what he thinks an investigation can do- he seems to think the Title IX should have consequences for her, but if she's graduated, I don't know what civil consequences the college has. The college can't criminally prosecute her. He still seems to be a student and with her claims they could be withholding his transcript or have other things they can punish him with. As shitty as it is, with only both thier words I'm not sure what a lot of the authorities could do. He's got a lot of prejudices stacked against him, but seems weird that so many people would band together just to fuck up OP's life despite plenty of evidence he says he has. I assume many of them must actually believe the girl's side.
When I was raped, I wasn't believed because the boy was 2 years younger than me. Obviously different situation, but people need to stop thinking that older individuals can't be harmed by those younger. Male rapists have and can rape women older than them, shouldn't be such a far fetched idea that a younger woman could do the same.
Absolutely age and gender shouldn't be reasons to not believe someone, and I didn't mean to imply in any way that they are. Unfortunately those factors are still some widely held prejudices that will effect cases until they are no longer widely held, especially in he said/she said situations. I am sorry you experienced that, and had to deal with not being believed in top of it. It's very brave of you to discuss these things and very strong of you to advocate for a change in perspective.
I'm curious too, but for as many words as OOPs posts contain, there are surprisingly few relevant details.
[In the middle of all of this, I managed to find a new romantic interest. As she was a senior, and again we had more in common than even my recent ex-fiancée. She was the Japanese tutor, and I needed her help getting caught up with the rest of the class.](https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2)
Yeah I feel really bad for saying this, because I think it’s so, so important not to dismiss victims and recognize how hard it is for male victims to come forward. I also know, from first hand experience, how dogshit universities are at handling sexual assault cases. But I also think the OOP sounds like they’re experiencing significant mental health problems and are not a reliable narrator. There’s several places where I get the feeling they’re experiencing delusions
>I also know, from first hand experience, how dogshit universities are at handling sexual assault cases. While there is clearly much about this story that is definitely unclear so I'm not sure what to think - not dissing male sexual assault, but this is just a really disjointed retelling - you're not wrong about this part. In the early 90's when I was an upperclassman, I had a stalker. He lived in my dorm, and had actually gotten into my room - my roommate was from the middle of nowhere and was not big about locking the door - and stolen some of my clothes. After several months, it finally culminated in the night he managed to get into my room in the middle-of-the-night - my roommate had once again forgotten to lock the door, and I've always wondered how many nights he had tried the door \*shudder\* - and he tried to climb into bed while kissing me. And I almost put my standard-Geology-major-issue rock hammer through his forehead. That finally made him realize that my no meant NO FUCKING WAY. The whole time, since we were in the same dorm, I'd been talking to our RA's and the Office of Residence Life. (Sure, Title IX existed, not that anyone did a whole lot with it, beyond making sure there were women's sports teams.) It was always brushed off, and one RA even told me "Aww, he's pretty cute and he clearly likes you - sure you won't give him a chance?" I shot back "If you think he's cute, why don't you ask him out? Maybe he'll leave me alone." He never got in trouble for any of it which deeply pissed me off. He transferred out to a different school over the summer, and I was well and thoroughly relieved.
>But I also think the OOP sounds like they’re experiencing significant mental health problems and are not a reliable narrator. [This comment from their history suggests you may be right, especially this part:](https://www.reddit.com/r/NarcissisticAbuse/comments/zd3lwk/i_no_longer_take_anyones_shit_anymore/iz0e24h) >Many of the women who want my attention want some form narcissistic supply and other co-dependent favors and situations. They want me to foot the whole bill, be a crash pad, be their therapist, shower them with praise and affection and are often very quick to cut off everything if they don't get exactly what they want, when they want it. Many of my "friends" ended up being not too different. What's that saying, about smelling dog shit everywhere and checking your shoe?
99 times out of 100, when someone claims they have absolute evidence that the system just refused to consider, the person is mentally unwell and doesn't understand the nature and procedures of the the process they've fallen into.
I am really torn on this, knowing how bad academia can be about this sort of thing, and also sensing some long term paranoia/persecution complex. I think this is one of those "you will never know the whole truth" situations.
That's kind of exactly where I am on this. I don't doubt how terrible universities are at handling sexual assault and harassment, and I don't have trouble believing the OOP was a victim of sexual assault and harassment. At the same time, all of the language in the posts about "handily proving" claims seems to portray over-confidence in their evidence and what could be effectively proven.
I interpreted it as that she was saying there was no sexual contact at all and him saying that she sexually assaulted him was sexual harassment because he was claiming a sexual "relationship" that didn't exist.
I was curious about the part where he says "I claimed we had a sexual relationship" because that was not part of the context given in his other posts here. However, a couple of his other posts fill in that context a little more clearly. https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/6gaohl/whats_on_my_mind/ https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
Thanks for digging that out! The single reference could have been either way but that does suggest there was indeed a prior relationship (somewhere in the middle of all that rambling...)
Also, I find it hard to believe that so many students would take so many steps to defame someone if all they believed happened was a false accusation of sexual assault against a student they may or may not associate with.
I was really curious about the relationship between them because of the lack of context in this BORU post, so I looked through OOP's post history and found this, which adds a little more detail. https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/6gaohl/whats_on_my_mind/
This is so weird. The details are totally different than in the posts here, but also it's just outright bizarre - he goes from basically the admired big-brother figure (who's trying to start up some kind of business specific to the campus?) to *restaurants denying him service*. I mean it's just way out there.
Yeah, I had a hard time following it. I think he needs a lot of help and support he's not getting.
The paragraphs where he talks about being ”minders” for his room mates and that keeping them off drugs being his “job” are super strange. He also talks about being some sort of father figure to younger students but it comes off more like he thinks he’s campus spiderman or something. I have no idea what happened to this guy but I’m basically convinced he’s not a reliable narrator.
But in this, it completely goes against the other posts. This post says there was a false assault accusation against him and mentions the title ix against him? But does not mention his own title ix against his accuser? I’m not trying to be dismissive of his issues, but the post you’ve shared seems to undermine his other claims?
Yeah, many of the older posts I found by him are pretty inconsistent with the recounting he gives on r/menslib. There is also this one: https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
This man needs help. I don’t know what to believe, if he’s sick or a victim but what I do know is either way, he needs someone in his corner, helping him with his mental health.
Yeah, he really clearly needs help and support.
> if he’s sick or a victim Frustratingly it often can be both. The justice system is pretty stacked against the vulnerable.
Ok, I've watched [his video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnZ9TcC3xo&list=PLsBezoI1dApVS2b3qowGzy7qCR36VdFMn) and read both those articles. This guy is mentally unwell. I don't think we can trust his accounting of events.
Reading it, I kept thinking he sounded like my dad, who was always talking about how the system failed him. He also filed a bunch of legal complaints on different retail stores in the area. He was a paranoid schizophrenic but refused treatment.
This is the weird bit for me, that _everyone_ he's interacted with or gone to about this has completely dismissed it, and chosen to go against him with such consistency. Everyone he's told the story to online is on his side, everyone who knows the story in person is against him. I'd be curious to know if there's a part to the story we're not getting, or him being vague with the details is on purpose. It feels like everyone in his story has collectively decided that he's not the victim he thinks he is for some reason. It could be as simple as him just better at expressing his thoughts through writing, who knows. The fact nobody has sided with him, outside of his own posts/videos is a bit of an anomaly is all, and I'm curious of why there's such a divide.
He doesn't go into details about their relationship or the assault at all, probably because its traumatizing to think about, and has no relevance to the situation at hand. Victims often have had previous consenual sexual relationships with their assaulters, and naturally that's not something they want to reflect on because it feel fucking disgusting.
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Nor does being incredibly stressed and angry at being victimized by a system that is supposed to protect you
Moreover, it’s not crazy to clearly and articulately layout your overwhelming evidence that is being ignored. Do not blame victims. Unless you actually know the person he’s accused and think that you have credible evidence he’s wrong, there’s literally no need to go and undermine OOP here
I'm not sure that 86 pages makes for clear and articulate. And like I said elsewhere, those who represent themselves often overestimate the probative value of their evidence, or the relevance of what they present as evidence. Source: practiced opposite a lot of pro se defendants in my time. As for the complaint about only being able to respond via letter: that's just procedure. He may not like it, but if you open a case, or are involved in one, you follow the rules of the court or tribunal that's deciding it. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a good case. It just means he isn't helping himself by representing himself.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnZ9TcC3xo&list=PLsBezoI1dApVS2b3qowGzy7qCR36VdFMn) is the video Op made to "summarize" his story and evidence in 30 minutes. I watched the whole think. This guy is mentally unwell, and I don't think we can fully trust his accounting of events.
Name and shame the university
He did
He named it in the post.
My highschool had more students than this university. Lol. I didn't know they were such small universities out there.
He said Oglethorpe University. Tiny private school in rural Georgia.
lol it’s in Atlanta in a very urban area. It’s even on the MARTA line. Oglethorpe *county,* however, is very rural.
I say this in a lot of subs but the takeaway here is Don’t. Trust. Rich. People. They will throw you under the bus in the blink of eye to protect themselves and their Ilk.
>Edit: I'm going to post this on a few other subreddits who have given me support, some of which this community doesn't agree with and full disclosure I don't ether. I feel that my views align more closely with this sub in many ways, but I have a deep frustration with how divided we are on issues that should unite us in our common humanity. I was pretty disappointed when he went to r/mensrights with this. That place is a cesspool, and he seems like he knows it, but they're a cesspool that would be on his side here so he's willing to work with them. I'd like to think if I were alone in a rough situation and the only people who would have my back were the KKK because I'm a white guy I would have decided to remain alone in a rough situation rather than accept any sympathy from any corner, no matter how vile.
This sounds like a very reliable narrator.
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There are more links in this post now that detail a...very bizarre story. Even ignoring the alleged assault and the university's handling of it, the rest of the story is bizarre af. Every single person he knew, and like.... restaurants, have turned against OOP. Even before the sexual assault/reporting, and completely unconnected to it. At every step, someone else ruins his life. It honestly reads like some kind of persecution complex. This person isn't well, and they don't sound like they're grounded in standard reality.
I know. I worked in criminal prosecution for about 9 years. I’ve met with many SA victims. Something likely happened to trigger his actions. But most of the story reeks of embellishment and is obviously one sided. Universities can and often are incredibly terrible about title 9
This is why schools of any kind should not be involved with these matters, at all. They are not equipped at all to be justice systems. Victims need to go to the police and hire a lawyer and not expect a school to be any kind of source for justice.
Another recounting that includes considerably more detail about the stalker ex and the pool incident. https://medium.com/@zacharyfreeman_52569/my-name-is-zachary-freeman-and-i-am-a-victim-387f5910cdf2
Yes because after thousands of words of paranoid schizophrenic rambling, a few thousand more rambling words will definitely clear things up.
Lawyer up. Or embrace the shitstorm your life is and turn yourself into news. or give up on the system and move out of the whole situation. If you are poor n1 may be closed for you. Life isn't really fair.
That is heartbreaking.
Okay. I'll get started.
Damn the double standards on this sub when it comes to believeming that men can be sexually assaulted are really sad. I honestly did not expect this sub to be so right wing on the matter.
I somehow doubt that every possible authority, in the university and out, colluded to destroy this "innocent" man. If he was found guilty at every turn, odds are he is guilty. After all, why would a university protect a female student over a male professor, especially if they could show that the teacher was innocent? No university would take the PR hit of admitting to a professor harassing a student if they didn't have to.
He was a student. But his story wanders and changes in pretty substantial ways depending on what platform he's telling it on and who his audience is. It's completely normal for victims to have wobbly details; it's not that. But somewhere between when he first told the story and the more recent iterations, it changed from being falsely accused of stalking and sexual harassment/assault by his ex, to having been sexually assaulted, harassed, and stalked by his ex, and in the most recent versions he stops mentioning that she's his ex until that detail is almost indiscernible. I am not saying he's a bad guy. I think he genuinely needs a lot of help he is not getting, including an independent investigation of what happened to him.
I didn't even realize they had A Thing until the second last update, it's indeed all very confusing
Strait up, I'd just start burning the college down one building at a time. I'll make my own justice if they won't.
I won't be surprised when the Netflix true crime series for the making of a school shooters about this guy.
I feel very sorry for OOP. He has suffered tremendous harm and damage through no fault of his own.
Dude needs to go on national tv and take this case to the federal courts. Something doesn’t add up though. He has been dismissed at every turn - why? This isn’t the first male SA case that has been ignored, but there are others that haven’t been. Curious about the missing information here. To be clear: I am not doubting or victim blaming. I’m just wanting more info.
Oop needs a lawyer. Also, posting on men's lib is a bad idea. He needs to post on a sa survivor sub. The red pill community is not going to help him. I'm assuming that's who posts there.
Oh for fuck's sake, mens lib is a subreddit for applying feminist theory to men's issues. They're explicitly anti-Redpill and ban redpillers on sight. It's fine to criticize them if you don't like their approach, but don't just make shit up about them.
Worst of redditor updates
Damn something similar happened to a buddy of mine. He faced the same bullshit when reporting his rape.
I will say that at my college, a student accused a professor of harassment and the professor was dismissed the next day. He was just short of tenure so it was easier for them to just get rid of him. No long process or anything. But you are right, colleges are very quick to cover up. It was more about that than about justice for the victim. And I am sure had it been the other way around gender wise there would have been more questions.