Nearly four years ago, Paul Heyward Robinson was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow College of Charleston student after a night of drinking. He was arrested, labeled a rapist and thrown out of the school. But it took a jury about 28 minutes to acquit Robinson recently; the Columbia-area resident was cleared of criminal wrongdoing. The damage was done, he said. He will never go back to the college. In his lawyers' eyes, his case illustrates how an intense nationwide focus on sexual assault and harassment, particularly involving college students and celebrities, is breeding ignorance of due process standards. While prosecutors acknowledged shortcomings in the investigation, they said the

It is a sad commentary on our culture that few people care what happens to men falsely charged with sex crimes Liam Allan, a 22-year old London, England-area criminology student, spent two years “in a terrible form of limbo” when he was charged with 12 counts of rape, based on allegations by a woman (unnamed) with whom he had had a consensual sexual relationship. Had Allan been convicted, he’d have spent years behind bars and been permanently inscribed as a sex offender. In what seemed a he said-she said case, his prospects were dicey. As it happened, the complainant was sitting on a cache of about 50,000 recorded messages (Allan had lost his phone with copies), which the police had examined

Liam Allan, a 22-year old London, England-area criminology student, spent two years “in a terrible form of limbo” when he was charged with 12 counts of rape, based on allegations by a woman (unnamed) with whom he had had a consensual sexual relationship. Had Allan been convicted, he’d have spent years behind bars and been permanently inscribed as a sex offender. In what seemed a he said-she said case, his prospects were dicey. As it happened, the complainant was sitting on a cache of about 50,000 recorded messages (Allan had lost his phone with copies), which the police had examined, but not disclosed to the prosecution or the defence. Following two days of testimony, during which the phone

In the final five years of his presidency, Barack Obama’s administration undertook a worthy and bold challenge: the elimination of sexual assault on campuses. In fact, Obama’s team had a much more ambitious goal in mind. Vice President Joe Biden, the point person for the campus initiative, said at the end of his term that the administration was seeking “to fundamentally change the culture around sexual assault”—everywhere. New rules of sexual engagement between college students were written at the directive of the administration, but top Obama officials said they wanted these to be applied in the workplace and beyond. “You’re going to change the workplaces you work in,” Tina Tchen, director

Let's pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity It says something, doesn’t it, that I’ve been more hesitant to speak about this than I’ve been of getting on the wrong side of the mafia or al-Qaeda? It now takes only one accusation to destroy a man’s life. Just one for him to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion, overnight costing him his livelihood and social respectability. We are on a frenzied extrajudicial warlock hunt that does not pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity. The punishment for sexual harassment is so grave that clearly this crime — like any other serious crime — requires an unambiguous definition. We have nothing of the sort.

Last year, the phone rang in the office of the New York attorney Andrew T. Miltenberg. On the line was Tom Rossley, a trustee for 23 years at Drake University in Iowa. His son, Thomas, had just been expelled after a woman accused him of rape, and Rossley, such a longtime booster that he was sometimes called Mr. Drake, was on the verge of being kicked off the board for protesting the verdict, he believed. While a trustee’s son might be expected to receive favorable treatment, Rossley thought that possibility had been eclipsed by the school’s greater urgency to demonstrate how seriously it took sexual assault, because it was under federal investigation at the time for supposedly mishandling a

The proposed update to the Higher Education Act introduced in the House Friday would allow colleges to refrain from investigating sexual assault allegations while a criminal inquiry is under way if police or prosecutors request such a delay. Advocates for survivors of sexual assault say that proposal would undermine federal requirements that colleges thoroughly investigate sexual misconduct and lead to slower remedies for victims. But some observers say in practice the language would likely mean little change from current policy, which allows colleges to briefly hold off on investigations when police gather criminal evidence. That provision is among several affecting campus policies handling

(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File) Yale University alumni are helping pay the legal costs of a former basketball star who is fighting his expulsion for sexual misconduct. Jack Montague told attorneys in a court deposition that $25,000 to $30,000 had been raised from alumni to help him pay costs associated with his lawsuit that asserts he was wrongly expelled in 2016 for sexually assaulting another Yale student. None of the alumni are identified nor does Montague say how many have contributed. The suit alleges a Title IX officer brought a complaint against him in autumn 2015 despite being told the woman did not believe Montague heard her when she tried to end their October 2014 sexual encounter.

After a flurry of movement this week on the reauthorization of the federal law governing higher education, which is overdue for an update, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday introduced its bill to overhaul the Higher Education Act of 1965. Summary details of the legislation, including plans to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, put a cap on the amount that graduate students may borrow, and end the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, were reported on Wednesday. But the release of the full text fleshes out the details of those proposals. The bill is a move toward undoing some of the priorities of the Obama administration, said Robert Kelchen, an assistant prof