Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC) expelled a student found responsible for sexual assault, but then tried to help him out when he began applying elsewhere.
According to the Huffington Post, VWC changed the student’s status from “expelled” to “voluntarily withdrawn” to help him get accepted to another school. Only identifying herself as Jane Doe, the allegations come from a newly filed lawsuit.
The complainant also accused the Virginia United Methodist Church-affiliated liberal arts college in Norfolk, Va. did more to help her assailant than they did her. Filed Friday, Doe is seeking $10 million in damages.
The woman said she was at a school-sponsored, dry party toward the beginning of the 2012 fall semester. The VWC-employed peer adviser then convinced her to leave and go to a party with him where alcohol was available. She believes she was drugged at that party because she woke up in a lacrosse player’s room and was experiencing bleeding and bruising in and around her sex organs.
By Feb. 2013, she had filed her complaint and VWC held a disciplinary hearing for the attacker, who was found responsible of sexual assault and faced expulsion. That May, she said David E. Buckingham, VWC’s vice president for student affairs wrote her a letter informing her that her rapist was no longer expelled, but had voluntarily withdrawn.
“They just said, ‘We looked it over and we want to ensure he can still get a good education and be able to play athletics,'” Doe told the HP. “That was a giant slap in the face to me. You’re going to help my rapist, yet I’m struggling to get decent grades, on the verge of failing out, and you aren’t helping me.”
In many cases of sexual assault and rape, victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which would make studying and attending class near impossible for a college student. Doe also alleged she was harassed by people who knew her attacker and told the HP they would chastise her for “getting [him] kicked out.”
Virginia Wesleyan students voice their opinions about pending rape lawsuit
Norfolk, Va. – Tweets from the Virginia Wesleyan campus newspaper, the Marlin Chronicle, show students packed into the library to hear from the college’s leaders, and to express their voices, too.
The school has been embroiled for weeks now in a $10 million lawsuit alleging that in 2012, a freshman was drugged at a party, a party hosted by a student called a “peer advisor.” That freshman says a member of the lacrosse team then followed her to a dorm and raped her.
The lawsuit says the college initially expelled the lacrosse player, but in a letter to the victim later, administrators said they had reconsidered. They changed expelled to withdrawn, so the athlete could enroll in another university.
The suit says — and NewsChannel 3 research confirms — the college has among the state’s highest per-capita rate of sexual assaults and liquor-law violations. That, according to the lawsuit, means this rape was not an isolated event.
College administrators did not return our calls about today’s meeting with the students. A member of the college newspaper staff said the guidelines for this dialogue with students prohibit anyone from revealing what was said to anyone outside the school.
Virginia Wesleyan College Admits It Helped Accused Rapist, But Wants Him To Pay Damages, by Tyler Kingkade
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/virginia-wesleyan-lawsuit_n_6077780.html
Virginia Wesleyan College admitted in a court filing Thursday that it helped a student it had found responsible for sexual assault by changing records of his punishment so he could transfer to another school.
The college, in Norfolk, Virginia, said it’s not to blame for the rape of a woman student who this month sued the school for $10 million. Virginia Wesleyan asked in separate motions filed in Norfolk Circuit Court that the lawsuit be dismissed and that the assailant it identified as Robert Roe be added as a defendant. The school acknowledged it found the assailant responsible for the Aug. 25, 2012, assault and expelled him, but later changed records of the punishment to withdrawl to “assist him in seeking further studies.”
Virginia Wesleyan was among schools named in a Huffington Post article this month that allowed sexual offenders to transfer to other schools with no indication of misconduct history on their record. Advocates said college disciplinary systems operate independent of one another and have uneven disclosure standards, allowing serial offenders to move elsewhere and avoid punishment.
Virginia Wesleyan, in its response to the lawsuit filed by the woman under the pseudonym Jane Doe, said it was not the cause of injuries or distress for Doe. It was Roe’s “acts,” and he should be responsible for damages, the school’s court filing said.
“In one breath the school says the assault was abhorrent, but in the next breath they blame the victim, Jane Doe, by saying she ‘assumed the risk and was contributorily negligent,'” the woman’s lawyers, including Stuart Plotnick, told HuffPost.
Virginia Wesleyan noted it did not have a duty to “warn or protect” a student from criminal acts committed by a third-party — another student. The school’s response to the lawsuit is similar to the answer of Emerson College in Boston to a lawsuit filed against it by a reported sexual assault victim.
“I am sure parents and students will find this position comforting,” Doe’s attorneys said of the Virginia Wesleyan response.
Doe filed a complaint with the college after she was assaulted, saying she had been drugged and raped. Virginia Wesleyan said Doe’s lawsuit does “not fully state the circumstances surrounding the alleged events.”
The college court filing confirmed some of Doe’s claims through an Oct. 1, 2012, medical report. The report notes that Doe went out on Aug. 24, 2012, and awoke the next morning with her pants down and bleeding around her vaginal area.
The college requested the court to select a jury from outside Virginia’s Hampton Roads area due to media coverage.
The transfer of sexual offenders from one school to another is drawing fresh concern in the case of Jesse Matthew Jr. in Virginia. Matthew was accused of sexual assault at two colleges in Virginia, but never faced criminal charges. He’s now jailed on charges of abducting and defiling University of Virginia student Hannah Graham, whose body was discovered this month, and was indicted on separate charges related to a 2005 rape in Fairfax, Virginia.
See also:
http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/local/13news-now-investigates/2014/10/07/vwc-rape-lawsuit/16851495/