Can I sue my Complainant because she is lying about me?
Suing your complainant because she is defaming you remains one of the most challenging issues to deal with when you find yourself in the unfortunate role of a respondent to sexual assault charges as a college student. Defamation, broadly speaking, means that someone is saying something about you as a fact, not as an opinion, and that this fact is both false and makes you look bad. Thus, if you think you are innocent of the facts your complaint said about you as part of her sexual assault complaint, you could also think that this complaint is false, and thus it makes you look bad. Your parents may think that as well.
If you feel that is unfair, you are not alone. Consider what happened to Saifullah Khan, and how he has now focused some of his efforts on this very painful and very public choice he has made: to sue his complainant because he believes she defamed him when she said he raped her after a halloween party which got him expelled from Yale.
All of the facts below come from the NYTimes’ September 17, 2023 article on Mr. Khan, How a Yale Student’s Rape Accusation Exposed Her to a Defamation Lawsuit and from my reactions after I heard him speak about his new life’s goals. Mr. Khan came across to me as a thoughtful, kind man who was wronged. Now he faces these challenges:
First, overcoming the impact of this case for the rest of Mr. Khan’s life:
“Mr. Khan, a neuroscience student while at Yale, never earned a bachelor’s degree. He is suing the university as well, for breach of contract and infliction of emotional distress, among other claims. He is seeking $110 million in damages and the opportunity to finish his degree. “Yale took away my 20s,” he said.”
Second, the actual financial and social cost of filing a defamation lawsuit:
“It’s a huge emotional and financial burden to be dragged into a defamation lawsuit,” she said, citing the successful lawsuit by the actor Johnny Depp against his former wife, Amber Heard. “Nobody wants to be in Amber Heard’s position, especially as a young college student without financial resources or social capital.”
Third, the uneven fact that his name, and perhaps not that of his complainant, is public:
“If he wins the defamation suit against his former classmate, he said that he will disseminate her name and facts about the case online. His name will always be connected to this case, and hers should too, he said.”
In a balanced world Mr. Khan would have felt that his hearing at Yale provided him with fairness. That he does not seem to feel that way, that he clearly believes he raped no one, and the momentous fact that this situation already took away a decade of his life, shows the arduousness of the path of male respondents to sexual assault under Title IX.
You can read the article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/17/us/yale-rape-case-defamation.html