What does a man under investigation for sexual misconduct at his college experience?
In my experience representing men who respond to sexual misconduct charges while in college, my clients struggle with painfully shaming feelings of profound powerlessness and deep betrayal. It takes a lot of work and a long time for men to heal from that hurt—particularly because many perceive talking about it as unmanly. To survive a Title IX process men need poise under immense pressure; IMO, committing to a stoic model of self that silences men’s hurt does not build poise, and tends to crack under pressure.
The essential point of a Title IX process demands safeguarding that no one discriminates against the male respondent. (1) This consists of advocating so that the Title IX staff doesn’t assume, as they are bound to do, that this man is guilty because he is a man before looking at ALL the evidence. (2) When Title IX staff, or any other school administrator (or faculty), assume the man’s guilt either before the evidence or after the (exonerating) evidence, they act with male bias. (3) In that dynamic, the man, often a naive student trying his best to succeed in college, suddenly finds himself hurt and betrayed by the very person he once trusted sexually (4), and by the institution he once trusted enough as a professional institution to entrust them with his education and the shaping of his career (5).
And yet, because of the unmanliness of talking about sexual assault victim hood, men’s voices seldom talk about their hurt and thus men’s stories of pain, powerlessness, and betrayal normally go unheard. (6) In sharp contrast, however, women complainants of sexual misconduct speak loudly and powerfully on this very same loss that men, taught that strength means to just grin and bear it, keep quiet. The eloquence required to speak the hurt and betrayal of sexual misconduct heals. It is poise under pressure. Analyze this female complainant’s poised and healing voice in light of the hurt she feels from Dickinson College (a liberal arts school in bucolic Carlisle, Pennsylvania). (7).
Because Patriarchal gender relations encourage men to think of the sexual experience with a woman as inevitably desirable and one where the man acts with “strength”, unlike women, no man grows up thinking of how to state he survived unwanted sex. As the Dickinson female poignantly puts it: “I definitely didn’t anticipate it. It was violent. It left me physically injured, confused, sobbing, and convinced it was my fault. It broke me.” (8). The very same thing happens to men who experience unwanted sexual contact from their female partners. (9). But men just grin and bear it because they too inevitably fall prey to the same flawed macho normative at the expense of truth (10).
Because Patriarchal social relations encourage men to find false strength validating institutional hierarchies, unlike women, no man grows up expecting that the rules of his school will actually betray him, putting him in a role that inherently assumes his role as the aggressor, while simultaneously extinguishing his ability to state his experience of sexual hurt—that very feminine feeling. Yet, every single Title IX plaintiff eventually goes to court stating that his school’s administration betrayed him in assuming his guilt. (11). That’s a big emotional step for any guy to take. As the Dickinson female puts it, the pain of institutional betrayal hurt her powerfully: “Dickinson knows what they’re doing. This is their job. They will help me. Right? Wrong. What followed was the most traumatic year of my life and it is entirely Dickinson’s fault.” (12).
More and more, Title IX respondents understand that the defense of their case requires careful analysis of what exactly took place and who consented to what. That both parties to any sort of sexual interaction need to consent is not the question. The issue is that society is pre-disposed to agree that only the woman refused to consent. “The issue of male-on-male, and especially female-on-male rape and sexual abuse is largely unacknowledged in part because these forms of trauma are much less common than those involving a female victim.” (13) Ultimately, you know the Title IX system failed you if, as a man, you felt unsafe coming forward with the revelation that it was actually your complainant who violated your space and your school that mocked you for suggesting so.
Raul Jauregui
Jauregui Law Firm
I am an attorney and I defend mostly respondents of sexual misconduct in colleges or universities. This is absolutely not my legal opinion or my legal advice, but rather survey of the Title IX topic. If you’re in this situation, in any way, consult a lawyer now.
As posted in Quora:
ENDNOTES
1. Discrimination against a man responding to sexual misconduct because he is a man remains the most talked about part of defending a male respondent under Title IX but it is by no means the only element. The school staff also has to adhere to the promises they made to all enrolled students in their contractual relationship, and public schools in particular, are bound to respect the male respondent’s due process. We’ve discussed some of these concerns here: https://www.studentmisconduct.com/news/2016/6/27/blog-post-05-harris
2. To look at “all the evidence” much like the House Managers seeking to remove Trump from office, you need witnesses and you need to cross examine these witnesses. We’ve discussed the importance of cross examination of the female complainant, and the likelihood that the Department of Education’s Title IX regulations will require it in several posts including: https://www.studentmisconduct.com/news/whats-title-ixs-problem-with-having-college-investigations-of-student-sexual-misconduct-without-cross-examinations, and https://www.studentmisconduct.com/news/what-are-the-new-title-ix-sexual-misconduct-rules-about-and-will-schools-need-to-follow-them
3. Proving this male bias has two generally accepted if extremely outdated approaches, in one, called the erroneous-outcome theory of liability under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the man has to be able to swear to the Court a story that “cast some articulable doubt on the accuracy of the outcome of the disciplinary proceeding.” For example, the plaintiff in Doe v. Miami University, No. 17-3396, 2018 WL 797451 (6th Cir. Feb. 9, 2018) managed to state that the fact that a hearing panelist was mistaken about the applicable standard of consent and believed it to be “affirmative consent,” which is a higher standard than what the university had promised Doe. Additionally, the court in Doe v. Miami also found that the hearing panel’s failure to describe how they resolved inconsistencies in the complainant’s statement also created some doubt as to the accuracy of their decision. The second main approach to prove male bias is selective enforcement, where the man’s essential claim shows that the school’s decision to discipline the student was “grounded” in gender bias. (This one is tough to prove because the easiest way to show it requires information that the school will not share with the man responding, including, for example, how many complaints of sexual misconduct against a woman they ignore.)
4. For just one example of the man’s comfort stating the pain that his accuser betrayed him, consider the facts as stated in Doe v. Brandeis, Civil Action No. 15-11557-FDS, a particularly interesting case because it involves a gay couple post-breakup, then characterizing facts that at the time seemed like caring expressions of love from the respondent towards the complainant as misconduct. The case is available at: https://casetext.com/case/doe-v-brandeis-univ
5. Practically every Title IX case involves stories of cold, callous and deplorable actions from Title IX staff against the male respondent. In a case we handled against Drexel University, a private school in Philadelphia, the on-campus police told our client that his painful experience of sexual assault was “ludicrous”. See, e.g., https://www.thefire.org/saravanan-v-drexel-university-2017-u-s-dist-lexis-193925-e-d-pa-nov-24-2017/
6. Men suffer from patriarchy just as women do. The other side of the male-hetero-white patriarchy everyone rails against includes rejecting the notion that male stoicism conveys strength and that thus the strong man keeps his mouth shut to avoid the shameful perception that he is weak.
7. Rose McAvoy ’20, I’m Done Waiting for Dickinson to Take Sexual Assault Seriously, Guest Columnist, The Dickinsonian, January 30, 2020, available at: https://thedickinsonian.com/opinion/2020/01/30/im-done-waiting-for-dickinson-to-take-sexual-assault-seriously/
8. Id.
9. RAINN, Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics: “1 out of every 10 rape victims are male” citing to Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010 (2013). Available at: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
10. Robert T. Muller, Ph.D., Male Rape Victims Face Difficulties Finding Support, Psychology Today, available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-trauma/201704/male-rape-victims-face-difficulty-finding-support
11. Footnote 1 of this document has a sample of these lawsuits: https://www.studentmisconduct.com/news/2016/6/27/blog-post-04-harris
12. Note 7 supra.
13. Note 10 supra.