After several troubling court decisions on the handling of college sex cases, a state judge in California has issued a ringing defense of due process. The ruling by Judge Joel Pressman, first reported by Ashe Schow, held that the University of California-San Diego (UCSD), had provided a fundamentally unfair procedure to a student accused of sexual assault. Scott Greenfield has an excellent analysis of the ruling, which also has been covered by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as well as by FIRE.
The case involved two students (both pseudonymous) who had a brief affair in early 2014. Contemporaneous text messages the accuser sent suggested that the intercourse had been voluntary, and that the accuser was at least somewhat experienced with alcohol. The sexual relationship quickly ended, but soon after the accused student attended a late spring social event at the accuser’s sorority (with another date), the accuser filed a complaint with UCSD.
The accuser wrote out a statement and was interviewed by one of UCSD’s “complaint resolution officers,” Elena Acevedo Dalcourt. (UCSD has refused to turn over either the statement or Dalcourt’s interview notes.) Only then did the accuser make a formal statement alleging two separate instances of sexual misconduct: first on the evening of a party (at which she had “brought a change of clothes to [the accused student’s] place,” with the expectation of sleeping over) and then on the morning after. She also claimed that despite a text message that she had a contact who “usually” purchased her alcohol (since she was underage), she actually was “inexperienced” with alcohol, and the accused took advantage by encouraging her to drink heavily.
Investigator Dalcourt found insufficient evidence of the first claim, but concluded that it was likely sexual contact occurred without “effective consent” the following morning. The investigator reached this conclusion because the accuser, in her interviews, “exhibited signs of a trauma victim.” Dalcourt’s report did not reveal what those signs were. ..Continued.. by KC Johnson
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