1. The old case became news when a 101-page civil complaint was filed by the alleged victim last month. Nothing has been determined true or false regarding the lawsuit’s allegations, but much of the media coverage has begun with the assumption that its claims are true. It could also be an example of a lawyer seeing an opportunity for a settlement and a 33% contingent fee based on a university wanting to avoid bad publicity.
2. The news media is refusing to publish the name of “Jane Doe,” the alleged victim. She is an adult, and she filed a lawsuit accusing university officials and law enforcement of covering up a rape by seven men whose names are also in the lawsuit. She should not be shielded from taking accountability for her own legal action.
3. On Nov. 14, 2024, about three weeks after the incident, the then-student who filed the suit, spoke for hours to a Cornell police investigator and an investigator from Cornell’s Title IX office, which makes sure the university complies with federal regulations related to sex discrimination. The transcript of their conversation was about 120 pages, condensed by the police investigator into a six-page official statement. The student signed the document. For some reason that fact seems to be glossed over in many of the accounts.
4. The Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, reviewed the statement and concluded that he could not bring a successful criminal case to court. It is unethical for a prosecutor to file charges if he or she does not believe the crime can be proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Whatever happened, the fact that the alleged rape victim signed a statement that did not include her comment during the interview, “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped” constitutes automatic reasonable doubt, in my view. “The omissions may help explain why the district attorney did not think he could bring a criminal case based on her allegations,” the New York Times says. Ya think? Nevertheless, all the social media uproar, the attacks by dormant #MeToo activists and disclosure of investigative records prompted Van Houten to abandon his integrity and reopen the criminal probe for a grand jury review.
5. New York’s Democratic Ethics Villain Governor Kathy Hochul expressed “deep concern over the handling of the case” because she knows little about prosecution ethics and is first and foremost a political hack. She appointed State Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to take over the investigation. James is the hyper-political AG who announced when she ran for office that she would find some justification for prosecuting Donald Trump. Well, she prosecuted him anyway. Special prosecutors are supposed to be independent and objective. James is incapable of either.
6. Here is how the National Review describes the beginning of the evening in question:
“Jane Doe’s complaint says that she started drinking vodka at her sorority house and was already intoxicated when she got to a bar, which served her at least one drink even though she was underaged and drunk (she is suing the bar). She then went to the fraternity house, where she alleges that one of the men “propositioned her with having a threesome with her and another one of his fraternity brothers.” …Did she agree? The complaint doesn’t say. It instead insists that, “in her drunken state, Plaintiff was incapable of consenting to this proposition.” …The New York Penal Code offers three avenues to prove rape (other than the victim being underage). Third-degree rape under Section 130.25 punishes sex “without such person’s consent where such lack of consent is by reason of some factor other than incapacity to consent.” Second-degree rape under Section 130.30 requires proof that the victim was “incapable of consent by reason of being mentally disabled or mentally incapacitated.” First-degree rape under Section 130.35 requires proof that the victim was “incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless.” … [So] New York law doesn’t consider a victim to be incapacitated, physically or mentally, simply because she was voluntarily intoxicated and had impaired judgment.”
The New York Times describes the confused and inconsistent narrative of “Jane Doe” and the way it evolved from that point on:
“Jane Doe considered two of the men friends. She and the men involved that night had taken ketamine. Things had started off consensual — though she was drunk — and some of her memories were hazy, the transcript shows. She had lost control. Her initial impulse was to keep quiet about what had happened.
But within a day or two, “everyone involved in sorority and fraternity life knew what had happened,” she told investigators. Most of the gossip blamed her, calling her “a whore that had an eightsome with the Chi Phi guys.”
She had not known how or why so many men had shown up in the room that night. But then she heard that a Snapchat message had been sent to the fraternity, inviting members to join what was happening. And when she saw on a message board that someone had said that Chi Phi members were “gang banging,” the pieces started coming together.
She told investigators that she had a revelation when reading an online comment that called Chi Phi brothers “terrible people, they gang raped a sophomore.”
“And that’s kind of when I came to the realization that I had been gang raped, gang assaulted, whatever you want to call it; that’s what happened,” she said.
I have written here before about what I feel is a fatal ethics flaw with sexual harassment and sexual assault laws: the alleged victim can decide some day months, years or decades later that she was harassed, assaulted or raped when she didn’t believe so at the time. It was that factual assertion that got me blacklisted at NPR as its ethics commentator. Grrrrr…
This is a good place to end Part 1. I’ll get to Part 2 after I calm down…
I think this is the Lacrosse rape case post you referenced: https://web.archive.org/web/20101122122017/http://ethicsscoreboard.com/list/nifong.html
Here is a list of Ethics Scoreboard posts saved in the Internet Archive: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQTsiJXscck07Ii7qw-oR9YKSzLhWYUOYcMk57lXye63CdzGN4WgIiHzn9c9eSpPCWxNXZXeSPopfHP/pubhtml
Thank you so much, Fred! I liked that post. I wish I knew how to find those things….
“For some reason that fact seems to be glossed over in many of the accounts.”
Despite the fact that she, and her attorney, conceded the fact, there are women who still believe Lindsay Clancey’s husband murdered the kids and tried to frame her.
They’re immune to the concept of “accountability”.
Here’s a relevant clip (not recent) of one of our greatest “hard truth tellers”, Camille Paglia, with whom I know you’re aware: https://x.com/rawdogmillionar/status/2105292799944052845
Side note: I discovered Camille Pagila while in college in the early 90s (when the “date rape” ball was set in motion) and wrote an approving column about her in the school paper. For that I was branded a “fascist”, “sexist”, and “rape apologist” by people who used to enjoy my columns. For two weeks the paper published furious rebuttals to my apostasy. Didn’t care (kind of liked it, honestly), and never looked back.
I’ve always loved her, and this clip is a great example why.
Another great clip. Especially love her exasperated growl around 30 seconds in: https://x.com/wokal_distance/status/1802967556954968483
I see plenty of material at YouTube from defense attorneys about false rape allegations. Normally there is a presumption of innocence in a criminal trial, where the prosecutor has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. In a rape trial all the prosecutor needs to bring charges and successfully prosecute the case are the statements of the alleged victim; no additional technical evidence or witnesses are needed. This means that for the defendant staying silent (e.g. by invoking the Fifth Amendment) is not a recommended strategy; the defendant has to do a lot of effort to offer proof that the accusations are false, e.g. by impeaching the accuser. There are limitations on the strategy of the defense, e.g. rape shield laws. So the deck is stacked against the defendants in a rape trial case.
Another observation is that women in many states face little legal consequences for making accusations that are later to be proven false.
These false accusations are often made because the accuser wants to duck moral responsibility for her actions, e.g. she does not want to be slut-shamed or have her relationship with her boyfriend ended. The strategy is to obtain a get-out-of-jail card by painting herself as the victim and all males involved as perpetrators. Intoxication (voluntary or not) is used as an argument that there was no real freely given consent. My understanding is that DA Van Houten in Tompkins County did not want to pursue charges due to her voluntary drunkenness during the events at the frat house.
I am not going to comment on the behavior of the males who participated in the gang bang, except that they acted in a foolish way. I prefer to leave it up to their parents to explain how poor their judgment is.
Feminist groups and anti-rape activists dismiss false rape allegations by saying only 2% of rape allegations are false.
Now THERE’s an imaginary statistic if there ever was one.
That 2% claim does not come from scientific research, but from a book “Against Our Will” from “Susan Brownmiller” in the 1970s which is a feminist book using comments and opinions to arrive at this number, according to the source below.
Police statistics will not count the case below as false reporting but as blackmail. False allegations are often made in divorce court to gain leverage in custody disputes.
I took a few minutes to read the Wikipedia account of this event. If it is accurate at all, there are so many contradictory statements from participants and witnesses and so little evidence, I understand why criminal charges were not pursued. It was nearly 3 weeks after the fact that the young woman sought a rape kit and provided testimony to the police department.
Certainly there is a lot of abhorrent behavior on display here. No heroes, maybe a villain or two, but most certainly a lot of stupidity and moral bankruptcy.
When these stories arise I am curious about the way drunkenness is weaponized against the defendants, yet they are not allowed its use as a defense. If she is too drunk to truly assent to sexual behavior, then she is too drunk to drive and if she got behind the wheel of a car we would hold her criminally responsible for whatever mayhem ensues. But we don’t hold her accountable for drunkenly assenting to sex? The young men are almost always drinking, their judgement is impaired so perhaps they believe there is consent, perhaps they don’t recognize that the young woman is drunk … they are held accountable for drunken behavior while she is not.
I am not defending rape. The story that has unfolded at Cornell is awful. Its ideological, social and moral implications are troublesome, and as is usual, there are those using this story to advance an agenda.
I am probably in Camille Paglia’s camp that the women’s movement demanded rights, freedoms and opportunities, but is willing to play the victim card when it is convenient. At the risk of victim shaming and blaming, this young woman appears to have played a role in at least some of the events that set the ball rolling, but that does not mean all the players were innocent. What a mess.
The one thing I read that happened was that one of the original two guys involved had sent out the group chat inviting others to join.
The notion of driving drunk was a good one, and if she were “guilty” of drunk driving and punished, than all the rest should be too.
It absolutely crushes me that men could treat another human being this way, drunk or not – given the oppressive patriarchal view that men should be protectors of women (I know, shame on me for such archaic thinking).
The harsh realization that she was a complete moron is also crushing.
Sad….
It has been a few decades since “Sexual Utopia in Power” by F. Roger Devlin came out. The essay brings clarity to how “sex with regrets” can be recast after the fact as “date rape” by a naive woman who doesn’t easily take responsibility for her choices and is intensely dissatisfied with how things worked out.
Since I read piecemeal like Dr. Samuel Johnson I may have never read the whole thing. If you can get to the bottom of p. 17 of the PDF linked before, you get his basic point.
https://www.toqonline.com/archives/v6n2/DevlinTOQV6N2.pdf
I read a lot of weird stuff. Thanks for letting me share.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
P.S.: The parents of teenage boys will like the essay.