The panel was made of the head of the Student Conduct Board, a faculty member who was a dean, and an undergraduate student. The dean and the student were both female.
I did get the questions about, “Why, if this was so long ago, is it coming up now?”
Thankfully they refrained from “What were you wearing?”
I dressed nicely but didn’t wear a tie. The hearing was held in a room within the Student Life offices. They had already told me he was not on campus that semester. Which was a huge relief for me, because I could stop worrying about whether I was going to see him or not. I could stop looking over my shoulder for that semester. He was a junior, so I assumed he was studying abroad. No one corrected my impression; then, the day before the hearing, someone said, “He’s not abroad.” They didn’t elaborate.
He phoned in to the hearing, which the administrators said would take ninety minutes. There was one piece of evidence, which was a text I had sent to a friend, and one witness, a friend I had told. It took three hours. Everything he said was, “Uh, like…”
He would give a small little detail and they would ask him about that and eventually weasel something out of him that would shed light on what happened.
I was pretty lucky he actually said in the hearing that I said, “Not now, maybe later.”
He said he heard that as “Maybe now, and yes later.” Once he admitted he heard me say no, that was all the evidence they needed.
We had to ask questions through the board, and toward the end he said, “I’m sorry that it happened.” It didn’t feel like much at the time.
But in terms of the physical details, I was saying one thing, and he was saying another, and the friend I had called was saying a third thing. So 3b was not an option.
The hearing happened, and I got a letter about a week later—an email—from Student Life. He was found responsible for 3a, not 3b, and the sanction was expulsion.
The feeling as I read through it—when I got to the word expulsion, my eyes locked on that word and I can really only describe that as total relief. Knowing that I would never have to see him on campus again, so for the next two and a half years I didn’t have to worry about seeing him or second-guess where I was going if I was alone. That was very liberating.
* * *
… and the sanction was expulsion. The feeling as I read through it—when I got to the word expulsion, my eyes locked on that word and I can really only describe that as total relief.
* * *
There were still physical effects; I remember the stress being there all the time. I behaved more erratically than I normally would, doing things and saying things I wouldn’t otherwise have said. Being really rude to a friend and feeling really raw much of the time.
And then that was kind of it for a while. I was surprised he had been found responsible for a less serious offense and they had still expelled him. But I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth and ask why. I was afraid to know that answer.
Then other stories started coming out. Other people who felt the process had let them down. A friend who had been assaulted, and her perpetrator was suspended for a year and half and his request to reenroll was only denied until after she graduated. Soon it became clear: Brown had a serious issue I needed to address.
ANONYMOUS S
I reported my sexual assault my sophomore year, almost exactly a year after it occurred. We had a guest speaker come talk to all the student athletes and she went into detail, stating, “When you say no, it means no, and anything forward from that is sexual assault.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought, “Oh. My. God. I was raped that night.”
I think the hardest thing for me to accept was that neither one of us was intoxicated. This meant he knew exactly what he was doing every single minute. I now could stop blaming myself because what he did to me was a crime.
So the next day I reported it to campus police. To my knowledge they didn’t really do anything. I told them I was scared for my life and they said, “All we can do is move you to another dorm.”
I said, “You don’t understand, he said he would kill me if I told anybody.” They said, “You need to have proof, witnesses.” I had no proof and no rape kit.
The constant question I kept getting was “Are you sure that really happened?”
I told my parents because the police had said they might question them. To my knowledge, they never did. My mom was in complete shock. My dad was so heartbroken; we’re all really close.
So, instead of dropping out of school, I went to counseling. I had to learn how to cope with seeing him around campus and the athletic facilities. If he had been removed from campus, I might have been able to move forward. But I was constantly on high alert in case I encountered him.
I was completely and utterly heartbroken. I had entrusted my life to my university and the athletic department.
What if I lost my scholarship?
Everything I had worked for was truly crashing down. All of those years of putting in extra workouts, all of those parties and sleepovers missed because of early a.m. practice, all to be taken away because my campus police seemed to believe I didn’t “make no clear enough for him”? This was my worst nightmare.
I had no idea who I was, but the real upside to being an athlete is that you become very good at putting on a façade. I remember wanting to scream at the top of my lungs just wanting help, but instead I decided to keep my head down, grunt it out, get my degree, and get the hell out.
AYSHA IVES
For years, I didn’t tell anybody about being choked and raped. When I was about thirty, I told one of my good friends about it. She said, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” We had been friends since middle school. She was distressed that she hadn’t been able to support me.
And then I told my current boyfriend. And then I wrote and published a book, Unbroken: How God Made Me Whole Again, which directly addressed the trauma of sexual violence in my life. It was so hard for me to tell the story, but writing that book was a healing thing for me. It was me reclaiming my voice. Before I wrote that book, I couldn’t say the word rape. I couldn’t even write the word rape. It was such a filthy word. That word was such a trigger for me. When someone else said that word, I would flinch.
I never saw that guy again.
In hindsight, I’m sure I wasn’t his only victim.
After the rape, I changed my major. I had started out in biochem, and then right after the rape, I changed my major to psychology.
ANONYMOUS V
The last few weeks of fall 2013 were unbearable. I’d followed my own safety rules and I was still assaulted. I didn’t want to tell my parents. I kept running into my rapist on campus—in the student center, at the library, and on paths walking into academic buildings. I remember thinking that my lungs didn’t know how to breathe the same air around him anymore. Every time he entered a building, I felt hyperaware of his presence and claustrophobic. Switching floors didn’t help me escape the feeling. It got to the point that I was so on edge that switching buildings couldn’t calm me down. I left school early for the winter break without finishing all of my exams. I still didn’t tell my parents: not about the rape or the academic fallout. The wall of things unsaid between us was starting to grow.
Over break, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I was very resistant to that diagnosis at first. I didn’t think it was fair to pathologize my sadness and fear. My experience was traumatic. What happened to me was awful. I didn’t want to hear that I was sick. I thought that what I was feeling was expected and normal.
I understood the diagnosis more when I came back for the spring semester. I was a mess. I still had the same anxiety and trigger response when I saw him. Before the assault, I didn’t think about being safe on campus. After, I was hyperaware. I couldn’t sit with my back to the door and I had to know who was around. I constantly looked over my shoulder while I walked, or had a friend walk me to class. I felt l
ike our campus wasn’t big enough for both him and me to live and study there. I would go to the dining hall, see him, and lose my appetite immediately. I’d see him in the library and lose focus for hours.
So I decided to go through the hearing process. I didn’t see how I could stay in college with my attacker on campus. I don’t doubt my memory of that night. I didn’t file a report lightly. I agonized over it before filing and up until the hearing. I remember calling a friend and telling her that maybe I could call it off if he would just admit it and apologize to me. I thought that maybe I just wanted the truth. I didn’t want to ruin someone’s life. I spent hours in therapy going over my own behavior that night, checking for things I’d missed that made what he did okay. I couldn’t find anything. Every time I searched, I came up with the same conclusion: he knew what he was doing, he knew I didn’t want it, and he didn’t care. I questioned my own motivations and actions very thoroughly. I didn’t report to go on a witch hunt.
During the reporting process, my apartment was my safe space. I would go to meetings about the hearing and then come back and hide. Maybe on weekends I’d go to something social. Mostly, I was drinking too much—self-medicating. The process took months and it took all my energy. I filed in February and the last appeal didn’t end until after graduation that May. The night of the first hearing, I thought the process had worked. I had gone through hell by that point. I’d been hospitalized over spring break for PTSD symptoms (without telling my parents why I had been admitted), I’d dropped a class, and my friends were shuffling through “check on V” duties to make sure I was still feeding myself and getting out of bed. But that night in April, I thought it was going to be okay. The first panel found him responsible.
* * *
My roommate brought home a huge helping of mac ’n’ cheese and ribs, and another friend brought wine, and we were all just really happy. I slept that night.
* * *
While we waited to hear the sanction, my roommates, friends, and I celebrated and breathed deeply for the first time in months. My roommate brought home a huge helping of mac ’n’ cheese and ribs, and another friend brought wine, and we were all just really happy. I slept that night.
Then the next morning I got the email: the board assigned him social probation and counseling as a punishment. I didn’t understand how they could believe me and give him such a slap-on-the-wrist of a sanction. Drugs and alcohol didn’t cause the assault, and we weren’t in a relationship. How would counseling change anything? Twice during the [hearing] process he went to drinking events and the school found out about it and did nothing. They said they added it to his file. I had an administrator take me aside and tell me I should file a Title IX complaint. I was too exhausted.
I found out a year later that the campus police didn’t know he was on social probation, and my RA didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be in my building. The sanction was given in April of my junior year, the spring after the assault, and the final appeal was June. It wasn’t until February of the following year that the police were notified. One of my friends had called them in November to say he was violating his sanctions. The police didn’t respond to her call because they had no record he was on probation at all. Since all this happened I’ve heard through the grapevine about other girls my attacker pressured or forced to have sex, people who didn’t report.
* * *
I fell out of love with the school. For three years I had worked as a student caller for the annual fund.… I quit that job.
* * *
Throughout all of this, I was angry. I fell out of love with the school. For three years I had worked as a student caller for the annual fund. After this happened I quit that job. Saying “This school’s great” would have been disingenuous.
When I tell people about my negative experience with the college reporting process, they ask why I didn’t call the police. Part of my assault was anal penetration, which isn’t considered rape in the state where I was assaulted. I vaguely knew that before my assault because I had heard about it through activism—that gay men couldn’t be raped. A day after my rape, I Googled this to check it out. Today, two years later, I now know that unwanted anal penetration is as serious a crime as vaginal rape in my state, but I didn’t understand that from what I found on Google that day. All I understood was that anal penetration was not considered sex under the law. From this correct reading of the law (if incorrect interpretation of how seriously my assault would be taken), I assumed that the police could not help me. If the state did not see my assault as sex, then I didn’t believe the state could see it as rape. This made me feel invalidated—like the law deemed me lesser than a victim of forced vaginal penetration—and, above all, incredibly alone.
I trusted the college to help me. They didn’t. I took the fall of 2014 off from college to recover from that betrayal and figure out my mental health.
FABIANA DIAZ
I was so ambitious going into college. And I didn’t want him to ruin any of that. It didn’t hit me until after that summer bridge program at Michigan ended and the fall freshman semester began.
I went through the whole police and university process, which meant being pulled out of class, or not being able to go to class. I missed a lot. I would meet with someone for five hours. It was just over and over and over again, for a month or so. It was so horrible. A nightmare.
For a long time I would say, “I’m fine, I’m fine,” even though I knew I was not fine. Life became a competition for me: he wasn’t gonna stop me from doing what I wanted to do.
But it’s been difficult.
The police didn’t want to move forward: “These things never go well for survivors. There’s not any hard evidence—the jury will never convict him.”
At the school, it was the same thing: I walked in one day and the woman in the Office of Student Conflict Resolution said, “We have a decision, and you won’t be happy with the results, but we’ll make sure he’s not in your classes,” and she handed me the letter and a box of tissues and left. I still see her sometimes on campus and I’ll look the other way.
Meanwhile, I started getting harassed by the football team because he was friends with them. They were harassing me, and then everyone from that night turned on me. I was really bullied.
That was really shitty. Really hard.
And then lo and behold, in the fall of freshman year, I’m in English 125 and he walks in.
I got up and walked out. I called an administrator and called my dad and it just blew up. But what it came down to was I had to switch classes, of course, not him.
And that’s how it was. He’d walk into a room and I’d have to be the one to get up and leave. There was no protective order, nothing.
ANONYMOUS XY
I told my sensei first. I trusted her. She advised me to not keep holding it in, that I should tell my parents because secrets take on a life of their own. “Who knows what their reaction will be?” she said. “Maybe they’ll be helpful.” She was always hoping for the best in people.
Trauma shakes everything up. Puts things in stark relief. My roommates—we’re not friends anymore. They basically abandoned me in two weeks. The married woman and the single guy were about to have an affair, yet they told me my rape was causing tension. I thought, “No, your personal drama is causing the tension.”
But my family—I’d been dodging them after the rape. So a few months later, I finally told my mother. I was in Chicago. We were Skyping. I took a deep breath and said, “This thing happened. I was raped. It was pretty bad. I’ve gotten help, and I’m hoping you can help me, too.” She said, “I don’t know what to say. I guess I could fly over, but that probably wouldn’t help.”
Then she just sat there. At that point, I was looking for a lawyer to help me with a civil suit, so I said, “Can you help me with that?” And she said no. She didn’t ask if I was well. My father didn’t say anything to me. I have three siblings. I didn’t tell them. I wanted to, but my mother actively
discouraged it.
I went home for Thanksgiving a month after my rape. My mom and I got into an argument (probably about how I didn’t obey her enough) and she physically assaulted me. She grabbed me and started shaking me. I don’t remember what she said. I had a panic attack.
Long story short, my parents and I went back and forth for three years. There was a lot of victim-blaming, a lot of denial. So I’m not in contact with them anymore.
Why did my rape make them so uncomfortable? My parents had tried to control me, but maybe deep down when they lashed out, they were actually scared. Anger and control really come from fear.
One thing I learned from my sensei: strength and compassion come hand in hand.
For a while it was all very hard. The immediate aftermath was intensely lonely.
* * *
Friends
A Chorus
She was the first person I told that I was raped. She and I are still really good friends.
My roommate really helped, and so did my RA friend.
My assailant and I had the same friends. It made it interesting, after it happened, to see who was really there for me and who wasn’t.
My best friend let me stay with her and sat with me that night when I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t cry.
My sorority—along with my friend Marie—saved me.
His friends cornered one of my friends and screamed at her.
I told a friend of mine what happened and she really shamed me. I had to go get Plan B with my mom.
Your priorities can shift on an hour-by-hour level. And your world can feel small compared to what your friends are doing.
At the end of the day, it really mattered who was in my corner.
We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out Page 8