Betsy DeVos, Title IX & What it's Like to be a Campus Sexual Assault Survivor

I can think of at least one college that will be so excited they have even more of an excuse to do nothing.

That was my first coherent, non-expletive-ridden thought after Betsy Devos announced that she was rescinding President Barack Obama’s guidelines concerning campus rape procedures.To begin, let’s go ahead and call Devos “B.” I called the guy who raped me D on here. You could also substitute “B” as “Betsy and bros,” as she does everything with the approval of Donald Trump and his male-dominated administration.Or you could think of B as standing for something else. Your call.Anyway, so B announced that colleges, instead of following the preponderance of evidence standard of a crime, could instead decide to use the “clear and convincing evidence” standard.Preponderance of evidence standard is simple and has precedent in legal and non-legal arenas: is it more likely than not (like 51 percent or more) that the alleged crime happened? “Clear and convincing” means it is highly probable the misconduct occurred. B’s statement will no doubt be defended with the fact that schools do not have to switch to the “clear and convincing” standard; they can stick with the preponderance of evidenc estandard. It makes it sound like a choice. This sounds all well and good until a student files a Title IX complaint against their school; what if their school used the preponderance of evidence standard? How will the federal Department of Education proceed?Here’s another reason this is not good: federal guidelines tend to not be optional for a reason. There are federal guidelines about almost everything and with good reason: how clean a factory has to be in order for people to work there and for goods to be produced there; how clean hospitals have to be and what measures they have to follow in order to meet a minimum standard of safety for their patients; what tests does each car have to pass so that a multi-billion dollar car company with nearly limitless legal prowess at its disposal can’t fuck you over and sell you a car that’s more likely to kill you than their competitors?So no, optional federal guidelines are no bueno. What’s more, making it optional TELLS you it’s not a good idea. If “innocent” students are having their rights trampled so much when they are accused of sexual misconduct of some degree, why on earth are you making it “optional” to protect their rights?So that’s the first issue. The second issue is the obvious: IT’S SEXUAL ASSAULT. I don’t like speaking out for multiple people, even though I feel like I have educated myself enough to do so, so I’ll just speak out using my own case as a guide.How the hell could I do that? Honestly. How the hell could I prove that misconduct was “highly probable” to have occurred when so much of my own case was based in large part to just how stupid the guy who raped me was? D told several lies to the people who investigated my rape at my college, and the part that sucked was that all I could do was tell the truth, never change my story because it was the truth. I was fortunate to have all of this time suppressing the rape to be reminded of all the horrid little fucking details that were burned into my mind.But what about all the women who were worse off than me? What if they didn’t have a perfect record, like I did? What if they decided to try to “normalize” what happened to them by sleeping with a bunch of people, maybe even the guy who raped them? What if they left out a couple of details in their initial interview by the school that later the rapist or someone’s friend said in a subsequent interview, thereby making the woman look suspicious? What if she was so drunk she doesn’t remember anything, to the point where instead of being sometimes blackout drunk she couldn’t remember it all — just had a soreness between her legs the next day?Sexual assault is hard to prove, and while a large part of that is because courts and institutions of the justice system like police are biased against victims, part of it is just the nature of the crime. Many women don’t report immediately after it happened, either because they’re too scared or they are confused and/or trying to normalize what happened — because if they justify it and make it sound like it wasn’t rape, like I tried to do, then that means they don’t have to admit to themselves they were violated and their lives will never be the same. Denial is a powerful motivation. I wrote an entire post called “Insanity” to describe just how much denial pushed me to nearly ruin my life.  I am quite confident that if I was raped a few years before as a freshman, which is when a female college student is most likely to be raped, I never would have reported it because I, naïve and from a small town where slut-shaming was innate in every faction, would not have known it for what it was. My parents didn’t talk to me about what rape was and what it could be; I doubt they even know. My high school certainly didn’t. My college DEFINITELY didn’t, not on its own; a couple of women’s studies groups put on events that piqued my curiosity and got the ball rolling. But ultimately, it was going through it on my own that really made it sink it. I don’t know if that’s the case for everyone — truly, I don’t know if you have to be raped to know just how much it affects you, because perhaps it was just a me-thing — but I do know a few things.One, I think my college found the guy who raped me “more likely to have done it than not” because they couldn’t slut shame me. I also was a 22-year-old senior graduating who would not be bullied. Leaders of residence life knew me — not because I was a trouble maker or because I was a kiss-ass, but because of work I did around campus during my four years. It also was a small campus so people who stuck around all four years tended to meet administration members at one occasion or another. Two, I think D fucked up a lot when they interviewed him. He tried to paint me as a crazy vindictive bitch (original, yeah?) and that I stalked him, and gave a couple “examples” of that. I had friends, who were also not known trouble makers (or unknown, to be frank), who talked about what I was like after the rape and vouched for my character. It’s also a small campus; forget how hard it is to prove stalking, on a campus that small you can’t NOT see someone. Believe a rape victim when she says it’s impossible to not see the person who raped you on a campus that small. Believe a rape victim when she says it’s impossible to not see a person who’s friends with the rapist on a campus that small. Believe me.Meanwhile, D had, what, a fraternity bro (who also isn’t that smart or particularly rule-following)? He also made up an entire sexual encounter (consensual) that never happened; that’s one thing I have never understood. Maybe he was counting on me not being so blunt about our previous sexual and the question would make me have to say something I hadn’t already said, thereby casting suspicion.Another reason he said it is much more simple and, in my opinion, believable: he got blackout drunk a couple weeks before he raped me and had sex with someone else who he thought was me. Seriously. It would not surprise me. Piece of shit.

Believe a rape victim when she says it’s impossible to not see the person who raped you on a campus that small. Believe a rape victim when she says it’s impossible to not see a person who’s friends with the rapist on a campus that small. Believe me.

But I digress.Third, my story. I could barely make it through without crying. The day I told two women who I didn’t know how I was raped and by who was the hardest day of my life. I think – it’s hard to determine now. It was definitely one of the top three hardest days of my life. I couldn’t replicate that emotion if I tried. Then again, I also can’t talk about that night anymore. There is no conceivable purpose other than causing me considerable pain.Fourth, I think the school ruled in my favor because they were afraid I would sue. Here was a white, upper middleclass student with a perfect record, good grades and backing from professors and student leaders.  Opposite was an idiot fraternity bro with a punchable face.…Okay, he may have had a little more going for him than that, but not much.That last point is the most relevant. I could have caused them lots of trouble, as far as they knew. I could go to the press, I could get a lawyer, I could do quite a bit of damage to the school’s reputation. Doubtless certain individuals think I already have, and if you’re reading this, just know I could have done a lot more if I was given cause.Instead, they could say he was guilty — and then give him a non-existent punishment. They could require him to go to counseling — which, by the way, is absolutely fucking useless if you don’t think you have a problem and you want to work through it. Take it from someone who knows. They could suspend him from leadership positions — my personal request, as I don’t think someone like that should be president of a fraternity or, MOST IMPORTANTLY, allowed to be an orientation leader — aka, have lots of access to female freshmen who don’t know any better.They could do all this, and then let him back the next campus. They could, and they did. And then a few months later he was mysteriously expelled, with only rumors whispering that he was in a girl’s room where he wasn’t supposed to be.(I went to a small school, therefore rumor mills are very powerful; that being said, I still to this day don’t know what happened to kick D off campus. I think it’s better that way).But according to B, poor little D was defenseless. According to B, D and his ilk of “alleged” rapists are mistreated. According to B, women like me should be even more of a nervous wreck on the verge of a mental breakdown during a sexual assault investigation, because it’s just too “easy” for us right now and too “hard” on those poor witto rapists like D and Brock Turner.If you don’t mind, B, in no uncertain terms and no empty smiles that you are famous for, could you tell me what the fuck part of my ordeal was too “easy” for me and too “hard” for D? What part was unfair to him? Was it that he had to stay away from me during the days after classes were over but he got to stay on campus, even though he wasn’t graduating, until Baccalaureate and commencement were over? Was it that that time I was walking to Baccalaureate and my heart plummeted into my stomach when I could see D and his distinctive walk 500 feet away just outside my college’s chapel, and he was less than 100 feet away from me talking to his new girl and her mother before he left just before the commencement began? That meant he was right there, right by me, and every nerve in my body felt it. Every blood vessel in my face knew it. Every piece of my broken and bleeding heart screamed it, right next to its chants of why did you do this to me?What about how he could use the gym, the cafeteria, any residence hall that he could get someone to give keycard access to, and I could literally turn around a corner and he would be right there? Was that just not fair enough for him? How about that he could get into my college apartment virtually any second of the day and hit me, rape me, beat me if he so chose? It wouldn’t be hard, if he had wanted to. It would’ve been all too easy. I know because that’s all I thought about for that entire week. Every waking second, and sometimes, when I would wake up, I would realize in my nightmares, too. Let’s move on though, shall we? What part was unfair to him during the summer, when he got the initial verdict and was sent a letter framed all around him and his concerns about the appeals process? I could show you my letter, B. The letter takes great care to emphasize that D could appeal and why, but not that I, too, could appeal and why. I didn’t know that I could ask for him to be expelled instead of merely “temporarily suspended” while he goes to “mandatory therapy” and completes it in time for school to start less than a month after the investigation is considered closed.We’ve been over this before about how effective “mandatory” therapy is. I’ll summarize: not very.Was it fair, that he got to move in to his quad with his three best frat bros into a co-ed dorm where dozens, if not hundreds, of drunk girls frequently leave their doors unlocked at night, perfectly vulnerable to poor witto D down the hall who they wouldn’t think they needed protecting against?I mean, I didn’t think I needed protecting against D and his cruel fingers and half-soft penis and strong arms that pinned me to his body. I even had a history of being treated like dirt by D, but I never thought he would do that to me.But he did. And that’s why I’m writing this post, B, if you’re reading.I mean, D did get expelled under mysterious circumstances, so maybe that is exactly what we did. We don’t know, because while the college was being all unfair and not giving him due process, according to you, the college didn’t tell his rape victim why he finally got expelled. The college didn’t tell anybody. Poor D – he was left being able to tell whatever story he wanted to whoever he cared to tell. How unfair, and oh my, how embarrassing, to have to make up stories about how you chose not to go back to your school for your senior year.And I do address you, B, when I talk about D. It’s D’s face I see whenever I see yours, when I see that vapid smile on your face. It’s D’s face I saw when you were smiling like a loon at your confirmation hearing when congresspersons rightfully questioned how you would handle being head of the Department of Education — you, who had no qualifications, just a loooooooooong list of donations you’d made to the Republican party.I do emphasize the “loooooooooooooooooong.”It’s D’s face I saw all throughout 2016 when Donald Trump ran for president, and won. It’s D’s face I see whenever I see our president’s.Try to imagine what it’s like to see your rapist on the President of the United States and members of his cabinet. I don’t blame you if you don’t. It’s hard.It’s a lot fucking harder than any day D ever had or has, I promise you. Some days I want to claw my skin of my body because I’m tired of living in it. Some days I ask God why the hell can’t I just die already — he kills little babies with brain cancer all the time or beloved fathers of four in random car accidents, so why can’t he kill me?Maybe it’s because I don’t pray to him much. Maybe it’s because there is no God, and the only justice in the world is the one we make of it. If that’s the case, B, you’re failing. You are failing me, a rape victim; you are failing millions of survivors/victims, and you are failing millions of future ones. Long after your disgusting self is gone from office, and so is President #45, and every member of Congress pro or against the new “guidelines,” your damage will be there. You chose to make it easier for rapists to get away with their crime, under the dumbass rallying cry of “due process.”I’ll elaborate: we are talking about men accused of rape at a college campus. When they are accused and are investigated, the results do not find them in a prison cell. The results sometimes aren’t even so much as a black mark on their record that they could say is plagiarism and no one would even know. The results sometimes are as minimal as “mandatory therapy” and not being able to hold a leadership position that you would only hold for a couple of months at most, anyway.Let me re-iterate, B. If someone is investigated for sexual assault and found tobe more likely than not to have committed it, they:

• are not thrown in a prison cell.
• are not photographed and logged into databases.
• are not fined.
• are not exposed to the public for what they did (or, to make you feel better about yourself, for what they didn’t do).

That’s why a college does not have to have the same “due process” as the court system. They don’t need it for vandalism charges, plagiarism charges, theft charges, hate speech charges, or any other charges that a student can have levied against, because universities don’t send people to prison. The most they can do is to choose to press legal charges and hope the system takes their side — which they might, since universities have the money to hire good lawyers — or to expel someone.In short, colleges don’t have to follow the same due process as courts because they don’t have as much power. Someone can be expelled from college but their life isn’t over. They can apply to a different one; they can go to a trade school; they can wait a couple years, work, and then apply somewhere else when the storm blows over. No one has to know. Colleges don’t have the power to show the public mug shots of the “alleged” rapists. So if colleges don’t have as much power to really damage someone’s life, doesn’t it make sense that they not have to follow the same evidence standard as a court of law? You can be found guilty of plagiarism without having committed plagiarism; you can be found guilty of destroying someone’s property without actually having done it. So why did B decide to wade into the storm of sexual assault and its horrible grip on college campuses, and make it even worse??It boggles my mind. I can only determine it’s because B doesn’t care about sexual assault victims. B instead saw that President Obama did something so they have to do the opposite; if it makes it easier for men to “grab ‘em by the pussy” with no consequences under the guise of them being denied “due process” when they’re found guilty, even better.So, the letter to B is going to conclude with this: you’re going to lose. Sure, you just won today. You won on behalf of every sexual predator and every abuse partner out there. But it’s all temporary. One day you will not be in office. President Trump will not be in office. Every representative in the U.S. Congress now will one day be dead, lose their re-election bid or, God forbid, do the right thing and step down after a while so someone else can give representing a shot.But I’ll be here, and I won’t stop writing. We Are Her will not stop speaking out. RAINN, Heaven, and other victim advocacy groups will not stop fighting. And we will win. We will make it harder for rapists to rape without consequence, because, to paraphrase Tony Stark, if we can’t protect people from sexual assault, you can be damn well sure we will avenge them. We will not go quietly into that good night. We can be knocked back a step or two, but we will still keep coming — because we are in the right.Some people out there will unfortunately have their “what ifs” blind them and think you’re reasonable; it’s the same side of them that victim blames and grasps on to every tinfoil hat reason they can find that says rape is not as prevalent as it is. They do this because they don’t want to accept that rapists are everywhere – not just dark alleys or distant cities or featureless rooms. Some will not be changed because, as I have discovered over the last couple of years, there are some truly terrible people in this world masquerading as decent or normal people. Maybe being a bad person is normal. I don’t know.But I do know that some is not all. Some can be talked to. Some can learn — because we’re right.We will not be silenced and we will not give in until rapists are held accountable, and colleges, police, lawyers, and federal and state governments are on the side of the victim not just in name but also in practice.B, you say you’re making these changes so rapists — ‘scuse me, “alleged” rapists — don’t feel so trampled or inconvenienced by a “more likely than not” guilty verdict. Donald Trump once said mocked Sen. John McCain about his being held as a prisoner of war, saying, “I like my heroes not captured.” Well, B, I like my rapists trampled. I like them to feel consequences for what they’ve done. I like them to be brought down a peg or two and to hear, from someone who is not their rape victim or their rape victim’s friends, that they are a rapist piece of shit — and no amount of denial or “sorrys” is going to change that.Enjoy your day basking in the approval of rapists and their moms, B. The next one is ours.