Crime & Safety

Oxy Rape Victims Sue School, Allege Indifference

Oxy Students Say College Authorities Were Indifferent to Their Complaints of Rape.

Six young women who were allegedly raped while they were students of Occidental College held a media-studded news conference Thursday afternoon, alleging that college authorities failed to take appropriate action following their complaints, thereby violating their rights.

Each of the six women read out statements at the offices of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg, a law firm on Wilshire Boulevard, where they also accused Occidental college authorities of either being callously indifferent to their complaints or trying to dissuade them from pursuing the matter with police.

Of the six women, three are recent Oxy graduates, while the other three are still students at the college.

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Gloria Allred, a partner with the Allred, Maroko & Goldberg law firm, opened the news conference by announcing that an 81-page complaint against Occidental College had been filed Thursday with the Office of Civil Rights in the federal Department of Education.

The complaint was written by Occidental College Politics Department Chair Caroline Heldman and Sociology Department Associate Professor Danielle Dirks in association 36 alleged victims of college rape or sexual assault. Both professors are longtime activists on issues surrounding campus rape.

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The complaint alleges that by not taking appropriate action against the women’s complaints, the college violated Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination in education on the basis of gender.

The media were not given copies of the complaint because, said Allred, it contained names of some individuals who did not want their identites to become public. The complaint documents alleged rape and sexual assault violations involving 36 Oxy students, including some men, from 2009 through 2013. In addition, the complaint documents alleged retaliation by college authorities against Professor Dirks for supporting the alleged victims.

“The last reported rape occurred this past Friday night and was reported to the police on Saturday and to Occidental College this past Sunday,” Allred said in her statement. (See accompanying video.)

In March, Occidental College students held an on-campus protest to demand that the school's administration take responsibility for failing to immediately alert them about the alleged rape of a student on Range View Avenue.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, a female student was raped by an alleged assailant, who is also a student of the school, at a residence located on the 4900 block of Range View Avenue.

A blog post on the Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition's website reports that "[t]he Oxy Administration did not share this information with campus until local media reported about the incident."

None of the statements read by the six women had any details of the circumstances leading up to their alleged rapes. Oxy Professor Heldman acknowledged, however, that rape and sexual assault in colleges is a nationwide problem and only a tiny minority of the incidents revolve around so-called "stranger rape," in which victims and perpetrators do not know each other.

Further, although consumption of alcohol is a factor in many of the rapes, Heldman said, here's a typical example of the phenomenon: A young woman texts a male classmate to pick her up from a party where she's had too much to drink—only to find that the acquaintance or friend ends up raping her.

"Rape is the only crime in which the victim is guilty," Heldman said, underscoring the difficulties that victims often have in proving their case.

Not only is the college slow to investigate complaints of rape or sexual assault but students found guilty are given “the lightest punishments imaginable,” Allred said, referring to one case in which a student found guilty of non-consensual sexual intercourse, and who admitted sexually assaulting another woman, was told to apologize to the victim and resign from campus leadership positions he held during his final semester before graduating.

Even alleged sexual assailants who have been found guilty by the college of multiple incidents—or who have admitted to them—are merely expelled and allowed to return to college after their victims graduate, Allred said.

“Sexual assault on college campuses is a nationwide problem, from which Occidental College regrettably is not exempt,” Occidental College Director of Communications Jim Tranquada said in response to the news conference. “We take this issue exceptionally seriously, and will not tolerate sexual misconduct. The creation of a safe and respectful campus environment at Oxy is paramount.”

Since 2010, the college has taken a series of steps toward that end, Tranquada said. “We have updated our sexual misconduct policy and procedure, trained more faculty, staff and students in how to respond effectively to reports of sexual assault, [and] initiated a number of programs to better educate the campus community and foster a culture that rejects sexual violence. We readily admit that Oxy has more work to do, and are vigilantly ensuring our continual progress.”

Oxy recently asked former sex crime prosecutors and sexual assault experts Gina Maisto Smith and Leslie Gomez of the well-known Philadelphia-based law firm Pepper Hamilton to conduct an independent review of the college’s existing policy and current practices for investigating and resolving reports of sexual assault on campus, Tranquada said.

“We respect the right of any member of the Oxy community to exercise their legal rights, and are committed to providing a safe campus and inspiring educational experience for all Oxy students,” Tranquada said.

A sleepover for sexual assault awareness is scheduled Friday on the Oxy quad, according to Professor Heldman. Coinciding with the eve of Occidental College's Founders Day celebrations, which will also mark the end of the college's 125th anniversary festivities, the sleepover, in tents or in sleeping bags under the open sky, will start at around 4 p.m. and continue into Saturday morning. All or most of the 36 students named in the federal complaint are expected to be at the sleepover, along with their families and friends, Heldman said.

Stay tuned for the individual statements of the six Oxy students in separate stories.


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