PUBLICSOURCE
Jane was a student at Duquesne University in recent years when she was sexually assaulted by another student, whom she had been dating for about a month.
After the assault, she cut ties with him and blocked him on social media. Jane tried to avoid any chance encounters on campus, too.
She coped with her trauma by trying to forget it. The thought of reporting to authorities was overwhelming to Jane. So, similarly to many people who experience sexual violence, she didn’t report it.
But over time, what happened to her became harder to ignore. She filed a Title IX complaint months after the assault. Even after going through the university’s judicial procedures, Jane’s assailant seemed to continue to follow her around campus for months without repercussion, underscoring what experts see as limitations to what colleges can do to rein in sexual violence and harassment.
To Amy Mathieu, Jane’s lawyer at the Marsh Law Firm, Jane’s case demonstrates a certain degree of uselessness in the Title IX process.
“What’s the purpose of going through this whole endeavor? It’s traumatizing for victims to sit through a hearing and talk about what happened. And to what end? [Jane] thought she reached justice only to find out that the no-contact order was a piece of paper that did nothing for her in the long run,” she said. Find more information online here.
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