Trump administration attacked by rape survivors after scrapping Obama's sexual assault reforms

The new guidance 'flips Title IX on its head,' activists say

A man protests Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the dedication ceremony of Michigan State University's new Grand Rapids Medical Research Center (Cory Morse /The Grand Rapids Press via AP)

College sexual assault survivors and their advocates say the Trump administration has betrayed students who were assaulted on campus.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently rescinded Obama-era guidelines meant to encourage the reporting of sexual assault. In their place, she imposed interim guidelines that allowed more protections for the accused.

The reforms were cheered by advocates for accused students, who claim the previous standards denied them their right to due process. Scott Schneider, an attorney who leads the higher-education group at Fisher Phillips, told the Wall Street Journal the rules contained “really sensible statements about due process”.

But to one student survivor, the announcement felt like a crucial lifeline being taken away.

“What happened to me is the most traumatic event that ever happened in my life,” the student, who asked not to be named, told The Independent.

The 20-year-old student says she was assaulted last December by two men – one a classmate at Notre Dame, the other a student at another school. She decided to report the assault after watching a documentary about the fight for survivors’ rights.

“I felt like, to continue making progress, we need to continue to fight,” she said. Under the Obama-era rules, she felt confident her rights would be protected.

But under the new guidelines, she said, “I don't know if I would have come forward”.

Through a series of letters, the Obama administration significantly expanded what colleges are required to do for survivors under Title IX – the federal law preventing gender discrimination on campus.

Ms DeVos repealed those letters on Friday, declaring that “the era of rule by letter is over”. Her new guidelines allowed schools to use a higher standard of evidence in sexual assault cases, and removed the recommendation that they resolve complaints within 60 days. It also allowed schools to hear appeals only from the accused, and not from the accuser, if they so desired.

Carly Mee, a staff attorney for the survivor advocacy group SurvJustice, said the new guidance flipped Title IX “on its head”.

“Title IX was implemented in order to provide some measure of rights and protections to survivors, because they were historically put at a disadvantage,” she said. “The current guidance ... is more concerned about accused students and their ability to go to school”.

The Notre Dame survivor said she worried that schools would drag out sexual assault proceedings even longer under the new policy. She started her own complaint process in April, and said she hadn’t received a decision until the day before classes started in August.

“It was really difficult to go through, coming back here and still not knowing what was going on, and who knew, and what the decision would be, and if [the accused] would retaliate…” she said, trailing off.

“If Notre Dame is already taking this long when they have this 60-day guideline in place, I can't imagine how long they would take if that wasn't in place at all,” she concluded.

Various politicians also spoke out against the decision, which Ms DeVos had previewed in a speech two weeks earlier.

Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania tweeted that the Trump administration had “betrayed the victims of campus sexual assault with this decision”. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the decision “repulsive,” and promised to stand by his city’s existing protections for survivors.

Ms DeVos, however, said the interim rules signalled a move toward a more “fair and impartial” process. In her previous speech, she had slammed the Obama administration for pushing schools to “overreach,” and deny the accused due process.

The Notre Dame survivor said she wasn’t worried about how Ms DeVos’s new rules would affect her, because her case was nearing resolution. Her real worry, she said, was for survivors who want to report in the future.

“It's obviously not an easy process by any means,” she said, “but then if you favour towards the accused, it's just going to make the process that much harder”.