The attorney general of Iowa isn’t happy that a district judge applied a higher evidence standard to a sexual-misconduct case involving an Iowa State University player than the school itself uses for internal discipline.
The Ames Tribune reports that the ISU board of trustees was flabbergasted by Judge Steven Oeth’s August ruling that overturned the board’s finding against basketball player Bubu Palo, who along with friend Spencer Cruise was accused of rape.
The attorney general, filing a brief for the trustees with the state supreme court, says Oeth and an administrative law judge used state law’s definition of sexual abuse, “when it did not apply to the university’s sexual misconduct policy”:
State law requires guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — part of the reason why the Story County Attorney’s Office decided to drop the criminal cases against Palo and Cruise — while university misconduct proceedings are based on a lesser preponderance of evidence standard.
There’s a dispute over whether Palo had consensual sex with the accuser after she was allegedly raped by Cruise, with the state arguing Palo failed to get affirmative consent:
“It is unreasonable to conclude that someone who had just been sexually assaulted and severely traumatized would immediately then consent to have a consensual sexual relationship with another person,” the brief argues, quoting from the board’s decision. …
“It is undisputed that Palo was present before, during and after that assault,” the Attorney General’s Office argued. “It is undisputed that Palo had sexual contact with the female student immediately after the assault occurred. It is undisputed there was no verbal consent — that he didn’t even ask.”
The Victims Rights Law Center and a student affairs administrators group also filed a brief arguing against the use of criminal law in judging campus sexual offenses:
[Criminal law] has been rejected by social scientists and others “as ineffective at addressing sexual violence and inappropriate to the powers and goals of universities” because of barriers resulting in the infrequency of convictions in sexual assault cases relative to the rarity of false reports.
Those groups also said the accuser’s testimony on Cruise ripping her blouse during the assault – later shown by forensic analysis to be false, which was instrumental in the dropped charges – should not harm her credibility:
“(P)olice investigation techniques and the detrimental effects of trauma on victims’ abilities to recall the details of their assault are a poor combination,” the brief argues, citing a recent Washington Post article about scientific research into the often murky nature of sexual assault reports.
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