Education

Please note: The legal options and laws outlined below provide you with general information only. They do not provide specific legal advice to address your specific situation. For personal legal advice please contact us.

We at the Victim Rights Law Center understand that a sexual assault causes an impediment to accessing a young student’s educational opportunities at America’s colleges, high schools, and middle schools. Sexual assault can lead to, among other things, dramatic declines in academic performance; sharp increases in absenteeism; or permanent withdrawal from school. If you are in school and have been sexually assaulted, it is not unusual for it to impact your entire educational experience.  Call us. VRLC helps with the following issues:

• Campus Disciplinary Complaints: If the person who assaulted you is a fellow student, you may be struggling with difficult decisions about whether to file a complaint with your school. Student disciplinary systems can be very helpful in addressing the problem, but they can also be poorly managed and intimidating.
• Privacy: Campus gossip about the assault may be making it hard for you to have your normal social life. Your peers probably know a lot about your daily life and if details about a sexual assault get out into the community, the resulting gossip can be unbearable. You may be considering dropping out of school or transferring to avoid the gossip.
• Physical Safety: You may feel unsafe on campus if the assailant is a fellow student or knows where you attend school. You may be avoiding certain classes or libraries.  You may be staying inside your room just to avoid seeing the assailant.
• Housing:  The assailant knows where you live and you want to change dormitories or location on campus.
• Transfers: If you are in middle or high school, the VRLC can work with you to request a safety transfer to another school. 

Our goal is to prevent these harms from happening to you and help you stay in school. Even if your school does not permit an attorney to attend the hearings in disciplinary cases, an attorney can work on your behalf in numerous ways outside the hearing. For example, an attorney can help you write a statement, prepare for the hearing, prepare to question witnesses and introduce evidence.

In our experience, the following are the most common problematic issues facing victims in Massachusetts colleges:
1.  Schools do not take sexual violence seriously.
2.  Schools do not believe the victim after disclosure.
3.  Schools categorize rape on campus as misunderstandings or “sexual remorse.”
4.  There is no top-down approach to solving this problem on campus.  Members of the upper administration have no incentive to acknowledge a rape because it is viewed by the public and by their trustees as “bad” to acknowledge.  
5.  The grievance process is rife with behavior that is not supportive and inappropriate questioning:
       -Blaming the victim for drinking
       -Asking a female victim what she was wearing
       -Asking a victim about prior sexual history*
6.  Schools refuse to acknowledge the safety problems associated with sexual assault and there is a lack of “interim measures” as defined by Title IX.*  Please refer to the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights for information about Title IX.
7.  Schools are unequal in the implementation of their grievance policies.*
8.  Schools delay the grievance process:
       -until the victim either drops out of the process or out of school* or
       -until the criminal justice system has fully adjudicated the rape or sexual assault.*
9.   Schools will take the prosecutions decision not to prosecute as evidence of no rape or sexual assault.*
10. During the process, schools rely on reasonable doubt or clear and convincing evidence and not preponderance of the evidence.*
11. Schools refuse to punish perpetrators even when serious violations of the code of conduct occur.
12. Schools permit the perpetrator to question the victim directly.*

*Specifically addressed in the April 4, 2011 Dear Colleague Letter issued by the Department of Education.