Legal counsel for Virginia Wesleyan College have responded to attacks against the school for requesting the names of sexual partners of a woman currently suing the institution over an alleged mishandling of a sexual assault accusation.
The school’s attorneys, citing misleading news reports, maintained that they did not seek the accuser’s sexual history to argue she was “unchaste,” but to disprove her claim in her $10 million lawsuit that the incident so traumatized her as to make her unable to have sex.
“As the college’s recent court filing indicates, the basis for the request was that Jane Doe has made various claims for monetary damages related in part to her failed relationships,” VWC’s counsel wrote in a memo. “We want to make sure we have properly evaluated these claims. Jane Doe’s attorneys have agreed the college is entitled to discovery of Jane Doe’s claimed damages, and the parties are currently working together to resolve this issue.”
Counsel acknowledged that some journalists took the time “to review court filings, attend hearings, request independent legal analysis and have made other efforts to impartially report on the case.” Others, however, focused on one aspect of the case — a request for the names of Jane Doe’s sexual partners — which led to the belief the university was trying to discredit her as being promiscuous.
One of those journalists in the latter category was Huffington Post’s Tyler Kingkade, who wrote an article titled: “Virginia Wesleyan College Demands Rape Victim’s Entire Sexual History.”
Kingkade waited until the middle of the fourth paragraph to discuss why the college was asking for that history. The reason VWC wanted the names of Doe’s sexual partners was to disprove claims she made regarding her sexual assault, namely that she was unable to maintain relationships because she is now unable to desire sex.
As I argued last week in response to Kingkade’s article, Doe brought up the claim, and the college has a right to defend itself. Following the publication of my article, Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote about legal documents that cast doubt on Doe’s claims.
VWC addresses some of these issues in its response to the misleading news articles. Notably, the college points out that Doe waited two months before reporting her allegedly violent rape by a stranger, and a Virginia Beach Police investigation found “insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges against” Doe’s alleged attacker, according to VWC’s legal memo.
Other issues with Doe’s account, which weren’t included in the legal memo, include major changes to details in her story. Doe initially told the college’s hearing board that she wasn’t dragged unwillingly into the accused student’s dorm room. She even said it was a mutual decision to go to his room. But in her lawsuit against the university, she now claims she was dragged.
She also suggests in her lawsuit that she was given a drugged drink at a party prior to the alleged attack. She never provided any proof, such as a toxicology report proving she had been drugged.
Further, Doe claimed in her lawsuit that she is now unable to form lasting relationships due to her inability to desire sex. VWC learned from a medical exam Doe had two weeks after the alleged incident that she had another sexual encounter 10 days after she claimed to be attacked. VWC is seeking the name of this individual and any other sexual partners to discover whether Doe really was as averse to sex as she claims in the lawsuit.
Stuart Plotnick, one of Doe’s attorneys, rejected the college’s insistence that Doe’s sexual history is important for discovery because of the claims she is making in her $10 million lawsuit.
“The idea is, you just don’t use discovery in a vacuum,” Plotnick told the Washington Examiner. “Our position is, they’re using discovery to ultimately obtain information to put her and her sexual history on trial in order to take the focus off of the true wrongdoer being the rapist and the school.”
From VWC’s response to Doe’s lawsuit, it appears even the college is beginning to question its decision to expel the student Doe accused of sexually assaulting her. Doe told VWC during her hearing that she was a virgin prior to the alleged assault, but the college claims to have information that contradicts that claim.
VWC suggests that if Doe lied about this during her hearing, it would call her credibility into question and raise the possibility that the hearing board would have come to a different conclusion, had they known she had provided false testimony.
