The University of Michigan has settled a lawsuit with a student accused of sexual assault, agreeing to throw out its finding of responsibility as part of a settlement.
The school agreed to overturn the ruling in exchange for the accused student, Drew Sterrett, agreeing not to re-enroll in the college or disparage the university. Sterrett had been expelled in 2012.
The Detroit Free Press reported the outcome of the settlement late last week, but didn’t detail Sterrett’s side of the story or mention the information included in this lawsuit. The article instead focused heavily on the accuser’s response to the settlement.
The details of Sterrett’s lawsuit had been previously reported by Emily Yoffe of Slate, and painted a far different picture than the rapist/victim narrative pushed by DFP. Sterrett and CB, the pseudonym of his accuser, lived in the same dorm at the University of Michigan. On one night in 2012, CB stayed over in Sterrett’s dorm room because her roommate had family staying in hers. Sterrett said in his lawsuit that he gave CB a shirt to sleep in and expected her to sleep on a mat on the floor. Instead, CB got into bed with Sterrett and the two began kissing and eventually had sex.
Sterrett alleged in his lawsuit that CB asked him about getting a condom. Sterrett’s roommate was trying to sleep in the top bunk, and the encounter became so loud and lasted for so long that he sent a text at 3 a.m. telling the pair they were being “abnoxtiously [sic] loud.”
The next morning, CB asked Sterrett not to tell anyone about the encounter. He believed she had been embarrassed about sleeping with a friend. Six months later she would accuse him of sexual assault.
In an affidavit from CB’s roommate and friend at the time, listed as LC in the lawsuit, CB only accused Sterrett of sexual assault after her mother found a diary detailing her sexual encounters, drinking and drug use. LC didn’t remember the night CB and Sterrett had sex, because CB had never said anything about it to her until the accusation. It was CB’s mother who called the school to inform them that CB would be making a sexual assault accusation. LC also said she saw no change in CB’s personality after the sexual encounter, but saw a change after CB’s mother found the diary.
“It is my belief, based on my personal observations and conversations with CB, that it is possible CB manufactured a story about a sexual assault in response to the conflict CB described occurring between her and her mother in the summer of 2012,” LC wrote on behalf of Sterrett.
Sterrett was told over Skype that he would be removed from his dorm, and was asked about the encounter. He claims he was not given information about the nature of the inquiry. When he asked the program manager of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, Heather Cowan, if he needed a lawyer, she told him (according to his lawsuit) that if he stopped talking to retain a lawyer the investigation would continue without his side of the story. Sterrett was told not to talk to anyone else about the case, meaning he was barred from finding witnesses to speak on his behalf.
Sterrett heard nothing more about the alleged investigation, except for a “warning” from Cowan after Sterrett was seen with a friend who was putting his bike away at the dorm where Sterrett used to live. CB saw Sterrett and informed Cowan, who said Sterrett’s presence appeared to be “retaliatory contact.”
The next Sterrett heard about the accusation was in Nov. 2012 — eight months after the sexual encounter — when he was given a one-page summary of the “investigation.” It consisted mainly of statements from anonymous witnesses that even CB couldn’t identify in her deposition for Sterrett’s lawsuit. The statements did not coincide with neither CB’s nor Sterrett’s version of events.
CB insisted that she said “no” during the encounter. Sterrett says he explicitly asked her if she wanted to have sex, and she said “yes” (meaning he followed a “yes means yes” consent policy, but because he couldn’t prove he followed it, the policy was meaningless). Sterrett’s roommate provided a sworn affidavit saying he was in the top bunk during the encounter, that CB got into Sterrett’s bed of her own volition and that at no point did she say “no” or give any indication the sex was not consensual. He said he would have intervened had he heard anything, since he was a friend of both students.
Sterrett provided a rebuttal to the summary, but none of his challenges were included in the revised version. He also claims, backed with affadavits from those interviewed by the school, that Cowan misrepresented witness statements to make Sterrett appear guilty.
He was banned from the school until July 2016, after CB would have graduated.
Now the finding against Sterrett has been overturned, but if you only read the Detroit Free Press, you would think a convicted rapist was just let off the hook.
