UT's handling of sexual assault report devastates woman
KNOXVILLE – She was just three weeks into her freshman year at the University of Tennessee — her first-choice college — when one Saturday night party derailed all of her plans.
At the outdoor, off-campus student gathering in September, she met a Tennessee football player she knew from high school. A friend offered her a cup of punch. She drank it. Then two or three more.
The last thing she remembers before blacking out was taking a selfie with the football player at the party. She woke up lying face down on his dorm room bed as she was being sexually violated, the spaghetti strap of her top torn. She remembers slipping in and out of consciousness.
In the bathroom afterward, she noticed blood between her legs.
The young woman, whose identity is being shielded by The Tennessean because of her reported sexual assault, disclosed the incident to a resident assistant two days later. Friends accompanied her to the off-campus Sexual Assault Center for a physical exam. She agreed to pursue a complaint with university officials, but decided she did not want to report the incident to police.
After an investigation by university officials, her alleged assailant was cleared. He remains in good standing as a student and on the football team. The Tennessean is not identifying the football player because he has not been named as a suspect in a crime.
The incident has not previously been made public.
The woman said she is devastated by not only the incident, but the university's response.
"He's out there partying every night, and I'm on anti-depressants in my first year of college," she said during a meeting with a Tennessean reporter at a Knoxville coffee shop in December.
Even before the case was closed, university officials acknowledged in emails to her and her father that the investigation had taken an unusual turn.
Her reported rape comes at a time when universities and colleges nationwide face heightened scrutiny over their handling of campus rape — including campuses in Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville.
There have have been at least seven sexual assaults reported to University of Tennessee police this academic year, a number that does not include all off-campus student sexual assaults.
On Thursday, a Knox County grand jury issued an indictment against UT defensive back Michael Williams on two counts of aggravated rape. Williams was named as aiding and abetting in aggravated rape on another two counts against an individual whose name has been redacted.
The indictments stem from a Nov. 16 incident in which Williams and Vols star linebacker A.J. Johnson were named as suspects in a reported rape of a female athlete in Johnson's apartment. Johnson graduated in December.
On Friday, the NFL announced it had withdrawn its offer to Johnson to participate in the NFL Combine.
Attorneys for both men say they are innocent. Both players were suspended from the football team immediately after the alleged incident was reported to police. It's unknown whether either has faced university discipline. UT officials declined to comment.
Only two of 19 sexual assaults between 2011 and 2013 that the University of Tennessee reported to federal authorities led to a completed student disciplinary proceeding. In 2014, there were two completed disciplinary hearings after student reports of sexual assaults. The total number of all sexual assaults reported to UT campus officials in 2014 is not yet available. Under federal guidelines, that data is not required to be reported until Oct. 1.
In the cases in which sexual assault was found to have happened, none of the UT student perpetrators was expelled, according to university disciplinary records obtained through a public records request.
In three cases, the perpetrator was suspended.
A fourth proceeding in 2013 involving Yemi Makanjuola found the former UT basketball player had violated student conduct standards by sexually assaulting a female student and indefinitely suspended him. The finding came after Makanjuola had transferred to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with the well wishes of the UT athletics department staff. Makanjuola did not respond to a request for comment left with UNC-Wilmington athletics department officials.
3 unusual steps
The young woman who reported in September that she was raped by a football player has since moved back home with her mother and is now applying for waitress jobs.
In that woman's case, three unusual things happened during the course of a three-month investigation.
The university's Office of Student Conduct initially investigated the case, as campus policy calls for. It is the university body that routinely investigates student misconduct, including sexual assault.
But five weeks after opening its investigation, UT's Vice Chancellor for Student Life, Vincent Carilli, notified the woman that a separate university office, the Office of Equity and Diversity would take over the investigation. That office typically investigates sexual assault and other allegations against university employees and nonstudents. Carilli provided no explanation why.
While the case was being transferred, the university withdrew charges against the football player, leaving him free to return to the team while football season was underway. Carilli noted in an email to the woman that it was not a standard procedure to withdraw charges against a student accused of sexual assault, but he did not explain why the university did so in this case.
"At this point, there appears to be some unanswered questions that need to be examined before proceeding further in the case," Carilli emailed the woman Oct. 14. "There are times when additional investigation is necessary, but it is not standard protocol to withdraw charges during the APA case."
APA refers to the Administrative Procedures Act, which spells out the steps a university takes in conducting a student discipline case.
Carilli provided no further explanation to either the woman or her father, who demanded to know whether the university's handling of his daughter's case took a different turn because it involved a member of the football team.
"The University seems far more interested in protecting the reputation of the football team than a 19-year-old assault victim," the father wrote Carilli in October.
The father asked repeatedly whether football officials had been notified of the allegations. "I have been refused an answer as to whether Coach Jones is aware of the allegations."
Carilli did not respond to the father's question about whether Tennessee football coach Butch Jones had been notified about the allegations against one of his players.
Frustrated, the father wrote a separate email: The football player's "continued presence on the football team as a public representative of the University adds insult to injury. Knowing what (the football player) has done, I cannot tolerate seeing him run through the 'T' every home game; he has not earned that satisfaction."
In December, the young woman and her mother attended an on-campus meeting with university officials, who informed them about the results of their investigation — that no misconduct occurred.
The nine-page memo outlining the campus investigation included summaries of interviews with two witnesses who, the report said, "observed no signs of intoxication" in the woman during the party. One witness told campus officials the woman was flirting with the player that night before the alleged assault. The report also includes an interview with the football player, who said when he got to his room and asked the woman if she wanted sex, her response was "Go for it." The woman denied she ever made that statement when the two were alone in his room.
Efforts to reach the football player were unsuccessful. He did not respond to emails from The Tennessean.
The report made no mention of any reports from the Sexual Assault Center, but noted that "further information was gathered during the investigation but was not used in determining whether student conduct charges should be brought against the (accused player)."
The university's conclusions went further than most campus sexual assault investigations do, experts said. Instead of a finding that focused on the woman's allegation itself and whether the evidence proved it likely or unlikely that a sexual assault occurred, the university concluded in a memo officials handed to the woman and her mother that the "evidence supports a finding that sexual contact was consensual."
The finding that consensual sex occurred after a student reported a sexual assault is "highly unusual," said Brett Sokolow, president and CEO for the NCHERM Group, or the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. The national organization trains more than 7,000 campus administrators each year in conducting sexual misconduct investigations.
"I haven't seen that before," he said. "Usually you find there was a violation or no violation" of university codes of conduct about sexual misconduct.
University of Tennessee spokeswoman Karen Ann Simsen said the accused football player did not participate in team activities when charges were brought, but returned when the university withdrew them.
Simsen said confidentiality rules bar the university from discussing the specifics of this case, but noted in general that charges can be withdrawn when facts or circumstances change. Further investigations may be conducted by a separate university department than the Office of Student Conduct, she said.
Simsen said "appropriate contacts in Athletics are notified of the circumstances" any time an allegation of serious misconduct involving an athlete is reported. She did not respond to a question about whether Butch Jones or Athletics Director Dave Hart were informed.
Referring specifically to the memo issued in this case, Simsen told The Tennessean that the conclusion that the sex was consensual "outlines the process required to determine whether sexual misconduct occurred by engaging in nonconsensual contact or nonconsensual sexual intercourse," she said. "Central to this analysis is determining whether consent was given and whether the person giving consent had the physical or mental capacity to communicate consent at that time."
The finding was devastating to the woman.
"They made me out to be a liar, just for coming forward," she said. The woman said she had chosen to file a complaint only with the university and not police to spare her the ordeal of a more public investigation and in the hopes her alleged assailant would face some form of punishment short of criminal charges.
"I wanted him to lose something," she said.
'I just needed to cut my losses and leave'
In early January, just two days after returning from winter break for her second semester, the 19-year-old woman encountered her alleged assailant at a fraternity party.
"I had a huge mental breakdown and friends had to carry me home," she said. "His friend (a fraternity member) called me later and told me 'not to come to any of our parties ever again.' "
She withdrew from school the next day and moved back home with her mother.
"I woke up and said I can't do it anymore. I loved it there before all this happened. I had to leave my sorority, all my best friends. It sucks not being in school. But I just needed to cut my losses and leave."
The accused player, meanwhile, remains a student in good standing on the UT football team.
Reach Anita Wadhwani at 615-259-8092 and on Twitter @AnitaWadhwani.
