I read the lawsuit of the YU rape survivor vs. YU in its entirety. It helped fill in important details that were originally missing.
What Happened?
In The Commentator article that broke the story, ‘I Thought Rape Culture Didn’t Exist at YU-Until I Was Raped’ the survivor chose not to provide details.
I can sometimes be a very trusting person, especially when it comes to other people at my school, so naturally, I trusted him. I do not wish to go into details, but when he proceeded to hold me down and respond to my “no” with “but it’s fun,” I knew that I could no longer trust anyone at YU. The feeling of his body holding me down with no escape will forever be engraved in my mind. I explicitly told him I did not want to have sex, I remember telling him “no,” but that word had no meaning in his mind. He had already decided he would not take “no” for an answer. “But it's fun,” he said. That clearly had more weight in his mind, since it was the last thing he said before he raped me.
In January, she appeared on Jeff Lax Live! (see episode link here) and shared more details.
At about 13:10 in the podcast episode-
Survivor: I was pretty adamant beforehand that I was not going to go into his apartment- I was gonna meet him outside of his building. Beforehand for a while- he asked me to help him bring something upstairs so I did and that’s when like, it happened.
Jeff Lax: So do you think that was a ploy, to get you, was that a trick?
Survivor: Looking back at it, I honestly do, because I was very adamant about not going, and um, yeah.
Jeff Lax: So you’re saying to him, I’m not going to your room, I’m not going to your room, and he says, can you just help me bring this up to my room?
Survivor: He kept asking me like, do you want to hang out, come over, do you wanna come over to my apartment, I’m like I’m not coming over. If anything, you can come to my apartment- my roommates are home, or we can walk around outside and talk and everything, so that’s what we ended up doing. We ended up talking and walking outside.
Jeff: And then at some point you end up by his building and he says, “ I need someone to help me, you’re telling me I’m not going to his room but he’s telling you he needs help bringing something UP to his room, and that’s how you ended up up there.’
Survivor: Yeah.
Jeff: Okay. And then things obviously got out of hand. You talked about the fact that he physically pushed you. And he physically held you down. I know this is hard, but if you want to talk about that experience please, please go ahead.
Survivor: Um. Like. Sorry. One second. Like I [inaudible] from what I do remember, I don’t, like my mind blocked out of a lot of it, but um from what I do remember yeah, he was holding me down. When I went to hospital, I had marks on my neck and on my leg as well.
The way Jeff framed this (probably unknowing), or at least the way I understood this at the time, was that the basketball player was holding some kind of heavy object and claimed he needed help bringing it upstairs and that was why the survivor came up. This was confusing to me because I know the layout of off-campus apartments in the Washington Heights area- I’ve been in them- and if all you are doing is going upstairs and putting down a heavy box, you can easily leave afterwards.
The actual complaint clarifies what happened, and also explains why the survivor probably did not want to lead with the details. It’s very likely she would have been victim-blamed.
This appears on pages 35-37.
123. Plaintiff had spoken with PERRY DOE on several social media applications for two days prior to meeting him for their date.
124. Plaintiff initially refused PERRY DOE’s invitation to go up to his apartment in Washington Heights. She suggested, instead, that they go to her apartment and hang out with her roommates in the living room.
125. PERRY DOE didn’t want to do that, however, and instead told Plaintiff that they should go for a walk. During this walk, PERRY DOE ducked into a store and purchased some beer and soda. He then asked Plaintiff to help him to carry the beer and soda upstairs to his apartment.
126. As PERRY DOE had just moved into his apartment, there was no place for Plaintiff to sit other than on PERRY DOE’s bed. When Plaintiff sat on PERRY DOE’s bed, he moved close to her and began to touch and kiss her.
127. Plaintiff told PERRY DOE “no” multiple times and clearly conveyed that she did not want to have any sexual contact of any kind with PERRY DOE.
128. PERRY DOE is a large and powerfully built man and he refused to accept Plaintiff’s multiple “no’s.” He subdued Plaintiff and asserted his physical dominance over her by grabbing her leg, pinning it down with his own, and grabbing her neck to hold her down.
129. PERRY DOE used physical force to effectuate his rape of Plaintiff, in that: (1) PERRY DOE placed his hands around Plaintiff’s neck and squeezed, in order to gain physical control and dominion over Plaintiff’s body; and (2) he forcefully pressed a knee against Plaintiff’s thigh in order to pry open her legs.
130. PERRY DOE’s use of physical force and violence to effectuate his rape of Plaintiff left discernible and visible marks and bruises on Plaintiff’s body.
131. Plaintiff’s neck was left with a discernible and visible bruise in the area where PERRY DOE had grabbed her with his hands.
132. Plaintiff was also left with a discernible and visible large bruise on her inner thigh, which resembled a welt, from PERRY DOE’s violent and aggressive pushing of Plaintiff’s legs open with his knee.
133. After PERRY DOE raped Plaintiff, she was crying. PERRY DOE asked Plaintiff if she was OK?
134. PERRY DOE then implored Plaintiff to not tell anyone about what had just happened because he respected her and has sisters and would never disrespect anybody.
135. After PERRY DOE raped Plaintiff, he asked her if she wanted him to walk her home. Plaintiff declined that invitation. She walked home alone and arrived back at her apartment at about 10:00 p.m.
136. On the evening of January 24, 2021, after returning to her apartment, Plaintiff was extremely upset, in pain, and agitated. She told several of her roommates that she had just gone out on a date and had been raped by the man she had visited.
137. On the evening of January 24, 2021, after returning to her apartment, Plaintiff texted a close male friend and conveyed to him that she had just been raped.
138. When PERRY DOE was raping Plaintiff, she was in shock, frozen, and in extreme pain. To the extent she could, she disassociated her mind from her body.
139. Prior to PERRY DOE’s rape of her, Plaintiff categorically and unequivocally conveyed to PERRY DOE, several times, that she did not consent to having sex with him.
140. PERRY DOE heard Plaintiff’s statements in which she stated “No,” and that she was unwilling to have sex with him. But PERRY DOE pressed forward anyway. He told Plaintiff that she should just relax and submit because, in words or substance: “this will be fun.”
141. For the entire day of January 25, 2021, the day after her rape, Plaintiff was in extreme pain. In the evening, one of her roommates persuaded her to go to a hospital to get treated.
142. On the evening of January 25, 2021, Plaintiff was admitted into Columbia Presbyterian Hospital to get examined and treated for the rape that had occurred the previous evening.
It’s easy to understand how shamed the survivor felt. She probably assumed (and rightfully so) that people would judge her for bringing beer and soda upstairs to PERRY’s apartment, then sitting on his bed. But judging her would be wrong. Because even if a girl carries beer and soda upstairs, and sits on your bed because you have no other furniture available, that is not an invitation to rape her. Even if she wanted to make out with you, hug and kiss you but didn’t want to actually have penetrative sex, that is not an invitation to rape her. Each individual gets to say how far they want to go, and that must always be respected. I think this is so important to stress because multiple people have discussed (for example, on the Intimate Judaism podcast) how they ended up in situations going much farther than they wanted sexually because they felt like they had already said yes to one thing and now they had to say yes to another because otherwise the person they were with would say they were a tease. This is not the case. It is never the case. Saying yes to bringing beer upstairs is not saying yes to rape.
The Deception
The YU rape survivor filed a Title IX complaint. However, according to her lawsuit, her case was not treated as a Title IX complaint. See pages 6-7 in the lawsuit.
YU thus deliberately misled Plaintiff, all YU students, and the YU community-at-large into believing that YU had handled Plaintiff’s Title IX Complaint based on her rape by PERRY DOE as a “Title IX” matter in accordance with Title IX rules, regulations, and procedures.
19. Unbeknownst to Plaintiff and the entire YU community, YU, through its high-ranking administrators and officials, Andrew “Avi” Lauer, Esq., General Counsel, and Chaim Nissel, Title IX Coordinator, handled and treated Plaintiff’s rape allegations not as a Title IX matter, but as a mere non-Title IX disciplinary matter.
20. In violation of Title IX, YU, Lauer, and Nissel, failed to notify Plaintiff, in writing or otherwise, that it was dismissing her formal Title IX Complaint.
21. Title IX itself expressly mandated that YU treat Plaintiff’s formal rape complaint as a Title IX matter and provide her with all of Title IX’s rules, regulations, and procedural protections and requirements, rather than as a mere “disciplinary matter” which, pursuant to YU’s Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy (the “Policy”) (Ex. B hereto, updated in December, 2020), vested extraordinary discretionary power in YU’s General Counsel and Title IX Coordinator.
This is so bad. It is very, very bad. Why was her complaint not handled as a Title IX complaint? Why didn’t they offer her an advocate? Why was it left to her to have to individually tell each of her professors about what happened to her- why couldn’t the school be her advocate and tell the professors that she needed a grace period? Why did the investigators never ask for the rape kit, or interview the individuals she had confided in about the rape occurring? I always like to assume that everyone involved in an institution wants to do their best by the students, but if the allegations in this lawsuit are true, it really does look like a cover-up. There was a huge financial incentive to not smear the basketball team due to the Rise Up campaign, “an extraordinarily ambitious and comprehensive fundraising campaign in which Yeshiva University plans to raise Six Hundred and Thirty-One Million Dollars ($631,000,000) over the next five (5) years (i.e., by December 2026) to make substantial investments in various Yeshiva University educational programs, including four areas of strategic focus: values and leadership, science, and technology, entrepreneurship and innovation, and jobs and careers” (page 16). See page 18 for the following:
66. Upon information and belief, in or about March, 2021, Yeshiva University, its President, its Board of Directors, and its employees and agents, Andrew “Avi” Lauer, Esq. (YU’s General Counsel), and Chaim Nissel (YU’s Title IX Coordinator), all recognized that Plaintiff’s rape allegations against a YU basketball player—if substantiated and publicized—would cause the University to suffer significant negative publicity that would hinder Yeshiva University’s “values-based” fundraising effort.
67. This was especially true because Yeshiva University’s varsity basketball team was enjoying unprecedented success (riding a record 50- game winning streak) that was gaining Yeshiva University extraordinarily positive local, national, and international media coverage.
Now, it could be that this is not true. Perhaps YU really believed that a rape that occurred off-campus could not be handled by them as a Title IX complaint, for example. But if so, they needed to be totally transparent about that. And they were not. (Moreover, the lawsuit explains why the off-campus apartment should not actually be considered outside of YU’s jurisdiction for multiple reasons, including that the player in question would have been unable to rent it without YU vouching for him with the landlord- see pages 33-34 of the lawsuit.)
The Clery Act
The Clery Act “requires colleges and universities to report campus crime data, support victims of violence, and publicly outline the policies and procedures they have put into place to improve campus safety” (see link).
For the past 20 years, YU has reported zero forcible sex crimes (sexual assault or rape) on campus. This despite the fact that actually, students have reported sexual assaults and rapes, including on campus climate surveys. Here’s the relevant excerpt (spanning pages 26-30 in the lawsuit):
88. Numerous institutions (including Eastern Michigan University, Michigan State University, Penn State University, University of Montana, and University of California at Berkeley) have been found in non-compliance of The Clery Act and fined by the U.S. Department of Education for inaccurate and misleading crime statistics.
89. Each of those institutions, nonetheless, reported numerous forcible sex crimes on or near their campuses from 2001 to 2020.
90. Upon information and belief, Yeshiva University is one of the few universities in the United States of America (if not the only such university) that reported to the U.S. Department of Education ZERO forcible rapes or sexual assaults on or near its major campuses from 2001 to 2020.
91. Upon information and belief, for two decades, YU has spun a malicious, phony, and reckless fairytale about the safety of its campuses and the alleged non-existence of rape and sexual assault at YU. This purposeful error of commission is far more egregious than a mere error of omission.
92. Upon information and belief, YU’s reports of sex crimes at or near its campuses for both men and women were and continue to be false, fraudulent, malicious, and intended to paint a misleading impression of almost complete safety at YU, particularly for female students (who, according to numerous reputable studies, suffer rapes and sexual assaults at rates exponentially higher than their male student counterparts).
[…]
96. Upon information and belief, from 2001 through 2021, YU received numerous complaints, and was otherwise made aware, of numerous alleged criminal rapes and/or sexual assaults of YU students on or near YU’s Wilf Campus and/or Beren Campus.
97. In or about 2018, a YU female student reported to YU’s Title IX Office, specifically Defendant Nissel, that she had been raped on or near YU’s Wilf Campus by a male YU student. Upon information and belief, YU and Defendant Nissel dismissed out-of-hand this rape complainant’s allegations and took no disciplinary action against the accused YU male student.
98. Upon information and belief, from 2001 to present, numerous other YU students have reported rapes and/or sexual assaults by other YU students on or near YU’s Wilf Campus and/or Beren Campus.
99. In campus climate surveys conducted for and by YU students, in 2017, 2019, and 2021 (as mandated by New York’s “Enough is Enough” Law), numerous YU students self-reported that they had been victimized by forcible sexual contact on or near YU’s campuses. Several of these YU students stated that they had reported these acts of sexual misconduct to YU’s Title IX Office.
100. YU knowingly, maliciously and fraudulently failed to report any of these sexual assault allegations—including the specific one made to its Title IX Office and Defendant Nissel in or about 2018—to the U.S. Department of Education, as mandated by The Clery Act.
101. YU, likewise, knowingly, maliciously, and fraudulently failed to report any of these sexual assault allegations—including the specific one made to its Title IX Office and Defendant Nissel in or about 2018—to YU students (including Plaintiff) and prospective students in their Security Reports (which are published annually on October 1) for calendar years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
102. Since 2001 and continuing to present, YU has been in gross non-compliance with and in violation of The Clery Act.
103. Upon information and belief, this gross non-compliance is not the result of mere negligence, carelessness, or sloppy record-keeping. It reflects, rather, a knowing, conscious, and calculated choice made by YU administrators and/or YU’s Board of Directors.
104. YU’s conscious and calculated choice to deceive and mislead the U.S. Department of Education, YU’s female students, and all prospective female students, about sex crimes that have occurred on or near YU’s campuses, has endangered the health, safety, and welfare of every female student who has attended YU for the last 20 years.
105. It has made every female student who has attended YU, from 2001 through present, including Plaintiff, more vulnerable to rape and sexual assault on or near YU’s campuses.
Maybe it’s just that I was a naive girl who had attended Bais Yaakov, but when I went to Stern I did not know rapes or sexual assaults were occurring on or near campus. It’s more than that, though- as EIC (editor in chief) of The Observer, I would have wanted to report on those incidents. Unfortunately, the culture at the time did not support people coming forward to share these incidents. (To give the benefit of the doubt, it’s also possible none occurred during the specific years that I was in attendance.)
It is shocking that YU chose not to report incidents that were revealed to them in their own campus climate surveys.
The overall image that is painted in this lawsuit is of a university that simply did not care to do anything or report anything that might tarnish its reputation. There is no excuse for not asking to look at the rape kit and the photos of bruises of the YU survivor. There is no excuse for misleading her into believing her complaint was being handled as a Title IX matter when it wasn’t. There is no excuse for not following the Clery Act.
The YU rape survivor is brave. Because by breaking this wide open for the whole world to see, she is going to usher in a new era of transparency at Yeshiva University- and hopefully at Jewish institutions worldwide. Be honest. Be forthright. Investigate rape as though it were your own daughter who is telling you she was raped. Leave no stone unturned. And share information about campus safety as you are legally mandated to do.
Thank you, Jane Doe. We owe you.
(As a total aside, I think the author of the complaint was a genius for referring to the YU assailant as PERRY. It brings to mind the character Perry Wright in the book and HBO series ‘Big Little Lies.’ Perry looks suave, debonair, and like he would never hurt anyone. But secretly, he’s abusing his wife. So too our YU athlete, who tells his victim that he “respects her and has sisters” and implores her not to share what they did with anyone, framing the rape as though he and his victim just got carried away by passion. But that’s not what happened, Perry. And now we know it, too.)
Well, we shouldn't be surprised. When don't large, powerful entities treat victims like the trash that needs to be thrown out when the victim's predicament causes any inconvenience or difficulties for that entity? Which raises my next question: Why do women, who demand to be "empowered", and claim that there is nothing they can't handle, conquer or accomplish, keep ending up in these situations? I mean, this really needs to be addressed. You ask these questions: " Why didn’t they offer her an advocate? Why was it left to her to have to individually tell each of her professors about what happened to her- why couldn’t the school be her advocate and tell the professors that she needed a grace period? Why did the investigators never ask for the rape kit, or interview the individuals she had confided in about the rape occurring?" You sound like women need someone to hold their hand, like they need help because they are so weak, don't have the ability to stand up for themselves or the intelligence to follow through on their own behalf? Which is it? Women have made it clear they don't need help, that they are not helpless, that they are smart, strong, capable, etc. Yet why do so many of them make such stupid decisions? This is NOT about "she deserved to be raped", so please don't go there. This is about women DECIDING to put themselves in vulnerable positions with MEN. I'm sorry, but this is the real world, and "just saying no" is not going to always be heeded, plain and simple. Why? Because the world is full of mean, selfish people. Whether you're telling a man, "No, I don't want to have sex" or you're telling the driver of a car you're in, "No, I don't want you speeding", there will be people who won't care one bit what you want or don't want and will hurt you anyway, put you a risk anyway. We all have to learn to recognize and avoid people who will put us at risk, that's part of our job as adults. So when do women start being accountable for making better decisions about protecting themselves-for their OWN GOOD- instead of making stupid decisions and demanding that the world make up for their foolishness? Its something we ALL need to learn to do. When people make stupid decisions, there are consequences, no matter whether you are male or female. Its called life. But these "liberated, strong, independent, brilliant, capable" women demand someone hold their hand and kiss all their boo-boos away every time they get themselves in these situations. No, a woman doesn't get to hug, kiss, be alone with, arouse, and fondle a man and then demand that she can say, "no" and that any and all men will listen to her command. Yet we tell women that and they go out into the world thinking "No" is their sword, their magic wand that will instantly dissolve any danger they walk into. "Hey, ladies! Getting drunk with the guys, no one around to look after you, and they decide to gang rape you? Want to enjoy some necking and petting, but the boyfriend wants more? Why, 'just say no', and they will magically turn into sweet puppy dogs!" This is what our feminist society is teaching females, which is living in denial and avoiding responsibility for your own safety. Very strange lesson, no? I think every rapist should get the maximum penalty, period. But I think its time for every woman with a story like this to, at the very least, be court ordered to participate in "how to take responsibility for your own safety and stop making stupid decisions regarding how you think you can control men, or any other human being." It should be taught in high school. Our society supports females being "free", without any thought to how much more responsibility freedom requires. "I made up my mind not to go to his room"...then she goes to his room to "help him" carry beer and soda (a grown man needs "help" carrying beer and soda?! Remember, these are COLLEGE students, not 10 year olds)...then she. sits. on. his. bed. After "making up her mind" not to go to his room. No, she doesn't deserve to get raped, her and all the other females deserve to be taught the truth about how the world works, and that its not filled with nice people. NOT addressing the obvious just plain ignorance and irresponsibility that this, and many other women, display, is actually the biggest insult to women, because the message is: "Women are hopelessly stupid, so we won't even try to tell them they can, and need, to use reason and logic to protect themselves, and have some accountability for doing that." Or maybe its even more diabolical than that: What kind of people are really behind encouraging women to place themselves at risk, telling them that they can go as far as they want with a male, in any situation, and all they need is the magic word "no" to save them?
Thank you for this overview with excerpts from the lawsuit. It is really detailed and informative. I unfortunately can't agree that this "will usher in a new era of transparency at Yeshiva University- and hopefully at Jewish institutions worldwide." I think the best we can hope for is that with repeated lawsuits, institutions such as YU will at least begin to notice what their legal obligations are. Based on their past actions, we can't expect that they will actually be more transparent, forthright, or care at all about victims of sexual assault.