Oxford University is facing legal action after a former student alleged it had failed to properly investigate her rape case, it was reported last night.
Elizabeth Ramey, 29, will argue the university was unlawful and discriminatory in its policy not to investigate allegations of rape – unless in exceptional circumstances, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Her application for judicial review, to be heard tomorrow, describes the university’s guidelines as ‘perverse’ and warns it could put female students at greater risk of assault, the newspaper said.
Miss Ramey – who has waived her right to anonymity to talk about her case – was studying for an MA in African Studies when she claims she was raped by a fellow student in June 2011.
But her college reportedly told her they could not take action unless the incident had been reported to police.
Miss Ramey – who now lives in Washington DC – subsequently gave a statement to Thames Valley Police and the alleged rapist was suspended from the university for three months.
Yet three months later, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue the case due to lack of evidence.
Rozzers investigate, no prosecutable case found, and this is the fault of the university?
Where does she think she is, America?
Miss Ramey – whose case is being funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission
And they can fuck right off.
‘…studying for an MA in African Studies…’
*bites lip*
Seriously, though, can’t the courts simply throw this one out? It’s insane they are even considering it.
Fashionable narratives trump facts. Not just third wave feminism but AGW, Islam, Hillary, fracking, thuggery…what was slipped into the water twenty or thirty years ago that gives narrative the public space and awkward facts hidden?
Miss Ramey – who has waived her right to anonymity to talk about her case – was studying for an MA in African Studies
I’d say it’s her bank account that’s getting raped. Or her parents’.
UK universities will soon go the way of US ones, so we have all this to look forward to:
http://columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2015/04/30/our-identities-matter-core-classrooms
“Where does she think she is, America?”
That’s exactly where she “is”.
And an American attorney “found” her.
I’d say it’s her bank account that’s getting raped. Or her parents’.
EHRC is publicly funded. It’s the tax payer being butt-raped.
‘…studying for an MA in African Studies…’
With particular reference to Ugandan affairs?
More proxying for an American campaign, like the whole Gay Marriage flap was.
It’s a crime. Go to the police. Schools are not police. Neither are they properly constituted courts. How hard is this?
What next? Will employers be required to run kangaroo courts too? Why just universities?
Should more of us be reporting crimes to universities? Could be a profitable sideline and a return, since The Sweeney, to seeing investigating officers with leather patches on their jacket elbows if the Geography Dept take point.
I think Machiavelli has hit on something!
“We’re from the Department of Languages, sunshine, and we ‘aven’t ‘ad our dinner!”
“What next? Will employers be required to run kangaroo courts too? Why just universities?”
If one employee is accused of harassing another we do expect an employer to do something about it,and they cant take action until they do some sort of investigation.
But I’m uncomfortable with the direction of travel here – the bigger a “shadow justice system” we create, then aside from the increased social cost (particularly to small businesses or charities) it also gets harder to ensure the Monster is actually fair and just. It’s hard enough keeping our actual justice system fair and just, and those institutions have supposedly only got that purpose as their primary mission objective. How do we make sure that the Small Restaurant Sector Quasi-Courts are as successful and unblemished and non-discriminatory as the larger, better-resourced and more experienced Higher Education Quasi-Courts? Will we have an army of (Quasi) Lawyers to police the Medium Size Retailer Quasi-judicial System?
Might keep a few SJWs in a job I guess.
Will employers be required to run kangaroo courts too?
From what I’ve seen, a lot of them pretty much do already. Not necessarily for criminal matters, but for internal stuff what can only be described as a kangaroo court is hardly unusual.
When I sat on my university’s disciplinary committee we had a plagiarism case where at the very final moment of the interview with the student she claimed that she had been raped by a family member and that was a contributing factor to her obvious cheating. Lots of awkwardly staring at the floor by the committee ensued
No previous mention or alluding to family problems in any of the documents submitted to the committee. What could we do, we were two academics and a student member. Was she lying, I don’t know but we were the wrong people to to make that call. We decided that she was to resubmit her essay but capped at pass only.
One other memorable plagiarism case involved the head of the student islamic society who claimed in mitigation that he was suffering serious financial hardship. One of the committee then asked what he had done to relieve his financial distress, had he taken the student loan? “No, that’s haram” Another resubmit capped at pass resulted.
Well point taken, but the adoption of Feminazism by compliant corporations is not a reason to support even more of it.
Well point taken, but the adoption of Feminazism by compliant corporations is not a reason to support even more of it.
Indeed. If I had my way, I’d introduce court martials in corporations to deal with managerial cowardice, including firing squads.
You’d expect the university to police the small stuff, plagiarism, bullying, harassment, etc. and pass the serious stuff, rape, assault, theft, etc. to the professionals. So on the face of it this case has absolutely no merit.
So what is driving it? Struggling here, but…
1, Uni wants a clear cut decision by a curt to set a precedent.
2. Alleged attacker is black. Reverse ferret racism?
3. Alleged attacker has recently been convicted in another case, possibly of rape.
No, still won’t do.
Careful Tim.
You’ll have dearieme along in a minute pointing out it’s “courts martial” & mumbling about education, again..
I hope the University has the balls to sue her for its costs. Fat chance.
It used to be that the Trot nutter running your course could only give you a shit grade if you didn’t share is view of the world. Soon he’ll be judge and jury against you.
Good luck everyone. It’s a brave new world of truth and justice.
MyBurningEars nails it.
This is about creating a parallel justice system within academia, unburdened by evil Patriarchal concepts such as innocent until proven guilty, the criminal standard of proof, the right to a lawyer acting in your defence, the right to confront evidence adduced against you, and the right not to incriminate yourself.
Feminist Sharia courts, in effect. This is exactly what has developed in universities in the United States.
But why?
Because investigating and prosecuting rape is hard. Unless a random rapist drags a woman off the street, there’s often little or no physical evidence to go on, it becomes a he-said-she-said situation, and we tend not to jail people on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations.
Feminists are frustrated by these limitations of the criminal justice system, and since they operate under the delusion that rape is a pervasive element of Patriarchy, they think rapists are everywhere.
Note that Oxford didn’t fail to act in this case. They suspended the alleged rapist for three months, only reinstating him when the criminal authorities decided there was nothing he could be charged with.
What Miss Ramey wants is for universities to act as an alternative to the police and courts, so that even where there is no real evidence of a crime, a man may be found guilty of rape by the university and have his life ruined via disciplinary committee.
The incentive this creates for scorned or simply crazy women to fabricate malicious allegations against men they don’t like is obvious. It is a criminal offence to lie to the police, but American universities showed nothing but sympathy for rape liars like “Jackie” or “Matress Girl”.
Well, why not have universities investigate alleged murders? Or arson? Or war crimes?
If Inspector Morse is anything to go by, Oxford would be doing nothing else but investigate murders.
Having run the investigations team for a large corporation, I’d say that there is:
* A remarkable prurience amongst managers – with them demanding that we intrusively investigated stuff which there was absolutely no justification for.
* The usual Dunning-Kruger stuff with them having no idea of investigations law, employment law, or the (back in those days statutory) ACAS rules for disciplinaries. Or, even, the corporate disciplinary policy.
* And a very “sweep it under the carpet” attitude when it came to popular staff.
Recognising that our situation was different (students aren’t employees), our usual procedure was to suspend staff on allegations of serious or criminal misconduct and conduct a triage investigation. This happened to me, as head of the investigations team one rather icky Christmas.
For criminal cases, we would then double track the disciplinary and the criminal process – they have very different rules of evidence and standards of proof. Even if you were found not guilty at court, you are not entitled to your job back*.
It worked. But several managers had to be beaten over the head with bricks. Particularly ones in London. And there were cases where there were miscarriages of justice, in the widest sense. I particularly remember one where the management, despite being specifically told not to, sprinted off at the rush on a sexual harassment case, giving the vermin a written warning. Whereas the evidence we had collected but not yet processed got the lass’s boyfriend dismissed. I was really pissed off at that one.
* and, actually, you might not face the same accusation. A case where we knew there would be a perfectly acceptable defence at the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard in a major fraud, notoriously “somebody else must have used my password” – which was indeed the defence at trial, became a serious misconduct “you either did this or you gave somebody else your password to a payments system in violation of the Corporate Security Policy” followed by a righteous dismissal.
Rob – I know! If Morse, Taggart, and Jessica Fletcher had ever met, there’d have been Murdergeddon.
@Julia M – The Columbia Spectator is going to be heavily referenced in future works on the end of Western Civilisation.
“Non bis in idem (periculo)” is a staple of civil law. If the university tried a student (with appropriate powers of punishment) then the police could not do so. Until “benefit of clergy”, whereby clergy were tried by church courts, was abolished “clergy” could not be tried by the king’s courts (Henry II’s attempt to have the King’s Justice wreaked on “criminous clerks” was the start of the process that led to the martyrdom of thomas a Beckett).
So Ms Ramey wants either (i) to abolish the use of Britain’s criminal courts for student criminals or (ii) to overturn a foundation stone of civil law. Given that she omitted to report an alleged crime to the police until after the university advised her of her duty, I suspect the former.
It appears from the published account that Oxford University was very proper and correct, giving the alleged “victim” advice on the procedure and suspending the alleged “culprit” for the period of the police investigation. The case should be thrown out with costs awarded against whatever lawyer appears in court to argue her case.
Having run the investigations team for a large corporation, I’d say that there is:
* A remarkable prurience amongst managers – with them demanding that we intrusively investigated stuff which there was absolutely no justification for.
* The usual Dunning-Kruger stuff with them having no idea of investigations law, employment law, or the (back in those days statutory) ACAS rules for disciplinaries. Or, even, the corporate disciplinary policy.
* And a very “sweep it under the carpet” attitude when it came to popular staff.
Oooooh yes!
“should employers have to run kangaroo courts too?”
I think if my employer was a zoo and a bad tempered kangaroo had bit me, then yes, I think they should.
@ AndyC
With twelve adult kangaroos to form the Jury?
Big zoo!
@John77
‘“Non bis in idem (periculo)” is a staple of civil law. If the university tried a student (with appropriate powers of punishment) then the police could not do so.’
Come again?
Firstly, civil law has nothing to do with the police.
Secondly, the old principle on double jeopardy no longer exists in English law. If compelling new evidence is presented, you can be tried again.
Thirdly, there is no way in which a university can effectively try anyone on a rape allegation, or punish them properly if it could.
@ Interested
“Thirdly, there is no way in which a university can effectively try anyone on a rape allegation, or punish them properly if it could.”
That is exactly what is being demanded: that OU should try anyone accused of rape and punish them appropriately (preferably before a criminal trial but also after any alleged culprit is found “Not Guilty”).
Civil law has everything to do with the police – miltary law has nothing to do with the civil police.
The old principle of double jeopardy remains a principle: IngSoc (run by Scots where “Not Proven” is an acceptable verdict) reduced it in certain cases but that would NOT apply to cases tried by OU.
SE
Really interesting post. Thanks for that.
John 77
“Civil law has everything to do with the police – ”
Odd that I never dealt with the police in 20 years of civil litigation, whereas friends who did criminal litigation dealt with them all the time.
Is rape a suitable matter for the civil law?
Ian,
Only after the criminal law has dealt with it.
I would hazard employment disciplinary as different from civil law (although we would never have pretended to decide “rape” as opposed to “inappropriate behaviour within the workplace”. One we were competent t decide. No matter what the jury’s view was on the criminal side. )
This actually raises an interesting point. We, here, apart from the idiots, despise the extension of “rape” to “impolite or inappropriate sexual behaviour”. Yet, in the workplace, there is actually a rationale behind banning certain conduct.
As an example, I sometimes work with my wife. Our behaviour in a customer environment is different to our behaviour in the office, is different to our behaviour at home. Fewer steaming rows than he first case …
Ian
“Is rape a suitable matter for the civil law?”
No, not really. Even less suitable for universities to deal with. Like churches dealing with child abuse (a) that’s not what they’re set up to do so they’re not very good at it; (b) their natural instinct is to say “nothing to see here, we’re doing fine.”
Some things are best dealt with by Plod – which I think is your and Tim’s point. Should Plod do better? Separate point.
@ Luke
The difference is between courts martial and civilian courts.
Bloody lawyers don’t understand simple English (or choose not to).
The solution is obvious. We need to segregate the universities, then rape won’t happen any more.
The case has been thrown out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-32657008
CJ Nerd, yes, but only because it wasn’t relevant to her. It’s quite clear the lawyers are going to go fishing got someone to whom it will be relevant, and use that to have another go.
Shakespeare had the right idea.
Another damned American import causing trouble.
It’s getting to be just like the boat race.