PROVIDENCE, R.I. ― Trial began Tuesday in a lawsuit brought against Brown University by a student who was suspended after a sexual encounter that he says was consensual but that a fellow student reported as an assault.
U.S. District Judge William Smith said both sides in the lawsuit agreed to a bench trial in order to get a quicker resolution. The male student, identified in the lawsuit as John Doe, was found responsible for sexually assaulting the female student and suspended in April 2016 for two years.
In the lawsuit, John Doe seeks to be reinstated and to stop Brown from handling complaints using the current process. Brown says the procedure was fair and the hearing panel had a rational basis for its finding.
Universities around the country have faced similar lawsuits from dozens of men who say they were falsely accused amid a push by federal authorities aimed at getting schools to better address sexual assaults on campus.
The encounter happened in November 2014 when John Doe was a sophomore and the female student was a freshman. They knew each other through a campus activity and had met in a campus building to watch a movie together after exchanging often sexually charged texts over a period of days.
John Doe maintains the encounter was consensual, but the woman filed a complaint in October 2015 saying it was not.
She said in her complaint that he tried to kiss her, she turned away and said she did not want to kiss him, then he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers. She said she froze, said she did not want to have sexual intercourse and then said she finally submitted to oral sex out of fear after what she called “coercive badgering.”
