Stanford University has offered monetary settlements to at least two women who filed Title IX complaints with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), BuzzFeed News reports. But they're offering the settlements on the condition that these women withdraw their complaints, helping Stanford get out of federal Title IX investigations.
Leah Francis, a 2014 Stanford grad, told BuzzFeed News that Stanford offered her a $60,000 check in October to withdraw the Title IX complaint that she filed with the OCR. Francis considered taking the settlement in order to help with her debt and therapy, but denied it as soon as she discovered that it required her withdrawing her complaint.
“Stanford should stop trying to isolate and bully survivors of sexual assault into dropping their complaints by dangling much-needed money for health care in front of them,” Francis told BuzzFeed.
Francis went public about her case in June 2014, five months after the sexual assault took place, The Stanford Daily reports. She filed a report that June requesting that her abuser be expelled, who was found guilty in April 2014 of the reported assault on Jan. 1 of that year. The male student was punished with a five-quarter suspension and community service, scheduled to begin after he graduated. He would have been able to return to Stanford for graduate school after taking a year off.
The other woman who was offered a settlement requested to remain anonymous, and declined to comment on how much the school offered her. She refused the settlement as well, as both women felt that it was important that the federal investigations continued. They want to push Stanford to reform the way it handles sexual assault cases. Is the Brock Turner case coming to mind?
While not denying that Stanford has offered settlements in these cases, Stanford spokeswoman Lisa Lapin said it would be "unethical" for the university to comment because they “are conducted under assurances of confidentiality,” BuzzFeed News reports.
"Unethical" is certainly an ironic choice of words there.
“Anyone involved in such discussions would be acting unethically to make statements, true or not, about what took place,” Lapin said. “Stanford has been cooperating with the Office of Civil Rights in its investigation, and Stanford would not make presumptions about what OCR will investigate. We are confident that OCR will determine for itself the matters it will pursue.”
“The only reason I filed in the first place was so that this would never happen to another girl at Stanford,” another woman who was offered a settlement told BuzzFeed. “All I care about Stanford doing is policy reform to better serve victims of gender-based violence. I do not have faith they are going to do that themselves.”
Francis has started a GoFundMe page to raise money for 2 years of therapy treatment of PTSD. Any money raised above $11,000 will be donated to the YWCA and AWARE, two organizations that support sexual assault and domestic violence survivors.