Xavier faces third civil-rights complaint
ENQUIRER EXCLUSIVE: Third woman claims university mishandled report of sexual assault
Written by
Cliff Peale
Federal authorities have launched a third civil-rights investigation of Xavier University, merging it with two previous complaints that XU mishandled claims of sexual assault on campus.
The multiple complaints will be joined into one probe by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which started the first two investigations in December.
In the latest complaint, 2011 XU graduate Caitlin Pinciotti charges that she was sexually assaulted in late 2008. She says the university allowed the student found responsible in a March 2009 campus disciplinary hearing to flout terms of his one-semester suspension.
Pinciotti said Sean Marron, who eventually was acquitted of four criminal rape charges in October 2011, showed up on campus in violation of the terms of his suspension at least five times and was never punished by then-Dean of Students Luther Smith.
“The message was literally that they didn’t care about the students at Xavier at all,” said Pinciotti, now 22 and a graduate student in Cleveland. “They just cared about making sure that Sean didn’t sue them.”
Xavier would not respond to questions about the complaint and and the OCR declined to provide more details.
The new complaint is the latest development in a string of controversies during the last several years over the way Xavier responds to women who file sexual assault claims.
In some cases, female students say, the administration has used technicalities to allow male students to elude consequences of sexual assault complaints.
In December, the OCR said it would investigate charges by former student Kalyn Burgio, who also had filed a complaint against Marron, that Xavier violated federal Title IX anti-discrimination laws.
The student who filed one other open complaint has not been publicly identified.
The agency merges complaints when they raise identical allegations. It told Pinciotti that it would investigate whether XU “did not take reasonable steps to prevent and eliminate sexual harassment of which it was on notice, thus allowing a sexually hostile environment against women to continue at the university.”
Most OCR cases are decided within about six months.
According to Pinciotti’s complaint, Smith allowed photographs and a witness statement that she had never seen to be used in Marron’s disciplinary hearing in March 2009, despite a mandate in the XU Student Handbook that all witness material should be available three days in advance.
Pinciotti’s mother, Kathy McNamara, said she confronted Smith as he walked into the hearing.
“I said, ‘You’re violating your own policies and procedures,’” McNamara said. “I don’t remember the exact words he used, but he kind of dismissed me and said, ‘I guess that gives you grounds for an appeal if this doesn’t work out here.’”
Smith’s office handled all of the sexual assault complaints. He was reassigned Jan. 13 to unspecified duties by Provost Scott Chadwick. Smith’s former boss, Associate Provost of Student Life and Leadership Kathleen Simons, was placed on leave.
Female students and professors at Xavier have said the administration’s response risks student safety by allowing violators to remain on campus.
Shawna Storey, who graduated in 2009 and still lives in the area, said she was assaulted and then filed a complaint in July 2009, shortly after her commencement.
Smith scheduled a hearing for September 2009, but then called Storey and canceled the hearing, claiming that rules prevented it because she had already graduated when the incident happened, Storey said.
“I started to cry immediately on the phone,” she recalled. “I asked him why. He just said, ‘The legal team, this and that.’ He didn’t really have much more information than that.”
Both Pinciotti and Storey specifically agreed to be named. The Enquirer is not naming the male student who was the subject of Storey’s complaint because he was never charged, even after she testified before a grand jury.
The fact that he still is a Xavier student and never faced a disciplinary hearing from the incident concerns Storey.
“Xavier should be protecting their students,” Storey said. “And they’re not.”
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120.../302170162
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Xavier faces third civil-rights complaint
