“[P]ersistent and unfounded branding of a man as a ‘rapist’ cannot be easily dismissed as anything other than sex-based harassment.”
From Friday’s decision by Judge Paula Xinis (D. Md.) in Doe v. Univ. of Md, College Park (for more detail on the factual allegations, see pp. 4-12, and for more on two claims that were dismissed, see pp. 21-23):
In October 2020, University of Maryland student Jane Roe … alleged that John Doe …, the plaintiff here, and another student had sexually assaulted her in separate incidents on the same morning. Following an investigation, the University concluded that Doe was not responsible for any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Roe and others embarked on a months-long public campaign to brand Doe a rapist and to exclude him from campus activities. Doe now asserts that the University’s failure to address this hostile, sex-based campaign violated Title IX….
[T]he persistent pattern of publicly identifying [Doe] as Roe’s “rapist” which led to his removal from Club Lacrosse, constitutes harassment directed at his sex. “Sexual harassment” includes “sex-specific language that is aimed to humiliate, ridicule, or intimidate.” Plainly, a reasonable juror could conclude that persistent public pronouncements that Doe is a “rapist,” a “sexual predator” and “dangerous to girls on campus,” is language aimed at his sex and his sexual conduct.{In determining whether Doe had been harassed based on his sex, a reasonable juror could also consider the source of the comments. The PSA [a student-run organization called Preventing Sexual Assault] was the on-campus support group for female victims of sexual violence perpetrated by male community members. For instance, during the on-campus “Slut Walk,” PSA members carried signs stating “Tell men not to rape” and “Pussy grabs back.” From this, a reasonable juror could infer that the PSA Presidents’ public campaign to brand Doe a “rapist” drew on the same sex-specific framing embodied in PSA’s slogans and was consistent with the organization’s broader sex-based mission.}
Indeed, such language is no less based on sex than the insults that supported the sexual-harassment claim in…
Guilty without being guilty and punished without being found guilty.
I’ve been through something similar, although it involved no criminal charges. A place where I used to work, several years before I got a job there, was the target of a hostile takeover. One thing it meant was that the people I got stuck with for co-workers no longer had any say in hiring decididn’t, and they were very much attached to my predecessor. Less than a week after I took that job, a female co-worker complained about me to my boss, who was in another building, that I had sexually propositioned her, plus she got other female staff and students to say the same about me, which ultimately got me fired. North Arkansas college can BURN IN HELL for all I care!