Over at the Gazette, above the fold, there’s a frontpage story about Ms. Raechel Liska, an honors graduate of UW-Whitewater, and her Title IX claim against UW-Whitewater for failing to address properly her sexual assault complaint. The story refers also to an earlier Title IX complaint against the school (the two complaints are now joined administratively), and the account of a
third student that corroborates the experiences of the two Title IX complainants.
See, from Andrea Anderson, A Trust Betrayed, http://www.gazettextra.com/20160227/former_uw_w_student_stands_up_for_more_awareness_around_sexual_assault (subscription req’d).
Ms. Anderson’s story publishes significant new information about the claims, and more detail about what’s already been published.
The story reveals that there are at least three, not two, women who allege the same administrative misconduct and concealment. Two of those women have filed Title IX complaints, and a third submitted a supporting statement:
“Liska has encouraged at least one other student to come forward and submit supplemental testimony to be attached to Liska’s Title IX claim.
Sarah, a senior at UW-W who agreed to let The Gazette use her first name, learned about Liska through the media. In her testimony, Sarah wrote she experienced a similar response as Liska from UW-W after reporting she was sexually assaulted by another student.
Sarah claims Mackin did not inform her of her Title IX rights and felt as if Mackin “talked down” to her and “never addressed the actual problem that I was having: I was abused by another UW-Whitewater student and I was terrified,” according to the testimony.
UW-W police talked to the accused, but Sarah still felt the university was minimizing her fears of retaliation from the man, Sarah wrote.
Sarah could not file her own Title IX complaint because the deadline had passed, Held said. Sarah was given the option to add testimony to Liska’s claim and did so to help push for improvement in UW-W’s response to sexual assault victims.
It was “distressing to realize that, after talking to Raechel about her interactions with the school, I wasn’t alone in this treatment. It made me want to change the way the University deals with cases like mine and Raechel’s,” Sarah said in her testimony.”
“Liska has encouraged at least one other student to come forward and submit supplemental testimony to be attached to Liska’s Title IX claim.Most of these cases are resolved administratively, and that’s the goal of the claimants here. How this will be resolved, of course, I do not know; successful resolutions need good terms and a sincere effort to carry them out.
I’ve no connection whatever to these claimants or their lawyers. That’s both by nature and design – having seen more than one tragedy in this small & beautiful, but sometimes troubled city, I simply don’t believe, for politics or policy, in close. On the contrary, it’s distance that makes one’s work, as an ongoing chronicle, possible.
I would hope that these claimants, as people with unique hopes and aspirations, find whatever measure of remedy they are seeking, so fully and completely as possible.
See, also, other posts that are part of a category on Assault Awareness and Prevention dedicated to this topic.