Video Link: Sarah Tubbs of Montrose talks about her ordeal after she says she was sexually assaulted at Stony Brook University, and then forced to prosecute her own attacker. Updated with video as link, 3.4.15.
Sarah Tubbs attended (and was graduated from) SUNY Stony Brook, part of New York’s state university system. It’s part of a public university system not unlike the UW System. (Commonly called just ‘Stony Book,’ the school is about twice as large as UW-Whitewater, but similar in many other respects.)
When Ms. Tubbs sought recourse under federal law after being sexually assaulted, she found that Stony Brook met her rights with an inadequate – indeed a perverse – remedy:
She’s had nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks since being sexually assaulted last year at Stony Brook University.
Yet when Sarah Tubbs sought the university’s help to proceed with disciplinary charges against her alleged attacker, officials required her to personally prosecute him, she said. Tubbs has no legal training. Yet she had to question and be cross-examined by the man she claims sexually assaulted her in his dorm room.
Tubbs, 22, of Montrose, is suing Stony Brook, which is part of the State University of New York system, and her alleged attacker in violation of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender at schools that receive federal funding. Under the law, such discrimination can include sexual harassment, rape and sexual assault.
Her lawsuit, filed last month in federal court in White Plains, seeks monetary damages and a court order abolishing the practice of having sexual-assault victims “prosecute their own cases and to cross-examine and be cross-examined by their assailants.”
The alleged attack occurred nearly a year before State University of New York campuses adopted a more comprehensive sexual assault policy in December 2014 at the urging of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Tubbs wants the new policy broadened to specifically prohibit victims from having to prosecute their own attackers at student disciplinary hearings.
See, SUNY grad says school made her prosecute her own sex attacker @ Gannett’s Lower Hudson website.
When Ms. Tubbs submitted to a university hearing as was her right, that hearing did not even consider adequately – in a case about sexual assault – whether she had given consent:
Tubbs was granted an appeal by the university in August, based on a finding that the disciplinary board didn’t properly consider the definition of consent to weigh whether the sex was consensual.
A university official, Jay Souza, wrote in a letter to Tubbs that “he found no evidence that the Hearing Board considered the definition of consent” as spelled out in the university’s student conduct code or applied that definition to “the facts of this case,” the lawsuit says.
Souza said in the letter that Tubbs would be contacted by the university about the next steps, but Tubbs said she hasn’t heard anything, despite her own efforts to reach school officials….
There Sarah Tubbs found herself at a campus hearing – entitled by federal and state law, but by her university denied representation, and afforded a process so paltry that officials did not consider something as fundamental as lack of consent.
Sarah Tubbs has now filed a federal lawsuit against Stony Brook, but the school she attended – as a citizen with rights under state and federal law – compounded an assault with institutional indifference and further harm. For it all, she’s still resolute:
“I don’t think it’s the rape that makes the person a victim,” said Tubbs. “I think it’s the systemic failure that makes someone from a survivor to a victim. … I can honestly say I won’t stop fighting until those systems change.”