Seven current and former UConn students have filed a Title IX complaint against the university, alleging that the administration failed to protect them from sexual assault on campus and responded inadequately to sexual assaults that did occur. Their accounts are, in a word, horrifying.
In a press conference with Gloria Allred (who is representing the seven women), former student Kylie Angell tearfully recounted her experience with campus security and the university’s Community Standards department after she was raped by a classmate in a UConn dorm. It’s heartbreaking:
I was notified on the same day as the [Community Standards] hearing that [my rapist] was to be expelled and he was not to be allowed to come back on campus again. Though I was emotionally and mentally exhausted, I felt that this was a victory and that I could finally go back to my life as a student. Then, two weeks later, I was eating in the dining hall, when the perpetrator sat down next to me and threateningly grazed my elbow in an act of obvious defiance. I was then met by heckling by his friend, who shouted at me that the perpetrator was back.
Unaware of what was going on and feeling that I was in a nightmare, I fled the scene to the UConn police. The officer told me, “Women need to stop spreading their legs like peanut butter or rape is going to keep happening ’til the cows come home.” Shocked, I left, feeling confused, violated, traumatized and vulnerable. [Breaks down sobbing] I then learned that the perpetrator had filed an appeal, but I had not been informed that it had been filed… The only explanation that I was given was that the Vice President of Student Affairs felt that expulsion for having raped me was too severe.
Angell went on to describe how her PTSD and anxiety caused her to feel unsafe in her own apartment, to miss days of classes, and to suffer academically. She also stated that after she tried to speak out she was threatened by the administration, who told her she could lose her campus job for being vocal about her attack. She told the Huffington Post that she later learned that her attacker went on to rape another woman a year later.