SEXUAL ASSAULT at Brown University

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by Jody Ericson

But Campus judiciaries, weighing a student's interests against the university's, can just as easily turn against the plaintiff.

According to handwritten notes from OCR investigators reviewed by the Phoenix, the rape allegation at Brown in September was treated differently from the start.

In interviews with UDC members, the civil-rights investigators have learned that at the beginning of the hearing, the chairman of the council, English professor Stephen Foley, made a point of saying this was a "special case" because Martha Joukowsky, the advocate defending the charged student, had asked the UDC to dismiss it.

According to notes obtained from federal investigators, university personnel said that the UDC had never before considered such a request.

That afternoon, on October 28, the council -- consisting of Foley, three students, and three members of the faculty -- went into executive session without hearing testimony from the alleged victim. This, again according to investigators' notes, was unusual. Then Foley issued another ruling that others would later question: he allowed Joukowsky to read her request aloud.

One UDC member asked for more time, to allow an interview with the plaintiff, but, according to OCR interview notes, Foley said they had to make a decision that day.

In another apparent deviation from procedure, employees from the Office of Student Life (OSL) were excluded from the UDC's deliberations. The OSL investigates and oversees cases brought before the UDC, and is customarily represented at UDC hearings. Not so this time.

When the UDC convened a few hours later, the council announced its decision. The vote had been 4-3, with Foley providing the tiebreaking vote. The alleged victim was told she was free to pursue her case in court.

Asked why the UDC has the option to decline to hear any complaint, Mark Nickel, director of the campus news bureau, says, "It's part of the code at Brown." When asked why the code is written that way, he pauses and then says, "I don't know why."

To be sure, the case was potentially complicated. Only the accuser and the accused were in the room that day in September. The man insisted the sex had been consensual and that they'd had sex on another occasion afterward.

The woman's credibility was also questioned after she told her alleged assailant she feared she was pregnant from the encounter. Several people interviewed by the OCR said the woman certainly must have known she wasn't: that she had taken a morning-after pill at the university health center, and later took a pregnancy test there that turned up negative.

In his interview with the OCR, Foley characterized the female student's allegations as a "highly charged, overwrought claim from a biased party." He accused the woman of trying to manipulate her ex-boyfriend into thinking she was pregnant, and said he wasn't quite sure where the pair's relationship stood.

In a letter to Foley dated a few days prior to the UDC hearing and obtained by the Phoenix under the Freedom of Information Act, Joukowsky made similar accusations against the young woman. Calling the charges "unsubstantiated, untrue and scandalous," Joukowsky said the UDC should dismiss the case. She also cited a provision in the student code that allows the council to reject cases "in certain instances, such as capital offenses . . . rape . . . and other felonies."

Cases like these are certainly complicated -- and emotional. But there are possible explanations for the alleged victim's actions. The woman claims she was not informed of the negative pregnancy test, and that she performed a home test of her own that turned up positive. She had a witness who'd gone to the store with her to buy the test, and she had records of phone calls made by her alleged rapist, who was concerned about the possible pregnancy.

The young woman was confused and afraid of stirring up publicity, a rape counselor told OCR. Her parents are known on campus as well, and she feared her ex-boyfriend's violent streak.

The day after she was allegedly raped, Toby Simon, an associate dean of student life, found the young woman curled up on her bed and crying, according to OCR interview notes. It took her two hours to tell Simon what happened.

In OCR notes, the dean described the alleged victim as "clingy" and "not with it." Simon said she'd tried to convince the woman to be tested for evidence of rape at a hospital. Instead, the alleged victim had chosen to be more discreet and to visit the university health center.

Ultimately, the UDC's job is to sort through such conflicting testimony and evidence and to render a decision, as it had done many times before. But in this alleged rape, UDC members didn't let the charged student go because of a lack of evidence. They didn't even bother to hear the case.

And there is no doubt that the alleged rapist had connections at Brown. In OCR interview notes, Joukowsky -- a professor of archaeology and art -- says she met his parents in 1993, when she began "southern temple excavations" in the kingdom of Jordan, in the Middle East. In promotional materials, Joukowsky is listed as the project's director "under the auspices of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities."

Joukowsky also told OCR investigators that in 1995, the charged student had been forced to take a leave of absence from Brown for "academic reasons." During that summer, he joined her excavation team of undergraduates in Jordan. In January of 1996, when he returned to Brown, the OCR notes mention a "curious" donation from his father around that time.

As a major fundraiser for Brown, Martha Joukowsky's husband, Artemis, has reeled in many important donations himself. His job is to woo big names to the campus -- and to make sure they get the red-carpet treatment.

Although Dean Robin Rose denied to OCR investigators that Artemis Joukowsky had written a letter on the charged student's behalf, his "brief conversation" with the dean must have sent a message. Artemis Joukowsky was watching the case closely. "A very unfortunate situation," he'd said.

In their complaint, the alleged victim's parents contend Martha Joukowsky clearly was acting with a conflict of interest in representing the student. "The faculty advisor selected by the charged student as his advocate was inappropriate," they state. "Professor Joukowsky has . . . a conflict of interest professionally and personally, on the one hand with the charged student's family, and, on the other, within Brown University Administration."

Such allegations continue to fuel students' suspicions that the UDC's rulings are arbitrary and geared more toward protecting the university's image than upholding a student's rights. Perhaps no one believes this more than Adam Lack.

Although the UDC dismissed September's alleged rape, its members did take on the Lack case -- and found him guilty of sexual misconduct with no hard evidence. Klein had filed a complaint a month after the incident, and she'd been too drunk to remember what actually happened that night.

There were no pregnancy or STD tests involved because Klein had asked Lack to use a condom. There were no apologetic phone calls from Lack, either.

In the end, university officials seemed determined to make an example out of Lack. Their efforts, however, backfired when the junior's case became a national cause célèbre among conservatives.

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Jody Ericson can be reached at jericson[a]phx.com.