Part 49: Two Stories of Sexual Violence at USC – Tragedies of Danger and Corruption in Los Angeles

Published December 7, 2023, Updated December 11, 2023.

Photo of Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education speaking at USC in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center for the Western Region Summit on Antisemitism in Higher Education on November 6, 2023 (Photo by Dr. Erroll Southers, President of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners and USC Associate Senior Vice President for Safety and Risk from LinkedIn).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The history of sexual violence at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles is undoubtedly long and checkered, even before the rise of Title IX establishing protections for gender equity in 1972 signed into law by Richard Nixon there was undoubtedly sexual violence. I will not attempt to tell that full history in this part, but instead will focus on two stories, one purely from my own perspective, and one told with the help of a leaked Notice of Investigation from USC’s EEO-TIX office, the first part stands for equity and equal opportunity. In doing so, I hope to illustrate common themes of public perception and private peril to create progressive conversation.

First though, I would be derelict if I did not mention what happened at USC this year on Halloween. No sooner had I dashed off another email pressing the university to increase transparency in its legally mandated reporting on these issues than another attack occurred with great notoriety and national public media attention. A female student taking a Lyft ride from a nightclub in West Hollywood was sexual assaulted, raped as the media headlines, while returning to her apartment just east of the 110-freeway. Our thoughts are with that student, and the driver has reportedly been banned from the app. LAPD’s investigation is ongoing according to the Daily Trojan.

In terms of public perception, a victim of sexual assault who goes public with her allegation, or even files a legal complaint as a Jane Doe faces an ordeal. It is not easy for victims to report these incidents, and quite often there will be a period of delay before the report. In the first story, the victim is unknown to me fully, she is simply a victim of a crime, in a USC Department of Public Safety Alert. USC DPS did not respond to request for comment on the first story, and in the second I have not requested comment from the respondent in the EEO-TIX case in order to shield the victim from retaliation. That fear keeps so many silent even when they should speak!

Turning to the first story, as readers of this series will know, I was a staff member for just short of 7 years in the USC Office of the Provost. The executives I supported oversaw the academic operations and legal affairs of the University and after the scandal with George Tyndall, I had set out to contact to the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights in May 2020 to provide what information I had and to express my continuing concerns for the USC community in regards to how USC responds to employee complaints and how that can endanger the campus community in regards to sexual violence. OCR as it is known is a federal law enforcement agency, with a fleet of attorney’s dedicated to overseeing the nation’s civil rights laws in educational institutions.

USC although it’s a large private university is still a school, and is subject to OCR’s jurisdiction in ensuring the universities compliance and monitoring repairs when breaches of trust occur as they had in May 2018 with Dr. Tyndall, the former gynecologist who recently died on October 4, while awaiting trial more than 5 years after Trojan women by the hundreds went to the LAPD to make criminal complaints following the Los Angeles Times exposé on the case and alleged cover-up by the USC administration. Despite all of the public pressure on USC to change, it seemingly still yet tries to ignore its critics and insists that it is fully compliant with Resolution Agreement along with its antecedent signed only months prior in January 2018 to resolve numerous complaints related to how USC handles required Title IX investigations.

USC is not above the law, nor is it beyond simple failures. In the first story which I will now tell it is simply a failure of the university to maintain its facilities that constitutes possible gross negligence. USC alone is not to blame for what happened, it was not the perpetrator even as the events haunt me and in telling them to you I hope to find some peace for myself. The story begins on a March night in 2022, it is after hours and I’ve stopped behind the Galen Center on Flower Street after hours on the way back from a long day in the San Gabriel Mountains. Found by random chance.

I notice that all of the security lights and the blue light on the emergency telephone so ubiquitous on college campuses are both out of order. It’s dark, and I’m parked in my car as a sizable woman gets out of her car behind me and goes into the bushes behind the basketball and volleyball arena to urinate before getting back in her car and driving away. I’m watching as this happens, and I know that the employee handbook requires me to report such incidences to USC’s Facilities Management Services, and so I call the hotline to report the apparent power outage and that it includes the blue light emergency phone.

I can still hear my voice warning the customer service agent that something needs to be done immediately to restore power to the arena and ensure public safety. “Someone is going to get hurt back here if it isn’t fixed,” and the agent takes the report diligently before assuring me that someone would get on the case. It doesn’t happen. I check again weeks later after hours due to the long days following the time change and the lights still aren’t turned back on. That night I had thought to text our Provost facilities team to address it rather than going through facilities.

It's not an academic building, one under our direct control, but instead it’s presumably an Athletics Department issue. I can hear my bosses voice in my head scolding me again for working after hours, and I had deleted the text message so as not to get in trouble and bug people after hours for things other people should be doing anyways. After all, USC has a Department of Public Safety, and Flower Street is next to the Metro Expo Line, surely someone must be on top of this and perhaps it’s just some electrical equipment problem they can’t fix because of a part.

The almost cerebral administrative culture at USC so often places a premium on not getting things done just to spite the person complaining about them. I’m suspect already, people know I’m not happy with the retaliation I’ve been experiencing. Still yet, I walked into the Senior Vice President for Administration’s office and share my concern with a staffer, we call the executive assistant for facilities, and she in turn calls USC DPS about the issue. The officer demurs and nothing happens again, I send a few more quick emails to facilities inquiring about the lights.

Then it happens on June 11, 2022, we’re too late, or perhaps nothing could have been done at all. The DPS report records the details and assigns the case a number, it describes the incident as follows at 8:23 pm: “A student reported that after exiting the metro platform on Jefferson Boulevard and Flower Street she was followed by a suspect who sexually assaulted her and stole her scooter.” The description of the suspect is unknown on age, eye color, hair color, and height, but it records his race: “Black” and of “Average build.” The next part is so whimsical it’s heart wrenching: “The suspect was wearing a blue polka-dotted shirt, blue jean shorts, white shoes and black backpack.” How many people with “blue polka-dotted shirts can there be?

My mind starts racing, “Dammit” I yell to myself before banging my hand on my desk and I note the location. I email my colleagues to note the location. I tell my supervisor and he yells at me angrily in frustration too over the failure, and so I explain what happened after he tells me that I should have scrambled our Offices resources to get the job done. I’m not sure we could have stopped that from happening, lights aren’t the same thing as a police officer there when you need them, and the pain of realizing that your actions might have helped create a more dangerous situation than necessary are profound. We’re mad at each other  for weeks. I report it to the then Chief of Police and he tells me that USC is emphasizing usage of its LiveSafe app ahead of the blue light phones, it’s of little consolation.

We discuss the breakdown. I hadn’t let it happen. USC has all the resources in the world, anyone else could have reported it, and in another world crimes like these wouldn’t happen. Despite the plethora of security cameras at USC none apparently capture an image of the suspect. Was it too dark? No arrest is reported. Weeks and months pass by and you start to learn to live with the idea that at a place like USC, and in a big city like Los Angeles, sexual violence seems almost inevitable, but it is not invariable, and so in this story the perpetrator is a complete stranger to the victim. Sometimes bad things happen to good people.  

The second story I wish to tell is not my own. It is based on victim interview and EEO-TIX case documentation, in fact, I don’t even wish to focus on the assault itself heinous thought it may, or even the perpetrator who maintains a significant public profile. The most striking thing to me is not the alleged violation itself, but rather how the EEO-TIX process itself is in turn used by not the victims or even the respondents evidently but rather by USC to do damage control, to keep an unwanted story from coming out by trying to intimidate the complaint by failing to respond with an appropriate investigation and even directly intimidating the victim both in-person and in writing, I say complainant as a process term in meetings without any sense of shame about it.

When people are mistreated sexually, whether male or female at USC, they should make complaints, but they should also take steps to protect their rights and ensure that their case will not be ignored including securing an attorney and contacting regulatory agencies such as OCR to make a timely complaint. The system sadly judges on that basis, and in this case the victim did delay but the complete indifference shown to her subsequently is nearly as heinous as the original violation. USC completely failed to respond with a prompt, thorough and equitable response. The victim was only a visiting prospective graduate student when she was solicited by a current student while on her trip via private social media message to meet at his apartment.

USC delayed in issuing a Notice of Investigation for nine months after the initial EEO-TIX report several months after being raped. The dates are clear and indisputable, additionally the author of this document USC Vice President for Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX is known to me from my own extensive interaction with her during my protected whistleblowing activities. The purposively dismissive account of the assault is clearly designed to intimidate the victim. This document does not comply with basic professional standards and instead seeks to humiliate the victim into dropping the complaint likely because of the respondents major campus profile.

Due to the nature of this document, I am unable to share additional details, but I’ve seen this before in my own Notice of Investigation after USC similarly delayed and then presented and withdrew accurate allegations in lieu of narrowed one’s. I find this even more heinous than that, not only is this retaliation, but retaliation against a victim of sexual assault for bringing forward the complaint. After another full year passed, the perpetrator was allowed to graduate without any Findings being issued or a Notice of Dismissal being given to fully close the process.

The victim wanted USC to do the right thing, but they failed her and left her feeling victimized again, not by some system, but rather by discourteous, pompous investigators and a total lack of Resolution from the process. After being sexually-assaulted off-campus, the victim did not apply to USC, and instead has deferred admission at another law school in California where she hopes to complete her legal studies to become an attorney. She was simply given the cold shoulder by USC and is too intimidated out of fear of lack of evidence to prove her claims to even consult with an attorney about her own case. She doesn’t want it to be a thing. Can you blame her?

I find her account credible. The document is authentic and were I too share in full detail how it describes the account in a belittling way you would be shocked to read it. Not all trigger warnings are equal, but the way in which this document is written is nothing other than cruel. From my own encounters with EEO-TIX, I understand how being forced to engage in such measures is dispiriting. What was USC to do to the perpetrator? The victim fears that other women have been, and may still be assaulted by this individual. We cannot name him out of fear of litigation, nor is the objective of my journalism to ascertain his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Now Catherine Spear is a former OCR attorney, and from my conversations with OCR it’s been consistent that she is essentially their women on campus. I like Catherine even a little, but this I cannot tolerate and that is why I have named her here in the hope of journalistic deterrence and accountability consistent with the values espoused as part of USC’s Culture Journey. The change that USC needed to make clearly has been like a tiger trying to change its stripes, as the July 2020 whistleblower lawsuit against USC alleged by an anonymous attorney in USC’s Office of Professionalism and Ethics this isn’t the first time something like this at USC has happened, nor has it attracted lawsuits including a parallel one from an alleged victim of similar violations.

The culture of predetermination and obsequiousness in its EEO-TIX investigations is very real. I’ve even heard a prominent attorney in Los Angeles with cases against USC note with complete zeal and honesty that once he became involved USC would conceal documents and scuttle cases. USC doesn’t want lawsuits, that’s understandable, but this culture of nastiness, of legal intimidation that pervades USC’s culture as documented in the USC MeToo Instagram Account now gone dormant show that it continues, and it preys on the weak and unrepresented. USC attempts to use legal documents to erode the resilience of complaints who demand justice.

I’m not saying this happens in all EEO-TIX cases, but rather when it's an inconvenient complaint as mine was or as this victim was, they really do give it the rug-sweep. In my own experience it was like dealing with the Church of Scientology, they would do just about anything with a smile to make you go away and let you know that further pursuit was hopeless. That isn’t a Resolution Process, and that’s not what USC is supposed to be doing. So is the real problem here not just USC, but also a regulator that now having failed multiple times to cure the breach, to get a handle on sexual violence at USC, and the cultural issues that fuel its prevalence? OCR San Francisco is supervised by another attorney Zachary Pelchat as Regional Director, a friend of Catherine Spear, and OCR is in turn led by Catherine Lhamon who is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Education Department.

Assistant Secretary Lhamon recently visited USC on November 6 for the Western Region Summit on Antisemitism in Higher Education. I learned of it from Los Angeles Police Commission President and USC’s Associate Senior Vice President for Safety and Risk Assurances’ LinkedIn page. He snapped a picture! You have to wonder when she was there if she took the time to meet with USC President Folt about these issues because there sure are a lot of Trojans who would have appreciated that conversation happening. Dr. Southers has been studiously dodging me pointedly observing USC’s non-compliance with the Tyndall Resolution Agreement even as USC recently agreed to similar best practices commitments to disclose information about its EEO-TIX investigations to the USC community and greater public.

Information is power. I’ve told Erroll Southers before that I would find more victims of USC’s scheming in short order, and after only a minimal attempt to follow-up on my Annenberg Media interview in conducting outreach that was accomplished. So what else is USC hiding? Just how many victims are there of USC’s machinations? Do we really need the class-action lawsuit that the July 2020 whistleblower called for? USC dismissed her claims, beat her in court on process. She can’t get out of arbitration, and now hearings have been set for next March on those claims.

I’m still looking for more stories about EEO-TIX, so if you have been a victim of USC’s retaliation machine, or of discrimination or sexual violence at USC, or harassment, or you just want to talk, please feel free to reach out to me to share your story. I’ve read and heard enough MeToo stories at USC, simple word of advice to my fellow gentlemen, if a woman says no, she means no and that means you need to stop. I know that even absent leadership from the top that we as a Trojan Family can rise above these troubles, but only by confronting them with honesty and most of all some compassion. More work to elevate the dialogue in the USC community!

As I recently reported to my subscribers, USC’s first Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer Dr. Christopher Manning has announced that he is departing after just under three years in the post for San Diego State University, where he has prior connection. I bleed Cardinal and Gold, and I don’t wish to speculate on the reasons for my friends departure, but I will say that Dr. Manning was a compassionate, good individual and that USC will surely miss his voice and good humor. My hope is that President Folt will hire someone appropriate and empower them to lead over these issues, because I don’t like the story I just heard, and USC has to get better on sexual violence both at prevention and how it responds to complaints. No more secret institutional corruption.

The graduate student workers who have organized under the United Auto Workers protective umbrella have been unequivocal in their condemnation of how USC handles discrimination and harassment. I beg the media to take the allegations that hear about USC with complete, utter seriousness. We can’t all be lying can we? They have created the first grievance process for these claims outside of USC’s EEO-TIX process and with more transparency, but the latter is needed University-wide. USC can’t keep all its secrets, nor should it, but it needs to keep changing for the better.

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Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.