Part 65: USC Has A Rape Cover-Up Problem – And What We’re Going to Be Doing About It
Published January 17, 2024, Updated January 18, 2024.
Photo of snowy Mount Hawkins from Little Jimmy Springs by author in the San Gabriel Mountains(GoPro Hero 11 Black).
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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
I’m not making this up, the University of Southern California, USC has a rape cover-up problem. In fact, they have a very big rape cover-up problem. In prior parts of my reports on this topic, specifically Part 49 and Part 55, I couched this language out of the interest of moving my journalistic inquiry slowly to corroborate my initial assessment of the recovered Notice of Investigation. Now there’s no question about it, it’s not my speculation, in fact, it’s been reviewed by three experts in Title IX campus policy and law to fully verify my reporting.
USC has a very, very big rape cover-up problem. Even my Jane Doe, a brave whistleblower who contacted me after I conducted brief online outreach seems surprised that I have just identified the accused John with an allegation of sexual assault, as they say, doing so would undoubtedly create quite a stir when you finally pull the big reveal on the secret. I won’t do that though, because that wouldn’t protect the source, but at the same time, now that USC has seen fit after more than 2.5 years to offer her a Live Hearing, we’re not about to let them win this battle!
Not only has she finally worked up the courage to consult with the attorney’s name I mentioned to her, but the activist network that I’ve spent the last 16 months building since USC whistleblower terminated me with Title IX retaliation, institutional blackmail of the lowest sort. My Jane Doe doesn’t want to view herself as traumatized, but as she told me yesterday after I revealed that a third expert, who I will name shortly is concerned on the basis of reviewing her investigation timeline alone I’m pretty, proof positive there’s a strong legal case there to be made.
The Notice of Investigation that she delivered isn’t just a smoking gun piece of evidence, literally it’s not compliant with USC’s Resolution Agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. They should not be approving of this conduct, but for one of their former employees, USC’s current Title IX coordinator, the Vice President of Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX it’s an easy decision. Nothing more than a thinly veiled intimidation attempt because they don’t like the optics of having to deal with the accused.
He's too powerful, even I admit to some brief hesitation before deciding that this is a goose worth cooking. These types of allegations are not new to higher education, or even higher education. Now I’m protecting the identity of the first two experts because they are engaged in the public sector, and the second has great potential as a future source of information, but please let me salute the research of Dr. Nicole Bedera, a “sociologist studying how sexual violence is much bigger than the people involved in a sexual assault” at the University of Michigan.
“I have heard of schools investigating complaints after the perpetrator has graduated or transferred to another institution,” Bedera told me in email response. Continuing by noting that “In those cases, the most common outcome is that the Title IX Office claims there is nothing they can do to sanction someone who has left the campus community.” She concludes with finality: “It's all theatrics that exhaust and retrauamtize the survivor with no possible tangible benefit. (And arguably, that would be a violation of Title IX.)” Well said, Dr. Nicole Bedera!
USC is out their mind absolutely if they think I’m just going to let this happen, and I’m sure glad my Jane Doe was laughing out loud when she got USC’s email on December 19 following my December 7 original report. The scary part is that this type of behavior is just about par for the course as Bedera found in her dissertation research, but there’s no question, that “refusing to open an investigation for nine months would clearly violate Title IX regulations under the Obama Administration.” The law is on her side, or so you would hope.
Bedera does caution that USC could just decide to the right thing after putting the Jane Doe through intentionally long delays. They could bar the accused from future admission to USC should he decided to pursue additional graduate studies, or even revoke his diploma. Still that seems unlikely, as she notes: “It's exceptionally rare for schools to take any action at all once a perpetrator has left campus.” Universities and colleges have wide a “huge amount of latitude in determining how they implement Title IX law and regulations” but the recommended amount of time by OCR to launch an investigation is no more than two months.
In this case, the incident occurred on September 6, 2021 and was reported on December 20, 2021. USC’s EEO-TIX office conducted the first interview of the victim on January 25, 2022, waiting until August 18 of that year to interview her again to “reaffirm” the allegations. EEO-TIX according to their own Notice of Investigation did not issue the required notice until September 20, 2022. The accused would go on to graduate in May 2023 from USC, and now presumably he’s received the same correspondence summoning him to campus for a Live Hearing in March 2024. Yes, they’ve been dragging this one out for that long.
The first expert was unequivocal, “they want her to go away, when is USC going to learn.” The second after asking me every question in the book came to the same conclusion. The point isn’t to litigate whether the rape occurred, but to be clear I believe the victim 100% that she communicated clearly to the accused that he needed to stop before engaging in sexual intercourse. USC’s Notice of Investigation attempts to discredit her by writing little things like that she didn’t keep the condemn, and that she was intoxicated at the time, but that’s beside the point.
EEO-TIX’s response has been so untimely, so lacking in luster that myself and three of the best Title IX experts around can’t help but conclude that this does not comply with Federal regulations on Title IX, the nation’s foundational gender equity law. Her complaint came after Trump weakened the procedures that protected women that are now in a highly contentious “legal gray areas since they have not come before a court,” Bedera told me in rapid response, before concluding that “I could certainly see a compelling case to be made that refusing to take any action for nine months and then waiting until after a respondent has graduated to fully investigate would constitute deliberate indifference.”
The indifference is the point, by gaslighting you into believing ipso facto a diligent investigation, that you have no claim, that you have no avenue to recourse, and that you won’t be believed, the indifference becomes exceedingly deliberate. USC’s Catherine Spear knows what she is doing. The former Title IX coordinator at Stanford during the Brock Turner case, and at the University of Virginia as well, she’s regarded as an expert at these matters, and well I happen to know some of her moves. I’m absolutely sure that she will attempt to ensure that not only is the complaint not sustained, but that the Jane Doe feels discredited.
It's almost a game as Bedera describes, for the “school to take both approaches--arguing in some cases that they have some latitude to respond and in others that they're incapable of taking action.” This would be less funny still if it weren’t USC, which is still under monitoring by OCR because of their disregard of complaints regarding former gynecologist George Tyndall, which they failed to disclose to OCR despite being required to do so in 2018. So USC is on its second Resolution Agreement, and the first was precisely because of these types of issues with USC’s former Title IX coordinators.
Spear was supposed to be the solution to this problem at USC. Spear reports to Felicia Washington, USC’s Senior Vice President of Human Resources as the August 21, 2020 press release announcing her appointment notes. “It’s about creating structures and a presence that people feel they can trust,” Spear told the USC News at the time. Last semester though as USC faced off with the new Graduate Student Workers Organizing Committee affiliated with the United Auto Workers, and despite forcing the issue to the point of strike, in the end agreed to a carve-out for a separate grievance process for graduate workers.
The Jane Doe was never a student at USC though, only a prospective student, and the assault forced her not only to stay away understandably from the regal campus, but to delay her own education. That’s the very reason we have Title IX, and so even as Spear promised “transparency and accountability metrics to publicly communicate information about our progress” she has failed to deliver on it more than 3 years despite having specific Federal requirements to do so. All of this only makes me wonder what other sensitive cases she’s been hiding, and so even as USC’s administrators continue to deny that there are issues and ignore my emails, we know.
It's not to tear USC down, but rather to force it to confrontation, to change by facing the truth: USC has a rape cover-up problem. I’m not intimidated, my Jane Doe isn’t scared, our friends aren’t running away, and depending on how much of a kangaroo court she’s planning we just might have to take this to another level. First though, I might make one suggestion to VP Spear, save us a whole bunch of time and trouble and just resign. Two years ago, President Carol Folt was forced to apologize for a “troubling delay” in USC warning the campus community about drug facilitated sexual assaults. USC lied about how that happened, and the reasons why.
Now I’ll give Carol Folt that grace, that she isn’t the one doing these types of things, but I do think that she knows about it, and if she doesn’t I’m going to make sure of that fact with a pressure campaign. She can run away from the Los Angeles Times at press conferences as she did after the Mike Bohn resignation, but accountability is coming to USC even if I have to write and circulate another petition just on this case to keep at the truth, because now I want to know: just how many rape cover-ups have there been at USC? The institutional retaliation is the icing on the cake, yes they really mean it, and it’s not uncommon.
I’ve played these exact games with VP Spear both while working for the USC Office of the Provost and afterwards. She knows what she’s doing, and it’s not upholding the Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation with fidelity, but rather convenience. When I was first terminated, she was absolutely freaked out by the idea that I had somehow perhaps triggered a law enforcement investigation from OCR into her conduct, or that they weren’t protecting her anymore. Should we wait and see how this one gets covered up?
We’re continuing to work to lawyer up the Jane Doe and make sure she gets a fair shake out of USC, but one thing is for sure, before my reporting, they couldn’t have cared less to deal with her complaint. Three experts corroborating that this is shady beyond belief, or hope is nothing to sneeze at, and I don’t need to take down the John to protect the Jane, even when USC won’t. The culture of retaliation, of manipulation of processes and procedures to drag out cases is exactly the favored tactic when the optics of responding appropriately don’t suit the institution’s agenda.
“Schools are known to intentionally slow down investigations to allow respondents to graduate,” Bedera told me concisely about her research. “I found significant evidence that it was the course of action Title IX investigators found the most desirable, if it was at all justifiable to take that approach.” Sadly she says, and I must agree from the first time I caught whiff of these happenings at USC: “The survivor you've met is far from alone in experiencing this particular type of institutional betrayal.” So we’re going to do something about it at USC by covering this case, and making these issues known loud and clear in the campus community, it’s not a myth.
If you have been a victim of institutional retaliation at USC, or otherwise have tips, or even just want to talk with me about these issues, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I can be reached via email at zachary.b.ellison@gmail.com or on my cell at 310-415-4253 including using Signal and WhatsApp. Enough is enough, I’m just going to keep circling the wagons, I’ll see them stop an active defense of victims at USC, because retaliation is a culture, and it operates within a machine. All that’s happened is this time, we have some pretty compelling written evidence.
Link: Nicole Bedera, Ph.D.
Link: Beyond Compliance Consulting
Link: USC’s new equity and Title IX expert guided by desire to help people through tough times
Link: USC president admits 'troubling delay' in acting on multiple sexual assault reports
Link: OCR 2020 Findings and Resolution Agreement
Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo
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.
