Manufacturing a Campus Rape Crisis

Protestors rally against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 4, 2018. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Commentary

U.S. President Joe Biden is working hard to secure his legacy as the founder of America’s campus kangaroo courts, firmly tilted towards believe-women justice.

Back in 2011, he was the prime mover in the Obama administration’s use of Title IX anti-discrimination rules to force colleges to set up tribunals to adjudicate sexual misconduct.

The aim was clear. Feminists had long been frustrated that juries are so reluctant to convict young men in “he-said, she-said” date rape cases when they don’t know whom to believe. The answer was to set up a separate court system, hidden from public view, passing judgement using lower standards of proof and denying the accused’s due process rights.

Biden was their man, proudly declaring that he was happy to use campuses for such social engineering.

“We need a fundamental change in our culture and the quickest way to change culture is to change it on the campuses of America,” he said.

No matter that thousands of accused young men were thrown out of colleges, their education was derailed by biased tribunal investigations.

The result has been numerous civil suits, over 400 so far, where their families have sued universities, usually successfully, for failure to protect their legal rights.

Biden was desperate to wind back critical reforms made by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Secretary. Within hours of gaining power, he was making moves to ensure these unjust tribunals can revert to business as usual—meaning any male accused of sexual misconduct is hung out to dry.

Meanwhile, down under in Australia, our own campus activists have diligently followed the American sisterhood’s copybook. Like America, it all started with fake statistics suggesting a campus rape crisis.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) million-dollar survey failed to find any real evidence of a crisis—only 0.8 percent of students reported any type of “sexual assault” per year, including incidents such as a grope from a stranger on the train to university.

The AHRC disguised these disappointing results by claiming widespread campus “sexual violence,” which was actually mainly low-grade harassment like “unwanted staring.”

Such manipulation of the statistics detracts from the very real problem of sexual assault which certainly exists on campus and deserves our full and focused attention.

But our mainstream media promoted the narrative of widespread sexual violence, and universities were bullied into establishing a huge industry supporting secretive committees running our own kangaroo courts adjudicating sexual assault.

I spent a year conducting a campus tour speaking out about this “fake rape crisis”—which encountered strenuous resistance but had one positive outcome.

When the riot squad had to be called in to protect me and my audience, from violent protesters at Sydney University, the government established an inquiry into campus free speech which led to a free speech code governing these institutions.

Australian sex therapist Bettina Arndt is confronted by protesters from the Victorian Socialists at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 6, 2018. Supplied/David Geraghty/The Australian

Now universities across the country have secretive committees usurping criminal law to adjudicate sexual assault—with devastating results for the young men concerned.

I have made videos exposing the unfair treatment of these accused men.

For example, one describes how a Ph.D. student warded off a committee threatening to withhold his doctorate over a false rape accusation at the University of Adelaide.

More recently, the disgraceful story of a nursing student at the University of New England who spent five months unknowingly living in a college alongside a fellow student who had reported him to administrators claiming he sexually assaulted her.

I also have a team of lawyers working pro bono to help the steady stream of other male students dealing with such ordeals.

Meanwhile, activists keep pressuring universities to do more about sexual violence.

Just two months ago a group of protesters interrupted a speech by the Australian National University Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt, claiming the university had done nothing to protect students from these dangers.

Schmidt responded saying he was prepared to put in unlimited resources to address the problem.

“But there’s no easy fix. It’s a wicked problem,” he said.

Let’s face it. It ain’t easy wiping out unwanted staring. But now this virtue signalling man will have to battle new scourges like “loitering” and “invading personal space.”

These are the latest additions to the ever-expanding definition of sexual harassment included in the new National Student Safety Survey, which has just been distributed across our universities.

Harassment now also includes someone “making comments or asking intrusive questions about your private life, body or physical appearance” and “making requests for sex or repeated invitations to go out on a date.”

So, you are only allowed to ask once for a date—twice is harassment.

All sexual acts including kissing are now also deemed sexual assault if your partner “made no effort to check whether you agreed or not.”

Feminists have managed to slip this enthusiastic consent requirement into the survey—even though this is not yet law in most Australian states. The survey also defines all sexual acts as assault if you were “affected by drugs or alcohol.”

There are also endless examples of activists cooking the books, to expand the number of those who have experienced sexual assault or harassment.

Students are even asked to report on not only their own experiences, but also if another student “told you, or you suspected, that they may have been sexually assaulted in a university context.”

So the data will include not just hearsay evidence—say, something you read in a student newsletter—but students’ own assumptions about what might have happened to another person.

It is even more alarming that this exercise is being sponsored by Universities Australia, the peak higher education body, which clearly endorses this blatant attempt to provide a funding boost for the mighty industry now supporting the kangaroo courts.

But worse is the impact on students themselves, with young women encouraged to regard any awkward sexual experience as harassment or assault and their partners as dangerous sexual predators.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.