In the past nine years, there have been three presidential elections, 6 congressional elections, and 35 different iPhone models.
Yet, in that same amount of time, one former Purdue University student has been stuck in limbo, unable to end a nightmare that began all those years ago.
<h3>The Allegations</h3>
During the fall semester of 2015, a male student whom The Daily Wire will refer to as John Doe began dating a female student referred to in court documents as Jane Doe. The relationship was okay for a while, but on December 13, 2015, Jane threatened to commit suicide in front of John by standing on the ledge of a parking garage after throwing objects around her dorm room and crying while saying she hated life. After this incident, according to John’s eventual lawsuit against Purdue reviewed by The Daily Wire, all sexual activity between the two ceased.
In early January 2016, John reported Jane’s suicide attempt to Purdue, and shortly after, she began to pull away from the relationship and the two went their separate ways. Four months later, and only after Purdue’s highly marketed Sexual Assault Awareness Month events, Jane accused John of sexually assaulting her during their relationship.
John received notice of the accusations on April 11, 2016. Jane claimed she awoke one night to John groping her. She told him it was not okay. John told her at some point before that incident that he digitally penetrated her while she was sleeping. He said he felt bad about the first incident but proceeded to the second incident anyway. Jane became upset at John over these incidents and left his room. John had also gone through her underwear in her laundry, and had once chased her down the hall, joking about tasing her. After they had broken up, he also continued to go to her room unannounced. She claimed John had a temper he couldn’t control as well.
John vehemently denies Jane’s allegations, stating in his lawsuit that he responded to the allegations by informing Purdue that he never groped her in her sleep in November 2015, but that in mid-December of that year, after her suicide attempt, she slept on a futon in his dorm room while he slept on the floor. At some point in the night, John accidentally touched her knee and she began freaking out before leaving the room. John also said he never had any sexual contact with her while she was asleep, and therefore never told her that he did. He added that he never went through her laundry but sometimes did her laundry for her and never threatened to tase Jane. He also noted that the two never formally broke up, they simply began seeing each other less, and that he merely went to her room to return an item. At that time, she told him not to go to her room, so he didn’t.
John provided evidence that Jane continued to shower him with affection even after these alleged incidents, demonstrating behavior not in line with someone who had been sexually assaulted. She continued to text with John over the holidays, wished him a Happy Christmas Eve, and sent him a package of homemade cookies for his family. She also invited him to her room at the beginning of the spring 2016 semester.
<div id="attachment_880991" style="width: 876px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-880991" class="size-large wp-image-880991" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382544-866x576.jpg" alt="A student rides a bicycle past the bell tower on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 22, 2012. Administrative costs on college campuses are soaring, crowding out instruction at a time of skyrocketing tuition and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans. At Purdue and other U.S. college campuses, bureaucratic growth is pitting professors against administrators and sparking complaints that tight budgets could be spent more efficiently. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="866" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382544-866x576.jpg 866w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382544-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382544-768x511.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382544.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 866px) 100vw, 866px" />Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
In addition, John provided Purdue with evidence that it was Jane who had the temper and tried to project that onto John. She often contemplated running away and not returning to the school as well. John also provided a list of more than 30 names to substantiate his reputation, since Jane attacked his character and credibility in her allegations.
Purdue’s policy did not allow John to review the investigator’s prepared report, nor was he provided a hearing to determine the credibility of Jane’s claims. John maintains in his lawsuit that his “ability to defend himself was severely and unfairly prejudiced.”
Instead of a hearing, a three-person panel reviewed John’s case. Jane never appeared before the panel and instead provided a statement written by Purdue’s Title IX coordinator. In that statement, Jane only requested that John be removed from Purdue’s Navy ROTC program, of which they were both members. Jane’s new boyfriend at the time was also a member. Jane stated that she didn’t fear John on campus and merely wanted him out of the ROTC.
Without any evidence corroborating Jane’s claims, John was suspended from Purdue and had to leave the Navy ROTC program. He appealed the decision, but was denied without adequate explanation, so he filed a lawsuit against the university as many students have done in the past decade.
<h3>The Lawsuit</h3>
John dreamed of becoming a Navy SEAL officer, but says he can’t get a federal job with this on his record. His Title IX case is the longest ongoing case of its kind, with the closest similar case lasting seven years and ending in a disappointing motion to dismiss for the wrongly accused student.
“Purdue&#8217;s wrongful suspension of me closed all federal &amp; military employment opportunities because I was employed with the Navy through their ROTC program at the time of the suspension, which forced me to ‘resign’ with the Navy after my school suspension was finalized,” John told The Daily Wire in an email.
“Expungement of my school disciplinary file would give me an opportunity to fix my [Department of Defense] record, which currently makes me look bad due to the circumstances and thus limits my employment opportunities. For reference, I was a 4.0 GPA varsity athlete when I graduated high school, and double majoring with a minor while employed with the Navy ROTC at Purdue. My longtime dream was to become a Navy SEAL officer. The derailment of my life by Purdue was severe, to say the least.”
The case has persisted due the slow nature of the justice system, numerous filings and responses from both parties, and appeals to higher courts. The case even landed on the desk of Judge Amy Coney Barrett before she was nominated for the Supreme Court. Barrett, who was with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019, upheld John’s claims that Purdue violated his due process and Title IX rights. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex, and accused students have said they are discriminated against as males when they are falsely accused and a school takes no steps to protect them.
When the case was sent back to a lower court, a judge dismissed John’s due process claim. John is trying to get the court to reinstate that claim and has had the judge who dismissed it replaced. The next stage of this case is a trial on the Title IX claim alone, which could result in what John ultimately wants: This whole thing to be expunged from his record.
After nine years of litigation, John’s family has spent more than $350,000 on legal bills, draining their savings and 401ks. He is currently working to set up a fundraiser to continue fighting Purdue’s persecution.
<div id="attachment_880995" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-880995" class="size-large wp-image-880995" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382547-864x576.jpg" alt="A large sculpture stands on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 22, 2012. Administrative costs on college campuses are soaring, crowding out instruction at a time of skyrocketing tuition and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans. At Purdue and other U.S. college campuses, bureaucratic growth is pitting professors against administrators and sparking complaints that tightbudgets could be spent more efficiently. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382547-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382547-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382547-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-156382547.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
<h3>Purdue’s Response</h3>
In a statement to The Daily Wire, Purdue University chief spokesperson Erin Murphy said the school rejected John’s assertions of unfairness toward him.
“Most of [John’s] claims were dismissed long ago,” Murphy said, referring to the multiple claims students include in lawsuits hoping at least one will be accepted.
“His single remaining claim has been ready for trial for years. [John] insists on going to trial, but his lawyers have caused delays. Some of his lawyers quit his case in June 2023 after the last settlement conference,” Murphy continued. “[John] has publicly criticized those former lawyers. His remaining lawyer has filed repeated demands for a different judge, which were rejected by multiple courts, including the United States Supreme Court. His remaining lawyer has also required trial postponements for personal reasons that are shown in the court record.”
Those “delays” refer to John and his attorney attempting to get a new judge assigned to the case due to allegations of unfairness and a pro-Purdue bias. There is a new judge overseeing the case, as the previous judge was promoted by the Biden administration.
John’s attorneys did not quit on him, and the “public criticism” Murphy refers to is a testimonial on his attorney’s website saying that the attorney left his previous law firm “after partners at the firm tried to strong-arm” John’s case from him.
Finally, the “personal reasons” Murphy alludes to at the end of her statement refers to the attorney’s cancer diagnosis. John’s attorney has been battling cancer while fighting for his client.

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Nine Years Later, One Student’s Title IX Nightmare Still Isn’t Over

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The following is an edited transcript of an interview with Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham and Daily Mail columnist Maureen Callahan on the growing, public PR battle between actress Blake Lively and film director Justin Baldoni. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/blake-lively-and-justin-baldoni-s-epic-hollywood-battle-2-8-25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Catch the full interview on Morning Wire</a>.
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Actress Blake Lively and director Justin Baldoni are continuing their public feud over their hit film, &#8220;It Ends With Us,&#8221; with both sides filing lawsuits. But even more than a legal battle, this has become an all-out PR war with leaked texts, calls, and film footage, as well as allegations of sexual harassment and spousal jealousy. The first trial date is set for March. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham speaks with award-winning journalist, author and Daily Mail columnist Maureen Callahan to get insight into a drama only Hollywood could produce.
MEGAN: Thanks for being here, Maureen. So, especially for those of us who are kind of catching up with this story, I&#8217;m wondering if you can give us the 10,000 foot summary of this scandal?
MAUREEN: Sure. So about a month ago, the New York Times ran a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html?searchResultPosition=9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blockbuster</a>, I think 4,000 word piece, in which Blake Lively was alleging her director and co-star Justin Baldoni, on their film “It Ends With Us,” had subjected her to almost ritualistic sexual harassment — and that she suffered so greatly, it was a concerted effort in which he involved multiple people to not only harass her while filming, but then once the movie was about to be released, orchestrated an online smear campaign against her. A couple of weeks later, Baldoni&#8217;s lawyer, Bryan Freedman filed a countersuit in which he alleged that the text messages obtained by the New York Times had been selectively edited. They sort of threw open their document dump, which seemed to absolve Justin of many of the things that Lively has been claiming. Nonetheless, these two are now locked in a bitter, bitter, expensive lawsuit. Baldoni is countersuing Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds for $400 million, which is, I believe, what he thinks their estimated net worth is. And the trial is tentatively set for March 2026.
MEGAN: So, before we get to some of the legal ramifications, there have obviously been a lot of leaks, a lot of shifting in public loyalties back and forth. At least that&#8217;s been my experience. At the outset, I was kind of on Team Justin. And then I thought, “Well, wait a minute. That New York Times piece was really persuasive.” But then Justin Baldoni&#8217;s team released some new audio leaks and they sort of shifted the game a little bit. What&#8217;s your sense right now of who&#8217;s on top in the PR war?
MAUREEN: I think Blake Lively is suffering mightily right now and the collateral fallout is affecting not just her husband, Ryan Reynolds, but her so called “Dragon,” her BFF Taylor Swift, who it&#8217;s reported has been taking a step back from her friendship with Blake because she doesn&#8217;t want any of this runoff affecting her career. Justin&#8217;s team has been very smart in what they&#8217;re leaking and when. They leaked footage of the two of them while filming a scene, rehearsing a scene, in which they were dancing very closely and Justin had his mic on. And so they&#8217;re working out how they&#8217;re going to do this scene. Justin is saying, “I think we should be kissing.” And Blake says, “No, I think we should be talking. I think that&#8217;s even more intimate.” And Justin says, “Okay.” So that sort of takes some wind out of her sails. They also released another lengthy voice memo that Justin had sent to Blake in which he&#8217;s praising her to the high heavens and saying he has let her down by not taking all of her notes, and she&#8217;s so brilliant and so smart, and he&#8217;s going to do everything he can to make her happy. Again, a counter narrative to Lively&#8217;s claims that he was doing everything possible to sabotage her and make her feel unsafe on that set. So I think right now Baldoni&#8217;s team is in the power position, but that of course could shift in another few days.
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MEGAN: Well, you know, it seems like there was a moment where Lively could have disengaged and, and just moved on. And this would have been something of a blip on Hollywood&#8217;s gossip radar. Why do you think she escalated to a lawsuit that opened up so much more of these internal communications?
MAUREEN: This is such a great question, Megan, because if you think about it the damage has already been done to her. Think about it, there are like five female directors working in Hollywood today. What male director is going to put himself and his career and reputation at risk by working with Blake Lively, who launched this all out assault on a guy who is not as well capitalized as she and Ryan are, who doesn&#8217;t have the reputation, the lengthy career — who on earth would risk it? And I have to wonder why she did it, because like you said, it could have just been, you know, a thing where they butted heads, they didn&#8217;t see eye-to-eye, but they each walked away clean to do their next project. I have a theory — and it is just my own theory and supposition — that something went on between these two. Perhaps it was an unrequited crush on Blake&#8217;s part and Justin didn&#8217;t respond in kind; perhaps they did in some way have a physical relationship outside of the filming and that went south. There&#8217;s something about this that just feels way too intense, way too personal. I think the real undergirding, the real story is why she did this.
<div id="attachment_873967" style="width: 860px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-873967" class="size-large wp-image-873967" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1928882045-850x576.jpg" alt="JERSEY CITY, NJ - JANUARY 12: Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively are seen on the set of 'It Ends with Us' on January 12, 2024 in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)" width="850" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1928882045-850x576.jpg 850w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1928882045-300x203.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1928882045-768x521.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1928882045.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 850px) 100vw, 850px" />Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images</div>
MEGAN: Well, I&#8217;m glad that you bring that up, because I do want to talk a little bit about those messages between Baldoni and Lively. And I know some media outlets characterize them as “flirty,” I don&#8217;t know that I necessarily saw them that way, but I at least saw them as very familiar, let&#8217;s put it that way.
MAUREEN: I kind of read them as flirty — even the text messages between Justin and Ryan Reynolds. Look, if anybody listening wants to get a taste of what it&#8217;s like to deal with Hollywood people, this is it. And it&#8217;s really quite vile because they&#8217;re just mooning over each other. I mean, they&#8217;ve just met and Ryan hasn&#8217;t responded to Justin&#8217;s text for two weeks and then he replies and says, “I happen to adore you, Justin.” It&#8217;s like, buy me dinner first before you start talking to me like this. It&#8217;s disgusting. And, you know, Justin and Blake are having a very familiar texting relationship that, whether they were that familiar, whether it was this sort of hastened intimacy because they were working so closely together so quickly, who knows? But now we&#8217;re going to see. I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any slight that&#8217;s not going to be weaponized. I just read an item yesterday that Blake Lively blew a good chunk of the movie&#8217;s budget on her wardrobe. I mean, this is how petty we&#8217;re going to get. I love it, but it is the strangest Hollywood war. I&#8217;m going to say it&#8217;s maybe the biggest one since Brad versus Angie.
MEGAN: Do you think Lively and Reynolds, at least as a couple, their image — like maybe Reynolds individually, Lively individually — do kind of come back from this? Because, you know, Brad and Angelina eventually did. But does their image as this blissful “It” couple bounce back?
MAUREEN: Well, Megan, first of all, when I said Brad versus Angie, I meant like when they divorced, when they separated, and it was like the bombshells were going off: “He was abusive. She was out of her mind.” This will be the thing that shows the strength of their marriage. I&#8217;m very cynical, so I really do believe that if this blowback against Blake gets to be too much, Ryan&#8217;s going to cut her loose. I think Ryan Reynolds has his eyes firmly set on becoming a billionaire, and I believe he&#8217;ll get there. And I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s going to stand for his reputation getting muddied in all of this, even though he&#8217;s already in it with these lawsuits and all of these text messages and these documents. And he was famously brought in by Blake to write a whole scene in the movie and be some sort of unpaid advisor. So I think that&#8217;s really where you&#8217;re going to see the strength of this countersuit against Justin, if it really does sort of crater their marriage.
MEGAN: Well, maybe just a couple more questions, Maureen. One of them is that The New York Times has come under a lot of scrutiny for the role it played in sort of rehabilitating Lively&#8217;s claims when she was on the outs in terms of public affection. I have seen some claims that they handled the coverage in a biased way, clearly working hand in glove with Blake Lively&#8217;s team. What do you think? Is there any validity to that claim?
MAUREEN: Yes, I think there is. It seems as though, perhaps, they didn&#8217;t do their full due diligence. I think it was probably seen, initially, as a strength, but is now a liability. I forget how many bylines were on that piece, but one, Megan Twohey, was one half of the team at the Times that broke the Harvey Weinstein story and became synonymous with MeToo. They wrote a book. They made a lot of money off of it. And I think the Times is already struggling in many ways reputationaly and this does not help. If I recall correctly, I could be mistaken so forgive me, but if I recall correctly I think they went to Baldoni&#8217;s team and gave them two hours to respond to that laundry list of accusations. So if that&#8217;s true, it&#8217;s not a great look. [NOTE: <a href="https://variety.com/2025/film/news/justin-baldoni-lawsuit-blake-lively-ryan-reynolds-nicepool-new-york-times-metadata-1236293856/">Some outlets</a> report The New York Times gave Baldoni approximately 12 hours to respond.]
<div id="attachment_873969" style="width: 804px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-873969" class="size-large wp-image-873969" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1925904572-794x576.jpg" alt="JERSEY CITY, NJ - JANUARY 12: Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni are seen on the set of &quot;It Ends with Us&quot; on January 12, 2024 in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)" width="794" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1925904572-794x576.jpg 794w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1925904572-300x218.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1925904572-768x557.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-1925904572.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 794px) 100vw, 794px" />Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images</div>
MEGAN: Well, you kind of intuited where I was going to go next. And that was the role that MeToo has played in this, with these claims, that it was a sexual harassment issue. So, do you think on a broader level, the tide has turned? And maybe this is because of Johnny Depp. Because before, I think there was a period of time when even the public was willing to say, “Hey, I don&#8217;t know that that&#8217;s a MeToo allegation.” I&#8217;m thinking of something like Aziz Ansari where there was a lot of back and forth debate about that. In this case, it seems like some of these men in Hollywood who don&#8217;t even possess the power of some of these women are now willing to challenge these MeToo allegations. So, do you think this sort of shifts the balance on where we are with MeToo?
MAUREEN: Yes, I think this case is very important in terms of where we are and where we&#8217;re going. I agree with you. The Aziz Ansari thing was ridiculous. If that allegation had come out maybe a year later, his career would not have been destroyed. I think we are now seeing a pendulum swing back towards sanity where just because a woman says a man did something to her, it&#8217;s not automatically received as gospel, that the man does get a chance to tell his side of the story and back it up with documents, receipts, screenshots, texts, voicemail, and it certainly helps when you have movie footage. So I think this is going to be an interesting case in terms of the cultural corrective that is underway.
MEGAN: Okay. Well, last question: Any predictions for the March trial?
MAUREEN: You know, I&#8217;ll be amazed if it gets there. Because I would think saner heads would prevail, and both sides should really just drop it and walk away. Justin Baldoni&#8217;s lawyer has already said he&#8217;s pretty much bankrupted by this, financially and emotionally. I don&#8217;t know what good it does for Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds to have this be the headline of their careers for the next calendar year, and that&#8217;s just to start. So, I think it&#8217;ll be interesting to see if it ever really comes to fruition, and if there is some sort of settlement reached, who pays who? This is really just Hollywood writ large, right? The egotism, the narcissism, the ridiculous sums of money, the victimization, the weaponization perhaps, we don&#8217;t know yet, but perhaps of MeToo, it&#8217;s such a great, weird stew of stuff.
MEGAN: Well, thank you Maureen. That was enlightening. I kind of can&#8217;t wait to see where this goes next.
MAUREEN: I know, it&#8217;s like every day we get another tidbit. Yes, thanks for having me.
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<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/blake-lively-and-justin-baldoni-s-epic-hollywood-battle-2-8-25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Catch the full interview on Morning Wire</a>.

Celebrity Sightings In Jersey City – January 12, 2024

‘Way Too Personal’: The Escalating PR War Between Blake Lively And Justin Baldoni

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One of the women who accused former New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment has dropped her lawsuit against him.
Charlotte Bennett was the second woman who came forward with accusations against Cuomo. Cuomo’s attorneys, Rita Glavin and Theresa Trzaskoma, sent out a statement claiming Bennett’s decision to drop her lawsuit amounted to an admission that her claims were false.
&#8220;Ms. Bennett&#8217;s decision to drop her baseless lawsuit should be viewed as a complete capitulation and a desperate attempt to avoid being confronted with the mountains of exculpatory discovery – including contemporaneous texts and videos that the AG’s office never obtained – that completely refute her claims against Governor Cuomo,” the attorneys <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-new-york-state-governor-andrew-cuomos-sexual-harassment-accuser-drops-federal-lawsuit">said</a>, per Fox News.
&#8220;After falsely smearing Governor Cuomo for years, Ms. Bennett suddenly withdrew her federal lawsuit on the eve of her deposition to avoid having to admit under oath that her allegations were false and her claims had no merit,” they continued. “If New York State does give in to her public pressure campaign and settles, it will not be on the merits and should require the public release of all the evidence so that New Yorkers finally know the truth: Governor Cuomo never sexually harassed anyone.&#8221;
Bennett was represented by Debra Katz, the woman who represented Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford. Katz released her <a href="https://katzbanks.com/news/katz-bennett-ny-case-statement/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">own statement</a> on her law firm’s website.
&#8220;Mr. Cuomo has used these legal proceedings to punish Ms. Bennett and others who reported his sexual harassment, and to cause more harm to her, all at the expense of New York taxpayers,&#8221; Katz wrote. &#8220;In dismissing the federal case we thus hope that our client will be able to resolve this dispute and finally be made whole for all the damage Mr. Cuomo and his agents caused her.&#8221;
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Bennett worked as an executive assistant and health policy adviser in Cuomo’s administration before he resigned in November 2020, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/now-its-two-second-woman-claims-cuomo-sexually-harassed-her" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. She <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/nyregion/cuomo-charlotte-bennett-sexual-harassment.html?action=click&amp;module=Spotlight&amp;pgtype=Homepage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> The New York Times in February 2021 that Cuomo began harassing her in the spring of 2020. Bennett told the outlet that Cuomo would ask her questions about her sex life and whether she was monogamous in her relationships. She claimed he also asked her if she ever had sex with older men.
Prior to the spring of 2020, Bennett said Cuomo had asked her about her dating life, but she “saw him more as a father figure” and didn’t think anything of it.
But on May 15, 2020, Bennett began to see things differently when, she said, Cuomo kept asking her about her love life and seemed to fixate on her, saying she was the victim of sexual assault. A few weeks later, Bennett said, Cuomo began asking inappropriate questions about her love life.
“He asked me if I believed if age made a difference in relationships and he also asked me in the same conversation if I had ever been with an older man,” Bennett told the Times.
The first woman to accuse Cuomo, Lindsey Boylan, made her allegations on X and finally detailed them in a post on Medium a couple months later, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/woman-who-accused-andrew-cuomo-of-sexual-harassment-finally-details-allegations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> at the time.
The Westchester County District Attorney’s office also investigated two other allegations of sexual misconduct against Cuomo but decided <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/district-attorney-no-charges-against-cuomo-over-sexual-allegations-despite-credible-evidence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not to charge</a> him despite “credible evidence.”

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U.S.

A New York City grand jury has <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/harvey-weinstein-indicted-new-charges-new-york-grand-jury-rcna169931">indicted</a> former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual assault or harassment by at least 80 women, on new charges that reportedly revolve around other cases of sexual harassment.
In 2017, women started coming forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual abuse. Weinstein’s 2020 conviction of third-degree rape of one woman and first-degree criminal sex act of another was overturned in April by an appellate court. But in 2022, Weinstein was found guilty of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault, and sentenced to 16 years in prison, a decision that is being appealed by his attorneys.
Earlier this week, Weinstein was transported from Rikers Island jail to Bellevue Hospital for emergency heart surgery.
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Weinstein’s Miramax company, which he founded with his brother Bob, produced three films that won the Best Picture Oscar: “The English Patient,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “Chicago,” as well as the films “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting.”
The appellate court that overturned Weinstein’s 2020 conviction wrote, “We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes. The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial. &#8230; It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them.”
After 2017 reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker detailed Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment of women, Weinstein was dismissed from Miramax, expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and suspended from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He resigned from the Directors Guild of America.
In what was called the “Weinstein Effect,” after the reports of Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment became public, many women and some men came forward to speak of being sexually harassed by prominent individuals.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-york-appeals-court-tosses-harvey-weinstein-rape-conviction">New York Appeals Court Tosses Harvey Weinstein Rape Conviction</a>

US-JUSTICE-ENTERTAINMENT-WEINSTEIN

Harvey Weinstein Indicted On New Charges

Harvey Weinstein

A male child molester who claims to be a woman and is being housed in a women’s correctional facility has been accused of sexually harassing female inmates.
Christopher Williams, 34, who identifies as a transgender woman but has no known female name, was able to get transferred to a women’s prison and has been sexually harassing the women there, one woman who filed a report against him <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/male-child-molester-house-in-womens-prison-under-investigation-for-sexually-harassing-female-inmate/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> National Review.
Mozzy Clark-Sanchez, who shared a cell with Williams, filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) report against Williams in 2022 but was recently told the report had been referred to state police. Both Clark-Sanchez and Williams are being housed in the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW). Clark-Sanchez told NR that she was a victim of child rape, so Williams reminded her of her abuser.
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Williams requested he be roomed with Clark-Sanchez during the pandemic and quickly began sexually harassing her, the woman said.
“I’d be sitting on my bunk and he’d lean over me and he’d be like, ‘I hate it when it fills up with blood,’” apparently referring to an erection, Clark-Sanchez told the outlet.
She also said she woke up on at least three occasions to Williams sitting next to her bed. Once, she woke up to find his hand under her blankets and touching her. She said a prison guard caught him and told him to return to his bunk.
“When I startled awake, I felt… Christopher jerk his hand out from in my pants, and underneath my blankets,” Clark-Sanchez told NR. “I was in shock. It took me back to my childhood.”
Williams also once brought a strap-on dildo into the cell and asked Clark-Sanchez to use it on him. She said he also made creepy comments toward her, such as “All these girls want this, I don’t know why you don’t.”
She said another time she awoke to find her shirt pulled up over her breasts and believes Williams had touched her in her sleep. She said she wouldn’t have woken up during such an ordeal because she takes heavy medication to help her sleep because she has night terrors from her childhood trauma of being raped by her uncle and sold by her mom to pay for drugs.
Williams is not the only man who has been allowed into the WCCW, NR previously <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/meet-the-trans-identifying-male-felons-of-the-washingtons-womens-prison/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>, and they all are accused of leering at the women in the shower and bathroom areas.
“Our shower stalls don’t go up to our heads,” a female inmate told NR. “And the bathroom stalls, same thing. A bunch of women, when they’re in the showers, these people are just standing there. They don’t have to stand on their tippy toes and they look over and see everything. People were so uncomfortable. You feel kind of like you’ve been violated.”
Clark-Sanchez said Williams did this to her, and on one occasion threatened: “I can get you when I want.”
There are at least 11 men claiming to be women at the WCCW. Though prison policy says men have to go through an intensive process to be approved for the women’s prison, in practice, all they have to do is claim to be a woman, NR reported. They don’t have to have undergone reassignment surgery, be on a hormone regimen, or be transitioning in any way.
When Clark-Sanchez filed her PREA report against Williams, she said prison officials said her claims were substantiated and moved Williams to a single room away from other inmates.
“They moved him out of the room, and they found literally a bag of d***s,” she told NR. “A bunch of homemade dildos that this dude made.”
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Williams was arrested when he was 16 for sexually assaulting his younger sister, who was nine at the time. Their father said he had first molested the girl when she was six. Williams was required to register as a sex offender but never told the sheriff’s office where he was living, so he was convicted in 2009 and 2010 of failing to register as a sex offender, which is a class C felony.
He is currently serving a 28-year sentence for a domestic violence conviction from 2012 when he assaulted his girlfriend. At the time of his conviction, he was housed in a men’s corrections center, where he allegedly assaulted a male prison officer so badly that the officer needed reconstructive surgery. The officer needed to have his ear cut open to relieve swelling, suffered broken bones beneath his right eye, extensive stitching for a gash on his cheek, a lost tooth, and a broken nose that required emergency surgery to rebuild. Williams was convicted of second-degree assault for that crime, later claimed to be a woman, and was sent to the WCCW.

Christopher Williams Mugshot

Male Sex Offender Claims to Be Trans, Accused of Harassment in Women’s Prison

Male Sex Offender Claims To Be Trans, Faces Allegations Of Harassment In Women’s Prison

Child Sex Abuse

Crime

Transgender

Washington

The Department of Veterans Affairs office dedicated to rooting out racism and harassment is itself a “hostile, toxic work environment with a permissive culture of rampant gossiping and innuendo,” where multiple layers of top officials participated in and covered up sexual harassment, an internal agency review concluded.
At one point, a senior manager fired a mid-level manager because both men wanted to sexually harass the same employee. When a complaint was filed, a political appointee sat on it, apparently partly for racial reasons.
The 125-page report paints a shocking portrait of the 400-person diversity office, in which employees spent much of their time filing complaints against each other instead of serving veterans. Employees engaged in “self-aggrandizing,” petty turf wars, and planned wasteful events, including one junket in which nine people travelled to dispense “diversity” training that was supposed to have been done by one person.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Harvey Johnson, the leader of the Office of Resolution Management, Diversity &amp; Inclusion (ORMDI), retired when confronted with evidence of his department&#8217;s behavior, as well as allegations that he had swept misconduct &#8220;under the rug.&#8221;
Archie Davis, the ORMDI Chief of Staff, has been moved to a different office pending discipline after the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) concluded that he &#8220;engaged in misconduct of a sexual nature with a subordinate employee, including while he was in her direct chain of command,&#8221; &#8220;sexted&#8217; with a different subordinate employee,&#8221; covered up allegations against colleague, and a slew of other infractions.
The findings come as the VA has made some of the most bizarre and inflammatory “diversity” moves in the Biden administration — <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/veterans-affairs-rescinds-memo-banning-v-j-day-kiss-photo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">including an attempted ban on the iconic photo</a> that celebrated victory over Japan in World War II, and a new policy that could tamper with medical assessments to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-admin-wants-more-black-veterans-declared-mentally-disabled-in-the-name-of-equity" target="_blank" rel="noopener">deny benefits to white suicidal veterans</a> in the name of racial equity.
ORMDI is tasked with harassment prevention, equal employment opportunity, and diversity and inclusion for the VA, yet “the very office tasked with enforcing” such things itself engaged in wanton harassment and bizarre racism, according to the OAWP report, which was dated January 26 and obtained by The Daily Wire.
A female employee provided OAWP with messages showing that after meeting chief of staff Davis for the first time in early 2023, he began sending her flirtatious texts and copying her on emails in which he bullied subordinates, seemingly to boast of his power and to show what could be in store for her if she did not cooperate.
Western Region Supervisor Gary Richardson was also sexually harassing the same employee. She said that he would hound her on Microsoft Teams with personal chatter as they worked, and that he told her when she was not available, he would stare at her photo &#8220;to get my fix.&#8221; When she travelled to D.C. for work, he told her he had a &#8220;pass&#8221; from his wife and pressured her to go out with him.
And on March 2, Davis recommended that Richardson be fired for it, writing that &#8220;the predatory electronic messages should be sufficient to present Gary with the option of resignation of retirement in lieu of removal.&#8221;
<blockquote>
<h1>&#8220;Good morning Sexy!&#8230; Ain&#8217;t just attracted to your curves and those physical attributes that cause men to holler at ya. Your bold, audacious disposition and your alpha female demeanor are equally a turn-on for me.&#8221;</h1>
</blockquote>
This was seemingly not because he, as Davis wrote, &#8220;breach[ed] that sacred line,&#8221; but because he was competition. Nine days later, Davis himself texted the employee: &#8220;Good morning Sexy! &#8230; Ain&#8217;t just attracted to your curves and those physical attributes that cause men to holler at ya. Your bold, audacious disposition and your alpha female demeanor are equally a turn-on for me.&#8221;
Davis subjected her to messages such as one that said, &#8220;I wanna make you lose your mind. When I&#8217;m thumping your clit with my tongue and you grab my head, I&#8217;ll keep it right there til you shiver and quiver and beg me to pound you,&#8221; according to screenshots obtained by The Daily Wire.
On another occasion, he sent her porn and texted her at 4:43am, &#8220;I hope you like it early in the morning. Often I imagine how good it will be to roll over on top of you and start the day by filling you up.&#8221;
The victim said that Davis &#8220;would always try to persuade me with money,&#8221; such as free trips to D.C., and told her &#8220;once you get on his bad side, you will feel his wrath.&#8221;
By July, when the woman was still not receptive, Davis got snippy, saying, &#8220;We&#8217;ve been talking for a year and I have been clear on my interest&#8230; My intent was to have it all with you.&#8221; Soon after, she became the subject of his chest-thumping bureaucratic missives, with him writing to her, &#8220;any further attempts to extend your official travel at this conference beyond August 10, 2023 will be viewed as further insubordination and will be dealt with as such.&#8221;
Six complaints resulted in little reform, with the victim eventually reaching out directly to VA Secretary Denis McDonough, who did not respond. &#8220;With Harvey and Archie being in a position of power&#8230; I felt like it wasn&#8217;t going to go nowhere,&#8221; she said.
Davis’ misconduct “was so wide-ranging, pervasive, and widely known” that ORMDI Deputy Assistant Secretary Johnson “either knew or should have” known about it, yet he continued to give Davis “outstanding” performance reviews, OAWP said.
When Johnson received a complaint about &#8220;erratic behavior&#8221; by Davis impacting &#8220;the safety of staff,&#8221; he did not take any documented action. It recommended that Johnson have his previous bonuses clawed back so he could not simply evade accountability by retiring with a pension.
The diversity office’s day-to-day actions seemed to have virtually no bearing on the wellness of veterans. The report said that ODMI is responsible for the &#8220;Diversity and Inclusion Program&#8221; which travels across the country to conduct &#8220;technical assistance reviews (TARs),&#8221; which VA policy says &#8220;may be composed of one or two members.&#8221; ORMDI would add employees to these junkets for trivial purposes such as taking notes or the be &#8220;extras.&#8221;
One employee said it was &#8220;fraud, waste, and abuse. You know, we had &#8212; I kid you not &#8212; maybe eight, nine people on this TAR that was [sic] sittin&#8217; around.&#8221;
Another employee alleged that even though ORMDI had 400 employees, it hired outside contractors to do actual work.
The VA diversity office was so chaotic that investigators from another agency, the US Postal Service, were called in to address their many complaints against each other. While some complaints showed severe misconduct, others evidenced bizarre, adolescent dysfunction or were petty, high-school style gossip.
Employees often gossiped about whether the purpose of their many junkets was for particular employees to have sex with each other, and filed complaints based on sniping and rumors.
Some sexual activity in the DEI office was consensual. One employee was happy that chief of staff Davis called her his &#8220;big brown sugar,&#8221; told him she wanted to &#8220;suck him dry,&#8221; and asked him about anal sex.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) said that VA officials explained a delay in convening an investigation in part because they thought someone could only be investigated by a person of the same race.
Secretary McDonough acknowledged receiving an email from a whistleblower about the scandal, but said he could not recall his response clearly. The employees remained on the job even after House VA Committee Chair Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) wrote to him about it because he did not read the chairman&#8217;s letter, despite congressional correspondence being part of his daily briefing.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t read the letters tab every day. And I&#8217;ve just ignored it,&#8221; McDonough said. &#8220;That is one of the things that really bothers me about it, and I saw no other way to address it than to just come clean.&#8221;
Gina Grosso, the Assistant Secretary for HRA/OSP, failed to take prompt action, explaining to OAWP that “there were so many complaints at once, and it took time to figure out who was the grieved, and it&#8217;s several things on my plate — on the plate. I don&#8217;t think I have any other great explanation, honestly.”
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Grosso, a political appointee of Joe Biden, announced her resignation the day after Congress raised the issue.
“The sheer volume of complaints arising in ORMDI should have put [Human Resources and Administration/Operations, Security, and Preparedness] leaders on notice of the dysfunctional situation in ORMDI, but HRA/OSP leadership failed to take sufficient actions,” it said, referring to the human resources department that houses the DEI office.
In a February 14 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pEafd-tYAU&amp;t=3s">congressional hearing</a>, Secretary McDonough said although a whistleblower contacted him about the issue, he didn’t remember it, and it didn’t get his attention when Bost wrote to him about it, because “I’ve just ignored” letters from Congress.
“The person who failed here is me,” McDonough told the committee. “This behavior suggests a real culture issue in ORMDI.”
The report concluded that &#8220;given the systemic deficiencies and failures documented in this report, VA must take immediate action to restore VA employees&#8217; trust in ORMDI.&#8221;
The VA did not return a request for information from The Daily Wire.

Left: Deputy Assistant Secretary Harvey Johnson, the VA’s top DEI official. Right: His chief of staff, Archie Davis (Department of Veterans Affairs). Center: A statue of the iconic V-J kiss photo that was banned by the VA for being non-inclusive (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

DEI Office In Biden’s VA Is ‘Hostile, Toxic’ With Rampant Sexual Misconduct, Internal Probe Finds

Biden Administration

Department of Veterans Affairs

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Sexual Misconduct

Oberlin College has suspended a long-controversial professor who called for the elimination of Israel after sexual harassment allegations against him came to light.
The private Ohio liberal arts college just outside of Cleveland has put tenured professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati on indefinite administrative leave and scrubbed him from the school&#8217;s website.
&#8220;Professor Mahallati was placed on indefinite administrative leave on November 28,&#8221; an Oberlin spokeswoman <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/woke-colleges-professor-peace-ousted-alleged-war-crimes-antisemitism-sexual-misconduct" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a> to Fox News.
Mahallati <a href="https://www.oberlin.edu/mohammad-jafar-mahallati" target="_blank" rel="noopener">taught</a> religion as well as Middle East and North Africa studies and has previously called himself a “professor of peace.”
However, Mahallati is accused of supporting the Palestinian terror group Hamas, giving students credit for writing anti-Israel blogs, and telling his classes in 2016 that “Israel is a colonialist state” and “Israel is an apartheid state.”
Oberlin made the call to suspend Mahallati after decades-old allegations that he once demanded sex in exchange for good grades surfaced.
Court papers from the 1990s obtained by the Middle East Forum and given to the New York Post allege that when Mahallati was an adjunct professor at Columbia University, a graduate student 11 years younger than he accused the 43-year-old married father of giving her good grades in exchange for sex.
Mahallati allegedly invited the woman to his home, supposedly to interview her for a research assistant position, but then “made repeated sexual advances” and promised good grades for sexual favors, she claimed. The two then had sexual encounters at his office as well as at his Manhattan apartment for 15 months, she alleged.
Mahallati allegedly threatened to withhold her grade if she did not stay silent, and when she did go to Columbia’s administration, he accused her of fraudulently submitting the same paper twice, the woman claimed.
The woman, a 32-year-old Palestinian Christian, sued both Mahallati and Columbia at the time, accusing the professor of trying to damage her reputation and academic career.
Mahallati denied the claims at the time in 1997 and tried to claim diplomatic immunity even though he had not been Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations since 1989.
“We take all allegations of sexual harassment and abuse extremely seriously,” a spokeswoman for Oberlin <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/12/06/news/campus-anti-semite-suspended-after-sex-for-grades-claim/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the New York Post. “We would not hire a faculty member who we knew to have a history of sexual harassment of a student, colleague or staff member.”
Mahallati, 71, has also taught at Georgetown and Princeton.
In September, the Department of Education <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-anti-semitism-probe-launched-into-oberlin-college-over-professor-of-peace-who-called-for-israels-elimination" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launched</a> a federal anti-Semitism probe into Oberlin College over Mahallati. The investigation is examining whether Oberlin violated Title VI, which protects students from discrimination based on race or national origin.
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The probe could result in Oberlin losing some of the millions in federal funding it receives every year — last year the school received $5 million in federal grants.
While Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mahallati is also accused of defending the Supreme Leader of Iran’s fatwa calling for the assassination of the novelist Salman Rushdie over Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses.”
Rushdie was <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/08/12/nj-man-matar-hadi-with-sympathies-toward-iran-arrested-in-stabbing-of-salman-rushdie/?utm_source=partner&amp;utm_campaign=conservnewsd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stabbed</a> in 2022 by a supporter of the Iranian regime while speaking at an event in upstate New York.
Also while Iran’s ambassador, Mahallati <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/oberlin-professor-of-peace-iranian-ambassador-destruction-of-israel-1989-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> at the United Nations in 1989 that Palestinian-controlled land’s “occupation by Zionist usurpers is a transgression against all Muslims of the world and its liberation is therefore a great religious obligation and commitment.”
Mahallati’s classes at Oberlin were canceled in the spring. Previously, students boycotted and protested the professor’s classes, <a href="https://oberlinreview.org/26171/news/continued-college-inaction-provokes-second-protest-against-mahallati/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">alleging</a> that he covered up crimes against humanity in Iran in the 1980s.

Universities Anticipate High Numbers Of Students

Oberlin College Suspends ‘Professor Of Peace’ Who Called For Israel’s Elimination After Sexual Harassment Allegations

Oberlin College Suspends ‘Professor Of Peace’ Who Called For Israel’s Elimination After Sex Harassment Allegations

Education

Hamas

Israel

Oberlin College

Woke Culture

In a move that could pit women’s advocates and transgender activists against each other, the Education Department has opened an investigation into an alleged incident involving a trans-identifying student exposing his male genitalia to freshman girls.
The Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which investigates schools for potential violations of the anti-sex discrimination statute Title IX, said Wednesday that it would look into the incident, which occurred in March. The investigation comes as a response to a complaint filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law &amp; Liberty (WILL).
In <a href="https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/OCR-Opening-Investigation-SPASD66.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">its response</a> to WILL’s complaint OCR says that it will investigate “Whether the [Sun Prairie Area School] District responded to a report of sexual harassment consistent with the requirements of Title IX.”
An investigation does not mean that OCR will determine the school district acted inappropriately when a student reported that a biologically male student identifying as a female entered the girls’ locker room and showered naked next to four freshman girls and exposed his male genitalia to them.
While Title IX in recent years has been used to adjudicate allegations of sexual assault and harassment, the Biden administration has signaled it would use the statute to punish schools for not adhering to the administration&#8217;s transgender ideology.
The incident occurred on March 3, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/18-year-old-male-identifying-as-female-enters-high-school-girls-locker-showers-naked-next-to-14-year-old-students-conservative-org-alleges" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>, at Sun Prairie East High School in Wisconsin. When the four freshman girls entered the lockers, they found a senior male student, believed to be 18 years old at the time, in the room that contained the lockers and benches. The girls said the student wasn’t in the class with them, but proceeded to the shower area even though they were uncomfortable. They were aware that the student identified as transgender and had used girls’ bathrooms previously.
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The girls showered with their bathing suits on, which was common practice. Just when they started to shower, the transgender student fully undressed and entered the shower next to one of the girls. The student was initially facing the wall but then turned toward the four girls, exposing his male genitalia to all four freshmen.
The girls didn’t know what to do and didn’t immediately report the incident, but after one girl told another student what happened, that student said they should report it. Three days after the incident in the shower, the uninvolved student reported it to student services. The incident should have been reported under Title IX, but Associate Principal Heidi Walter didn’t report the incident to the Title IX coordinator, and instead asked for the names of the students involved, according to WILL.
On March 10, the student who reported the incident had gained permission to provide the students’ names and was ready to do so, but Walter said that the girls could approach her if they wanted. She later admitted, according to WILL, that she should have “dug deeper” into the issue.
The four girls should have been provided supportive measures under Title IX, but instead, the school focused on the transgender student, WILL said. EHS’ principal did, however, apologize to a parent in an email by saying the incident “should not have happened” and vowing to “continue to work to ensure no one has a similar experience,” though she didn’t outline any steps the school would take.
WILL said that the Sun Prairie Area School District dismissed the rights and concerns of the freshmen girls while assuring parents that the issue had been resolved. The district also pointed to its “Restroom and Locker Room Accessibility Guidance,” which may not have even been in effect. The guidance, according to WILL, suggests that if a transgender student “makes any request regarding the use of locker rooms,” the school will evaluate the request. The policy says nothing about students who don’t make requests, if permission is required, or who makes the determination on the student’s request.
The school district’s policy says that a “student who is transgender, nonbinary, or gender expansive will be permitted to access the men’s/women’s segregated restrooms in accordance with the student’s gender identity that the student regularly asserts at school and in other social environments.”
It further states that any “Student who has a need or desire for increased privacy, regardless of the underlying reason, may be provided with access to a single-access restroom where such a facility is reasonably available, but no student shall be required to use such a restroom because of the student’s transgender, nonbinary, or gender expansive status.”
The school district has also released a statement saying it stands by “LGBTQIA+ students and staff,” taking “seriously our responsibility to provide safe, nondiscriminatory, and inclusive environments for people of all orientations and identities as they reflect our diverse community around us.”
The statement also says that “all children will be safe and loved in our schools,” which WILL argued has not been upheld in this case.

Transgender Bathroom Sign

Education Dept. Investigating Alleged Incident Of 18-Year-Old Trans-Identifying Student Exposing Male Genitalia To Freshmen Girls

Department of Education

Teenagers

Title IX

Wisconsin

Students at UC Berkeley stormed the football game on Saturday between USC and Cal Berkeley and are threatening a hunger strike if a female professor is not reinstated after being suspended amid allegations of sexual harassment and stalking.
The students are angered that professor Ivonne del Valle, the only first-generation Mexican female professor at Berkeley, was suspended for allegedly harassing, stalking, and then retaliating against UC Davis professor Joshua Clover, The Post Millennial <a href="https://thepostmillennial.com/uc-berkeley-students-storm-field-during-football-game-to-protest-firing-of-professor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Del Valle allegedly began stalking and harassing Clover in 2018 and continued her campaign against him until 2022, claiming without evidence that he had hacked her phone and computer, according to KQED.
“Professor del Valle isn’t just any faculty member, she’s the top expert in colonial studies,” Berkeley sophomore Emily Chamale said during a protest last month against del Valle’s suspension, <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/11965822/uc-berkeley-students-threaten-hunger-strike-to-reinstate-professor-suspended-for-stalking" target="_blank" rel="noopener">KQED reported</a>. “The question that haunts me is: If someone as respected as her is going through such things at Berkeley, what might the future be for the rest of us?”
Christián González Reyes, a Ph.D. student, was quoted as saying: “We want Ivonne back. We’re not going to be silent anymore.”
What led to del Valle’s suspension was a series of investigations by Berkeley and del Valle’s own admission that she had keyed Clover’s car, scrawled messages outside his apartment, called his friends and mother, and called his office phone line at least 10 times within an hour and a half. Del Valle claimed her actions were due to being hacked, but the evidence she provided to KQED did not support her claims and did not point to Clover as a culprit.
“I did write outside his door, ‘Here lives a pervert.’ I did that. And again, I’m not proud,” del Valle told the outlet. “If I had the opportunity to do things differently, I would do them differently.”
She also acknowledged going to Clover’s mother’s home, but claimed the message she left was not a threat. She also denied that her behavior was sexual harassment. Del Valle also admitted to posting an image of Clover’s partner online.
UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore declined to comment on the specifics of the case to KQED.
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Three investigations were conducted into del Valle’s behavior between 2019 and 2022, but the first complaint came in May 2018, after del Valle began sending Clover Twitter messages telling him that someone was bothering her and calling her names. Del Valle had met Clover after he spoke at Berkeley.
The first investigation found that del Valle, who has taught at Berkeley since 2009 and has tenure, had violated the university’s policies against stalking and sexual harassment.
“The evidence additionally demonstrates that Respondent monitored, followed, observed, and threatened Complainant, both electronically and in person, and interfered with his property,” the report said, according to KQED.
Del Valle claimed her actions against Clover were an attempt to defend herself after university officials and police didn’t take her concerns about hacking seriously. She provided the news outlet with documentation regarding an analysis of her laptop and cellphone. Her cellphone had been compromised, but the computer was not hacked, according to the analysis. The analysis does not point to Clover, or anyone else, hacking her devices.
Berkeley found “insufficient evidence” to support claims that Clover “engaged in any hacking of Respondent’s electronic devices and is harassing or stalking her online.”
Del Valle also claimed that after she would sent messages to friends or family on her phone or computer, Clover would tweet about similar topics. The evidence she provided to the news outlet, however, did not show any sort of eavesdropping.
Del Valle sent KQED the 261 pages of documentation she sent to Berkeley regarding the alleged hacking. A Berkeley investigator wrote that substantiating her claims were outside their scope but that it did not negate the fact that del Valle’s conduct “would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or suffer substantial emotional distress.”
At one point in the report, del Valle admitted to knocking on Clover’s apartment door and saying she “was not leaving until he opened the door and explained what he was doing by hacking her.” She then slid a note under his door that said: “If you make me leave, it’ll be worse.”
Del Valle later left Clover a voicemail claiming: “I can do whatever the f*** I want piece of s***” and “You need to still call me and apologize or you’ll see what I’m going to do.”
Del Valle would go on to key Clover’s car and vandalize his apartment, leading to Clover moving in large part due to a “persistent sense of and considerable lack of safety,” according to a report.
In a 2020 settlement agreement, del Valle was required not to contact Clover or his friends, family, or students. One year later, she violated that no-contact order by leaving messages near Clover’s mother’s home, as well as other violations, according to an investigation. This was determined in Berkeley’s second investigation into her contact, which resulted in a nine-month suspension.
In 2022, Berkeley conducted a third investigation which found that del Valle violated the no-contact order. This time, she asked police for help using social media, and posted a photo of Clover’s partner online.
Del Valle told KQED that she has been living out of suitcases since her suspension, and that she could lose her tenure and be fired if she doesn’t accept an 18-month suspension Berkeley has offered.
“My life is completely destroyed,” del Valle said. “I don’t want UC Berkeley to think that they can do this to a minority woman in order to protect a white, senior professor. It’s not acceptable.”
For his part, Clover in 2014 tweeted that he was thankful that all living police officers “would one day be dead” and has advocated for killing cops, suggesting shooting them in the back.
While UC Berkeley students are currently protesting to stop a professor from being punished for sexual harassment and stalking, students in the recent past have advocated for harsher punishments for just such accusations.
In 2016, students <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/11/uc-berkeley-sexual-harassment-scandal-protests" target="_blank" rel="noopener">protested</a> in order to get assistant professor Blake Wentworth punished after the university found him responsible for making offensive sexual remarks toward two graduate students, Kathleen Gutierrez and Erin Bennett. In that instance, students protested the school’s lack of action, even holding a press conference. At the time, Wentworth was the latest in a line of male Berkeley employees to be accused of sexual offenses that were not punished adequately, according to students.

UC Berkeley Campus

UC Berkeley Students Protest Female Professor’s Suspension Over Sexual Harassment, Stalking Claims — Which She Admitted To

UC Berkeley Students Protest Female Professor's Suspension Over Sexual Harassment, Stalking Claims — Which She Admitted To

Protest

University of California Berkeley

Michigan State head football coach Mel Tucker’s defense attorneys have released text messages from his accuser allegedly showing she was looking to get money from the wealthy coach.
Tucker was fired in September over sexual harassment allegations made by activist Brenda Tracy, who gets paid to speak to schools about sexual violence. She accused Tucker of making sexual comments about her and masturbating while the two were on a phone call together.
Tucker has maintained his innocence, and hundreds of newly released text messages between her and a friend cast doubt on the validity of her claims.
In alleged messages to a friend, Tracy seemed focused on Tucker’s money, writing that he “signed his contract. I cant [sic] even wrap my brain around 95 million. Sheesh … Can you imagine around 700k going into your bank account every month. Every month…&#8221;
&#8220;We’re gonna make it happen … I’m gonna ask him to finance the doc part of [marketing materials that Tracy wanted] … He’ll do it,” she wrote, according to a copy of the defense’s filing <a href="https://www.outkick.com/mel-tucker-accuser-was-allegedly-involved-in-multiple-relationships/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">obtained</a> by OutKick.
About a week before she filed her complaint with MSU’s Title IX office – the office that investigates allegations of campus sexual assault – Tracy admitted to her friend that “she was down to $5,” according to the legal filing. Once she filed her complaint, Tracy, referring to herself as a victim, allegedly wrote her friend “imagine the victim is taking on a $95M coach.”
After telling her friend that she owed money to the IRS and that she “was supposed to be paying down 2018 taxes and not staying caught up on the other years,” Tracy said that “[h]aving the IRS after me in a way that is known publicly surely won’t help my lawsuit,” according to the documents obtained by OutKick.
In other messages, though she was in a tough financial place, Tracy told her friend that her “priority is face lift and filming myself so we can make this [money],” according to the court documents.
The defense also says it has a witness who, under oath, explained that Tracy and Tucker “were in some sort of relationship when the conversation took place” and that “the phone sex was consensual.” Tracy herself has not given a statement under oath.
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This witness also told the defense that Tracy attempted to cover-up her messages with her friend discussing Tucker’s money. This witness said that as her friend was dying in a hospital – and after – Tracy tried to get access to the woman’s home and asked her family for access to the woman’s phone and computers.
Though the text messages look damning for Tracy, Tucker has reportedly not been completely honest throughout the investigation. He reportedly told investigators that he was at his Michigan home when the phone call took place, which should have made it outside of MSU’s jurisdiction. But Tucker was reportedly in Florida for a school-sponsored event, according to the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/09/22/michigan-state-mel-tucker-false-claims-sexual-harassment/70922038007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> from USA Today. Witnesses reportedly discredited Tucker’s claim about where and when the phone call took place.

Mel Tucker

Fired Michigan State Football Coach Provides Text Messages Allegedly Showing Accuser Looking To Get His Money

Michigan

If you mirror the priorities of the Left, then you can do whatever you want. As long as you’re not caught on camera, you’re fine. If you look at the disparate consequences for public figures ranging from people like Russell Brand to people like Howard Stern, the public consequences are quite disparate.
Russell Brand has been accused by four separate women of actions ranging from sexual assault to rape to sexual harassment. Whether the allegations are true or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know is that at this moment, they’re just allegations. There has been no actual criminal indictment brought against him. He’s certainly not been convicted of anything. But YouTube has suspended Brand from making any money on its platform only days after that report broke from Channel 4 and BBC, outlets that used to pay Brand while he was in the midst of his most flagrantly vile behavior.
So if there are serious allegations made against you of any sort, all of your videos immediately get demonetized. (Which is going to be very bad news for a significant number of actors and half the rappers on the block.) That’s a horrible standard. You’ve now created a massive incentive structure for people to make allegations against people, true or false, in order to destroy their careers.
I’m not saying the women who have made allegations about Brand are lying. I don’t know whether they are or not. I do know, at this point, I have no idea how YouTube could possibly uphold such a standard. Does it have something to do with the fact that Brand is a heterodox political thinker, somebody who says things YouTube doesn’t like very much?
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Then there’s Howard Stern. Stern has been making headlines the last couple of days by pushing very loudly to the Left. He spent virtually my entire life — from the time I was a teenager — being an absolute deviant and a degraded person beyond all measure. The kinds of behavior that Stern has regularly engaged in publicly throughout his career are nothing short of disgusting. They are disreputable. They are vile toward women; he had women in his studio sit on vibrators so he could record their reactions and blast them out to millions of people in his audience.
But now, Stern is apparently one of our moral exemplars. Over the last couple of days, he ripped into Lauren Boebert, who engaged in what I think is disgusting behavior; he referred to her in vile ways.
How is Howard Stern able to get away with all this? He gets away with it because he mirrors the political priorities of the Left. You be as gross as you want to be so long as you mirror the political priorities of the Left. Stern has discovered the magic elixir that wipes away all of your past and present sins, and that is to be far enough to the Left. He’s saying all the nostrums everybody on the Left really wants to hear, and that means it’s fine for him to do all this.
So why is this important?
Because when you have a class of people who are immunized by their association with certain Left-wing causes, it incentivizes bad behavior by those people. It also creates a massive double standard: If you are heterodox, you can expect to be targeted, but if you are orthodox in your practice of leftism, you can expect you’re going to be given an enormous amount of breathing room.
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Ben Shapiro Editorial Series 11 copy

Russell Brand Gets Pilloried For His Behavior. Howard Stern Gets Celebrated For His. Guess Why.

Ben Shapiro

Howard Stern

Opinion

Readers Pass

Russell Brand

Michigan State University officials on Monday delivered a notice of termination to the school&#8217;s head football coach Mel Tucker after a prominent rape survivor and activist recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/michigan-state-suspends-head-coach-after-rape-survivor-alleges-he-sexually-harrassed-her-during-phone-call-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accused</a> him of sexual harassment during a phone call.
Tucker, 51, who signed a $95 million decade-long contract extension less than two years ago, made headlines last week after allegations against him became public in a USA Today report. In that report, Brenda Tracy — a rape survivor who educates athletes about sexual violence — said the football coach sexually harassed her during a phone call on April 28, 2022.
After the report was published, Michigan State officials suspended Tucker without pay on September 10, pending the results of a Title IX investigation over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Michigan State athletic director Alan Haller released a <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissolari/status/1703858552924774730" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> Monday afternoon announcing the university&#8217;s intent to terminate his contract.
&#8220;I, with the support of administration and board, have provided Mel Tucker with written notice of intent to terminate his contract for cause. This notification process is required as part of his existing contract,&#8221; Haller said in a university statement. &#8220;The notice provides Tucker with seven calendar days to respond and present reasons to me and the interim president as to why he should not be terminated for cause.
&#8220;This action does not conclude the ongoing Office for Civil Rights case; that rigorous process will continue.&#8221;
According to his contract, Michigan State may fire Tucker for cause if he &#8220;engages in any conduct which constitutes moral turpitude or which, in the University&#8217;s sole judgment, would tend to bring public disrespect, contempt or ridicule upon the university.&#8221;
Haller&#8217;s four-page letter sent to Tucker&#8217;s representatives on Monday <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/michigan-state-university/2023/09/18/msu-fires-mel-tucker/70889396007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reportedly</a> detailed the reasons behind the termination, saying, in part, &#8220;The university has become aware of various facts that have led to the unfortunate decision to terminate your employment for cause. At this point, the university has amassed a body of undisputed evidence of misconduct that warrants termination for cause.&#8221;
Tucker reportedly invited Tracy to the campus to speak three different times. On two occasions, Tracy spoke to the players and staff about sexual violence in sports culture and once to be recognized &#8220;as an honorary captain at the team&#8217;s spring football game,&#8221; USA Today reported.
However, according to a complaint filed with the university&#8217;s Title IX office in December, Tracy reportedly &#8220;sat frozen for several minutes while Tucker made sexual comments about her and masturbated.&#8221;
“The idea that someone could know me and say they understand my trauma but then re-inflict that trauma on me is so disgusting to me, it’s hard for me to even wrap my mind around it,” Tracy told USA TODAY. “It’s like he sought me out just to betray me.”
According to the report, the school hired an outside Title IX attorney to investigate Tracy&#8217;s complaint, which was concluded in July.
Tucker, who is married and has two children, acknowledged the accusations made against him during the phone call but claimed they had consensual &#8220;phone sex&#8221; and the allegations were &#8220;completely false.&#8221;
&#8220;Ms. Tracy&#8217;s distortion of our mutually consensual and intimate relationship into allegations of sexual exploitation has really affected me,&#8221; Tucker wrote in a March 22 letter to the investigator, USA Today reported. &#8220;I am not proud of my judgment and I am having difficulty forgiving myself for getting into this situation, but I did not engage in misconduct by any definition.&#8221;
Tucker&#8217;s termination will reportedly cost the football coach more than $80 million.
Tucker is reportedly scheduled to appear in a formal hearing beginning on October 5.

Michigan State Head Football Coach Mel Tucker

Michigan State Officials Plan To Fire Head Football Coach Mel Tucker Over Sexual Harassment Allegations

College Football

Michigan State University

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