DURHAM, N.C – Officials at Duke University delayed an investigation of a male graduate’s Title IX complaint of sexual violence by a male faculty member according to a new federal lawsuit which details how officials and university law enforcement dismissed the claims of Ph.D student and research assistant sexually assaulted by a professor.
It is believed that the university drug their feet on a nearly two year Title IX investigation and expelled the student two days after rejecting his Title Ix claim.
According to court documents, the victim, identified only as “John Doe” in the lawsuit, was a Ph.D. student at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business as well as a graduate student research assistant when a male professor volunteered to serve as one of his advisors and de facto supervisor. According to the lawsuit, the professor quickly began “grooming” Doe with alcohol and unwanted personal attention culminating in sexual assault the night of June 28, 2021.
Unidentified in the complaint, the professor is named in the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) charge that Doe filed in August.
According to the federal complaint filed by attorneys Artur Davis and Sunny Panyanouvong-Rubeck of HKM Employment Attorneys, after overcoming his shock, humiliation and fear at the assault, Doe reported the attack to faculty at Duke, including Duke University President Vincent Price, and filed a formal report with campus police, but was met with dismissiveness and disbelief. The lawsuit details a meeting Doe had with Captain Greg Stotsenberg, of Duke PD’s Investigations Unit, who claimed that male on male sexual assault isn’t common “or even really a thing.” Like many sexual assault victims, this dismissiveness led Doe not to file a criminal complaint.
According to the National Center for PTSD, “At least 1 out of every 10 men will experience sexual assault at some point in their life.”
“This brave young man keeps being victimized by this sexual assault. Duke University failed to take this complaint seriously, pressured our client to violate his therapist’s directions, refused to admit key evidence during the Title IX hearing and kicked him out of the Ph.D program soon after the hearing,” said Davis. “This has not only caused untold harm to this survivor, it has put countless others at risk of this perpetrator striking again.”
The lawsuit goes on to detail how Doe was repeatedly retaliated against, from dragging out what should have been a 60-day investigation until it became a 48-month ordeal, to ignoring a PTSD diagnosis made by Doe’s doctor and even pressuring Doe to take classes from the professor who assaulted him. In fact, the complaint even details one incident where faculty refused to call 911 for Doe while he was having a panic attack and accused him of “being dramatic” after the professor violated a non-contact order.
After the two year ordeal, officials dismissed Doe from the university’s Ph.D. program in August 2023, just days after the long-delayed release of the findings of the Title IX hearing. This came three months before research assistants at Duke organized under the umbrella of the Service Employees International Union, meaning that Doe was a student worker protected by Title VII as well as Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.
Click here for a copy of the filed lawsuit.
