Hanna Stotland on the Grey Area of Sexual Assault

@calmom: I did listen to all of it, but not what they edited out.

You seem to like to state things as if it is fact when you don’t really know unless you were there. Very often in cases of rape, it is a lot of he-said/she-said, but YOU (or Hanna) can’t be sure it is not forcible rape. Just because there was no conviction, it doesn’t mean it was not a forcible rape. So is Hanna making judgement calls on some of those cases? Does she only take on those specialty cases when she thinks there was no forcible rape?

I don’t think we have exact figure on percentage of accusations are false. I just did a quick google, and this is one article I found from BBC:

There are a lot of cases that are not reported and sometimes cases are not investigated because accusers do not want the hassle or be publicly shamed, but it doesn’t necessary mean there was no forcible rape.

“The FBI has put the number of “unfounded” rapes - those determined to be false after investigation - at 8%.

Fake rape accusations get a lot of attention.”

That number is based on allegations made to the criminal justice system where an accuser can face criminal charges themselves if they are found to be lying. I don’t believe that any study has looked at the question of false accusations where the accuser makes no criminal accusation which is the situation which @hanna is almost always dealing with.

I think her approach is very sound. The very heart if it is the question of what someone would do differently. If you lose your job for any reason it is reasonable to ask yourself what would you do differently, and how do you frame the situation so you can find the next job. Not every accused can sue the uni if there are procedural or evidence issues and they may not want to or can’t…they may just want to put that uni in their rear view mirror and get on with their life.

@maya54, you are right. I couldn’t find studies done on false accusations when there was no criminal accusation through my quick google. At the same time, it has often being discussed that many more rapes do not get reported/investigated because accusers think they may not be believed and may be shamed, not because the rape didn’t happen.

I think there are very few “fake” allegations but probably many mischaracterizations and embellishment probably happening on both sides as most of these are in essence relationship issues. Having to take a step back and reframe the thinking that Hanna’s clients do is very healthy in my opinion and while we will never know as it is too early in their lifetime I suspect some of these accusers will come out the other end stronger and able to have healthier interpersonal relationships once they work through the anger.

I wouldn’t wish this for my kids at all and they are now done with college so that threat no longer exists but I wouldn’t have hesitated to get them outside help to piece their life back together after any lawsuits were done if lawsuits were needed. Parents cannot be objective enough to support the hard work to find a new college for someone caught up in the current chaos.

She seems to be uniquely qualified to help those who are able to afford her services. I gotta say I would hire her. I was also in a business which by its nature only attracted rich clients. Also did badly in high school (but still got admitted to top college and law school), but unlike her, I continued under performing academically throughout college and law school but still ended up learning a lot.

I have two gfs who took similar paths including alternative Hs which back in the day was where our high school sent kids who didn’t conform to their potential to get a GED…not to Harvard but to Michigan and Nothwestern. I gotta say they have great EQs.

I chose to make pro bono work a component of my career rather than working full time at a high-need public school or community organization. Two of my sisters, a doctor and a lawyer, work respectively for a public hospital and a youth charity for a fraction of what they’d make in the private sector, which is admirable. My aim is to conduct a private sector practice in an ethical manner.

@oldfort , I don’t try to evaluate who’s done what. Not only is it not my job, but I couldn’t begin to do it effectively if I tried. If you could tell who’s a rapist by talking to them, we wouldn’t need courts, and courts are a long way from perfect.

“probably gets a lot of her clientele through referrals from other counselors who either don’t want to deal with her clientele or don’t have the first clue of how to help”

Yes, this is where most of my work comes from. I also get referrals from mental health professionals and from lawyers.

@maya54 “What happened to you after you left high school to change your direction?”

Growing up and getting healthier mentally for two years. Being off the conveyor belt of high school and college pressure was crucial for me. It felt like the Pink Floyd video with the students dropping into the meat grinder. I needed to get out of that machine in order to figure out what I wanted to do. Having open-ended time to work and rest my mind made a world of difference.

@Hanna - Thank-you for your response.

@Hanna Fantastic interview! In addition to your articulate and deeply thought out presentation, I appreciate the fact that the interviewer actually allowed you to speak fully and express complex thoughts without interrupting and going for soundbites. Hallelujah thank doG for PBS and NPR and public broadcasting in general.

@Hanna , great interview. It is so helpful to have this POV expressed so articulately and thoughtfully. The media often focuses on issues at the edges where there is a lot of emotion. This was a breath of fresh air!

Excellent interview.

Now, did I misunderstand this, or are you saying that the majority of your clients are men who were involved in sexual hookups with men or women, where both parties were drunk, and where the accuser agrees that he or she actually unambiguously “consented,” and maintains the “consent” was invalid only because the accuser was too drunk to consent? Not that the accuser was semiconscious, or the accuser neither affirmatively consented nor affirmatively refused, but the accuser agrees that the accuser did things that most people would agree were consent if they were done by sober people?

Yes, the majority of my cases involve actions that most people would agree conveyed consent if they were done by sober people. In only a handful of these do the parties agree that there was affirmative VERBAL consent. But it’s usually conceded that there were indicators of nonverbal consent, like getting on top of another person, or performing an act, or discussing birth control options and then getting into bed naked. It’s only a minority of my cases where the accuser alleges that they said no or weren’t conscious.

Do the accusers agree that what they did would have conveyed consent if they had been sober? Were the decisions, “Accuser was too drunk to consent, therefore accused is expelled”? That surprises me. In the cases we’ve discussed here, I can only recall one (the Pomona case) where the decision was explicitly that the enthusiastic consent that occurred was invalidated by the fact that the girl was smashed.

Put me on Team “If you discussed birth control options and hopped into bed naked with a person of the opposite sex, you consented to sex.” Unless the discussion was something like you saying, We don’t need birth control because we are not going to have sex.

Since alcohol was involved in most cases, were a large percentage of the cases involving first semester frosh (either or both accuser and/or accused)?

“Were the decisions, “Accuser was too drunk to consent, therefore accused is expelled”?”

Yes, that is the most common pattern I see. And we are talking about accusers who are walking, texting, etc., not semiconscious.

I’ve had a few cases where it became clear after the fact that the complainant was too drunk to consent, but that wasn’t apparent earlier on. Classic example: complainant coherently signs her guest into the dorm and climbs a ladder to the upper bunk under her own steam, but after the sex, turns to my client and says, “I love you, [name of boyfriend from back home].” In the morning she remembers nothing. So in retrospect, she was incapacitated, but beforehand, she seemed fine. That didn’t matter, and my student was expelled.

Sometimes the accused in these cases is suspended, rather than expelled, but the suspended students usually want to transfer, too, and they have just as much trouble transferring as the expelled ones. They often feel that it is not safe for them to return to the original campus even if they are allowed to.

@ucbalumnus, first semester freshmen are overrepresented among both accusers and accused. But I have some students accused all the way through senior spring and into grad school.

Yeah, not buying this as an accusation. She was in an alcoholic blackout, but it’s impossible to know contemporaneously that someone is in an alcoholic blackout. They don’t even know they’re in a blackout themselves. It’s ridiculous to expect a person to recognize something that’s impossible to recognize.

Maybe the adjudicators thought that someone being in an alcoholic blackout is de facto proof that they are extremely drunk. But that’s factually incorrect; although alcoholic blackouts get more likely the drunker the person is, they can occur in people who are not very drunk. Also a person in an alcoholic blackout can appear coherent and functioning, so that the outside observer would not perceive them as extremely drunk even if they are.

As a parent of two sons in school, I’m not down with the idea that someone can retroactively withdraw their consent to sex, unless there are unusual circumstances in play.

I agree that being falling over drunk or passing out from drinking is not the same as being in an alcoholic blackout.

I think the claim is not that they withdrew their consent, but that they never consented and the other person should have been aware they were too drunk to consent. But being in an alcoholic blackout is not evidence that a sober observer would have been able to know they were extremely drunk or even that they were extremely drunk.