Students accused of rape at university bringing lawyers to hearings

if an employer or anyone else rejects someone because they confuse criminal offenses with their breach of student or professional conduct, then that's on them. in reality you could spoon-feed a supreme court judgment, a judgment based on constitutional law cases found in any public law textbook, a blog written by a barristers' chamber and guidance written by one of the largest law firms in the UK Pinsent Masons and some people will still get it wrong.

well it's all fine and dandy to encourage students/staff to seek legal rep, however the legal system is notoriously reserved for people with money that the average person just doesn't have. that's why people will wait well over 1 hour on hold to speak to citizens advice for their 'legal advice' (i know. used to work for the national adviceline). personally suspect the only reason we have AB v The University XYZ at all is because it was brought by a former student with abnormal funds. well lad went to a 'prestigious RG university' whilst studying modern languages and doing a year abroad in Spain. ik i'm generalising but that doesn't sound like an average student from a low-income household growing up in my working class neighbourhood.

strange tho you say 'encourage more engagement with legal reps for the accused'. why the accused; why not for both especially when you said earlier about your paramount concern for the protection of women?

That’s on who exactly? The person losing the job or the employer who would not care that much. No prospective employee would carry a copy of the supreme court judgement to their interview.

I focused on the accused because the current perception is that the rules are possibly skewed towards the alleged victim. I have no qualms with both parties seeking legal advice.

To be clear, my focus is on protecting women at all costs. That is my paramount concern. It does not remove the need to ensure that individuals are not falsely accused of crimes that they did not commit.

it's on the employer or anyone else to know the difference between a criminal offense and a breach of contract; you don't need a law degree to use the google machine or do a dbs check. as this thread has firmly demonstrated you can spoon-feed all of those sources to someone, paraphrase and even pinpoint paragraphs in said sources for them and they will still choose ignorance - mate i gave you all of those sources and you still confuse criminal offenses with breaches of student/professional code of conduct; you can't separate basic legalities in your head. i even quoted a university lecturer who posted earlier in this thread and his experience in sitting in on disaplinary procedures and explaining what actually happens and you still ignored it. if anything experience has taught me you can't force others to read reliable sources and gain understanding, so like that movie frozen ultimately must let it go and the burden is on them.

you say 'the current perception is that the rules are possibly skewed towards the alleged victim' - for readers of the daily mail, hell yeah it is. what are the chances of changing the views of that audience? in my experience zero.

You are making points as though the world is legally trained. It is not on the employer to do anything. The accused could lose out on opportunities simply because the employer does not want to deal with what they would consider to be a ‘tricky’ situation.

I am not confusing criminal offence with professional misconduct. I completely understand that there is a difference. You are playing a clever trick by fastidiously trying to stick to legalities when the world does not operate inside the mind of an experienced lawyer.

A potential employee can read all the legal jargon that exists and supreme court decisions on the topic, but it does not mean that they would be able to secure a job if they were fired for gross misconduct on a case of sexual assault allegation that was not proven.

Do you honestly think that a school or uni who was made aware of an individual who was dismissed for gross misconduct for sexual assault would bother with investigating whether it was true or not.

If they were dismissed for that reason, I don't think that the employer would be able to investigate it. No point asking the applicant. They would deny it regardless. Let's be honest, many people lie to try and get themselves out of trouble. I'm not saying that means that the person dismissed must have done the sexual assault.

You are making points as though the world is legally trained. It is not on the employer to do anything. The accused could lose out on opportunities simply because the employer does not want to deal with what they would consider to be a ‘tricky’ situation.

I am not confusing criminal offence with professional misconduct. I completely understand that there is a difference. You are playing a clever trick by fastidiously trying to stick to legalities when the world does not operate inside the mind of an experienced lawyer.

A potential employee can read all the legal jargon that exists and supreme court decisions on the topic, but it does not mean that they would be able to secure a job if they were fired for gross misconduct on a case of sexual assault allegation that was not proven.

Do you honestly think that a school or uni who was made aware of an individual who was dismissed for gross misconduct for sexual assault would bother with investigating whether it was true or not.

it is on the employer to educate themselves on legal hiring and dismissal procedures, not to mention how to write employment contracts, pay people, etc. no they don't need to be legal experts and actually know case law unless they are a solicitor. but they do need to be familiar with ACAS which is perpetually up-to-date and the ordinary employer is indeed familiar cuz it's related to their profession.

no one can do that for them tho - that was the point i was making. can't force-feed education just like i can't force you to educate yourself on subjects either, it must be your choice to read it. surely you haven't even tried cuz the Pinsent Masons guidelines summarises everything and is dirt easy to understand - it has no legal jargon in it. it's written for non-law people. gave it to you cuz you asked me for information on obligation to report a crime.

you don't confuse criminal offences with breaches of student/professional conduct? see your comment #258. or look what you just wrote here -

'Do you honestly think that a school or uni who was made aware of an individual who was dismissed for gross misconduct for sexual assault...' -

as i already explained (as taken from Pinsent Masons) no one gets expelled/dismissed for 'gross misconduct for sexual assault' unless a jury in the crown court first finds them guilty of sexual assault cuz employers/universities can't/don't do that as they are unqualified; ergo this person would have been sent to prison and left with their name on the sexual offenders registry. you think after their release a school/uni must conduct their own investigation to see if whether it was 'true or not' they sexually assaulted someone?

as i already explained when people get expelled/dismissed it's typically because they breached other terms/conditions of the contract that are not necessarily criminal but relate to what the school reasonable thought happened which goes against its principles of appropriate behaviour. what did AB get expelled for? i already mentioned it and it wasn't for sexual assault or any other crime.

why is this distinction important? because you and others judge students for reporting to their university and not the police when in reality they are reporting different things with different standards. it's perfectly reasonable for a school/university to define misbehavior differently from what parliament does. it's a company and companies are legal persons who can write their own contacts and all the student is doing is exercising their contractual rights.

yes i already said it could make finding work difficult for the one who has been dismissed - already pointed out hawker's employment judge agrees with you. already pointed to legal theorists who would agree that people can be judgy too.

if it makes you feel better not too long ago a student at Glasgow was suspended after police arrested him for rape allegations; however, whilst waiting for case to come to trial he was able to enrol at Edinburgh University. not too shabby a uni that Edinburgh is either. also law students who were given a 10-year ban from Warwick after making a series of horrific jokes about raping women on campus appealed and were able to re-enrol at Warwick the year later. i'd provide sources but we've already established there is no point.

yes i have always stuck to legalities, but my law stuff is based on reality not fantasy. told you earlier i am not interested in other things especially not my feelings. there is no 'clever trick' here. i have not once randomly quoted you and then tried to pull law stuff on you when you were least expecting it; you've always quoted me first so it's reasonable to assume you wished to address something i had written, but that's not what's happening here and i'm just endlessly repeating myself.

So called predatory males? Not so called, there are plenty of predator males even amongst the uni students

Really - and this is based on an extensive survey is it?

Possibly experience.

It is unfair for one bad experience to be used to judge an entire group of sound lads.

Yes, true.

It's not necessarily one bad experience, though. My daughter gets harassed most times she goes out, by men of all ages.

It doesn't mean that she judges all men like that.

There is no excuse to harass any woman. I do fear that the bar to determine what is harassment appears to have hit the floor. I heard one woman say that if a man approaches you and you consider him to be ugly or not your type, then he has harassed you.

I think we should separate a man ‘shooting his shot’ with a woman and leaving her alone after rejection to cases where she considers the lad to be ugly or not her type.

What do you mean by 'shooting his shot'?

I think we need to distinguish the small amount of folk that think talking to people is harassment, with the consensus POV about where and when might be appropriate to approach a stranger and how you interact with them.

Just as we distinguish the views of Andrew Tate from rightminded people.

Rather than using the word 'harassment' it might be better if I say that my daughter and her friends can experience unwelcome advances from men. They can cope with it most of the time. Sometimes it's persistent, which becomes more unpleasant, and can ruin an evening. Some men shout offensive sexualised things at them, especially when the men are in a group and driving by in cars. My daughter has also been followed by men, which scared her, and she's been shoved by men.

They are happy to be polite and chat to men of all ages if the men are friendly and not rude and don't make them feel intimidated or uncomfortable.

I completely agree. There seems to be a growing view that a guy simply approaching a woman should be seen as harassment.

Is there, though? Because having told @Cote1 that not all men should be judged based on a single experience, you then went on to highlight a single conversation you have had with someone who thinks approaching women should be seen as harassment, and have now moved on to "there seems to be a growing view" to that effect. To be blunt, highlighting clearly minority views and shifting the debate to them only serves to obfuscate the issue and stop progress being made. The issue that Cote describes with their daughter is a really common problem that girls and women have from a very young age with men who absolutely know that their behaviour is inappropriate and who care very little for the preferences or consent of the women involved, or how uncomfortable/scared the behaviour makes them. It is not someone 'shooting their shot'. It is clear and unambiguous harassment that women experience throughout their lives. It needs to be addressed, and one thing that will stop that from happening is constantly shifting the debate, which you have done consistently in your last five or six posts. I am not, of course, suggesting that you have a large role to play in either prompting or denying change here. Like all of us in this thread, the individual impact of our actions is negligible. But it is indicative of a wider problem in making progress on these problems that you have little awareness of because you are a man, but which absolutely affect most of the women that you know.