Kangaroo court casualties

- Unseen victims of campus star chambers

While our universities are under increasing pressure to do more to tackle sexual assault, their campus kangaroo courts are thriving. Last year, Sydney University alone investigated 121 reports of sexual misconduct, which included 74 cases of sexual assault and 47 cases of sexual harassment. All those little bureaucrats busily holding their secret meetings to decide whether to throw these young men out of the university and perhaps even confiscate their degrees – what delicious power.

For over five years I have been helping falsely accused young men ward off these committees, with the help of some marvellous lawyers working pro bono to try to defend these students. It’s a tough gig, with universities doing everything they can to deny procedural fairness and undermine justice.

I thought regular readers might like a catch-up on some of the cases I have shared with you over the years, showing how these young men are now faring.

To start with some good news. You might remember the story of an overseas doctor who was foolish enough to choose Australia for post-grad medical research. Boy, was that a mistake, destroying his stellar career path, and taking a huge emotional toll. I included in my blog about him this photo of his hair falling out (alopecia) as a result of the way the university dealt with him.

I’ve become very fond of this young guy - I’ll call him “Marcus” – a wonderfully warm, intelligent, hard-working man, and am just horrified at what this country did to him.

You can read the whole story here but essentially it involved a malicious false accusation by a jealous student who accused Marcus of sexual assault – Marcus is openly gay. Two years later, a jury took 20 minutes to dismiss the case after a two-week trial. Costs were awarded against the Crown, with the judge stating a proper investigation would have revealed that the complainant was “very substantially lacking credit” and the case should never have been commenced.   

There was never any proper investigation. As is true in most kangaroo court cases, Marcus was treated abominably by this tertiary institution. After the complaint was made, he was told he had two hours to leave the college. Relevant witnesses were never interviewed, he had no chance to present a proper response to the allegations. He was dumped far from his former college in a dirty room, alone, and desperate.

He spent years working as a waiter, couch surfing with friends or living in a hostel, having spent his savings, with help from his family, defending his criminal case. After he contacted me in late 2020, we did our best to support him, including using immigration lawyers to keep him in the country whilst pursuing action against the university – which finally resulted in a confidential settlement with the university two years later.  

That was a real step forward, but you will be pleased to know that since I first wrote about Marcus, this diligent kid put his head down and managed to get through the gruelling entry examinations required to practice as a doctor in this country. We’re hopeful that we’ve found a clinical position in a NSW hospital to get him through the final hurdle. He surely deserves a break.

---

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­A year ago, I made a video with “Andrew,” a pharmacist who had just graduated from a NSW regional university after we’d helped him through a two-year battle with this dreadful institution. One of the craziest things about this case was the complainant initially said she hadn’t been assaulted – nothing had happened – but her friends then persuaded her to make a complaint and Andrew was immediately suspended from college.

I became involved when the university was refusing to allow him on campus for a few weeks of practical course to complete his degree. Sorting that out took endless argy bargy but even when we won that round and he completed his studies, the university refused to give him his degree until the criminal matter was heard. It’s just nuts since universities allow convicted felons to do courses – and here was a kid accused of the most trivial case of alleged sexual touching and they ban him from the campus.  

After the magistrate tossed out the case the university decided to conduct their own investigation. The farce was never ending.  

Since I last wrote about Andrew, he has managed to graduate and finally escape. He is now a full-fledged pharmacist, happily employed a long way from his former university and blessed with an eight-month baby daughter. A very welcome turnaround from the misery of his final university days.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________________________________________________

There’s a bunch of other cases which I haven’t documented here, but I did want to mention one disturbing trend. It’s striking how many of the accused students are from overseas, including many Asians. There’s American data suggesting the same is happening there – the black, Asian, or Hispanic male who doesn’t quite fit in the mainstream culture is easily targeted by campus accusations. These kids then really flounder, not knowing how to defend themselves, cut off from their own culture and often not even wanting to tell their families about this disaster they are facing. It’s tragic.

One Asian student found himself threatened with a false rape accusation when he refused to resuscitate a past relationship with a crazy girl who broke up with him and then had a look at the dating scene, wasn’t impressed and wanted him back again. He wasn’t interested but she threatened to cry rape if he refused to see her again. Sure enough, he ended up being charged with a number of sexual assault allegations, despite having phone recordings of her threats. He spent years in limbo, unable to leave the country to finish his PhD research because he was on bail.  

How is it possible that this treatment of vulnerable Asian students passes unnoticed in our hypervigilant culture, which is always so ready to issue accusations of racism? The fact is no one is compiling any information at all about the treatment of falsely accused men at our universities. That’s a taboo topic – the spotlight, as always, is on “victims”.   

---

I recently found myself chatting at lunch to Heather Wilson, the co-founder of the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. The platform was set up as a platform for campaigns deemed too controversial for GoFundMe and gained world-wide fame after the site raised $8 million to help the Canadian truckers. But naturally the woke media disapproves of them because they are Christian and, more particularly, since their open door policy means they won’t exclude the “right wing extremist groups” that the media loves to hate.

I told her the story of starting a GoFundMe campaign early last year to help a tutor at a Melbourne university – a young man I called “Chris” who’d been falsely accused of sexual assault. The day after we started the fundraising, we received notice from GoFundMe saying they were removing my account because my fundraiser was deemed “prohibited conduct” and all donations would be refunded.

Naturally I was outraged and looked for an alternate platform – ending up at GiveSendGo which we’ve now used successfully to run a number of campaigns. Heather was very pleased her company had provided us with the opportunity to raise money for my important causes.

But what happened to Chris is a shameful, monstrous tale, which reveals the true extent of the feminist corruption of many of our key organisations. As I explained when I first wrote about his story, the problem started when a female student at the college where Chris lived took a shine to him, and then was affronted when he refused to be alone with her, attempting to maintain professional boundaries after discovering her personal interest in him. She then concocted a series of nonsensical sexual harassment charges against him. The university refused to conduct a proper investigation and failed to interview key witnesses. Chris lost his position at the university and had to leave the college.

We mounted an unfair dismissal case against the university, which was ultimately unsuccessful when the uni bureaucrats claimed they’d simply decided not to renew his contract and refused to proceed with mediation. The university was determined to believe “the victim”.  

That was all bad enough - Chris was out of a job and potentially unemployable with this charge hanging over his head, his years of hard work obtaining his PhD now down the drain. But things got worse, far worse.

Suddenly, despite having not even seen Eve for over six months, Chris was told police were applying for an apprehended violence order relating to alleged ongoing sexual harassment. She was granted interim orders which had the potential to place severe restrictions on Chris’ movements for the next five years. He was a quivering heap, not daring to leave the house because legally he was required to stay away from her but didn’t know where she lived or worked.

We found him a criminal lawyer and started the process of challenging the accusations in court when the poor guy got Covid and ended up in hospital the very day of the first hearing. We contacted the court and were told they would set another hearing date but that advice turned out to be wrong. Since he hadn’t turned up in court, the matter proceeded straight to a permanent order, Covid or no Covid.

Chris ended up spending time in a psychiatric hospital wiped out by anxiety and despair. It took more battles in court but finally the lawyer succeeded in having the absurd violence order reduced to six months. By then Chris had returned to his Asian family home, glad to escape from a country where a vindictive woman can so easily weaponise the university kangaroo court and our legal system to destroy the man who displeased her.  

Despite all this, he was grateful to have the support of so many strangers who contributed to the fundraiser which supported him. Despite my excellent legal team we also sometimes need local lawyers and funds to cover court costs and support young men who find themselves turfed out of universities, often with nowhere to live as they deal with ongoing legal ordeals. Donations are always welcome.