Feds: Privacy Laws Protect Records of Student Athlete Accused of Rape
LatestFor months, reporter Jon Krakauer has been fighting with the University of Montana and the state’s Commissioner of Higher Education, arguing that he should be able to get access to the school disciplinary records of Jordan Johnson, the Montana Grizzlies quarterback who was accused of rape in 2012 and acquitted in 2013. As Inside Higher Education was first to report, the federal government wrote a brief in the case which is, essentially, a big early Christmas present for colleges who want to cover up how they handle sexual assault claims.
Johnson was accused of rape in 2012 by a female student who said he raped her while they were watching a movie at her house. A jury acquitted Johnson in March of 2013 after two hours of deliberation, siding with Johnson’s version of events that the sex was consensual and the woman enjoyed it. (An alternate juror told a local radio station that the woman had given “mixed messages” about the incident and “there was no evidence that Jordan Johnson knew that he had sex without consent.”)
Before Johnson was charged in state court, he went through campus disciplinary proceedings: he was found guilty in a university court and ordered expelled. But somehow, the expulsion never actually happened; instead, he was just temporarily suspended from the Grizzlies.