NEW: Accused Student in Brown Rape Case Tells Story to Daily Beast
GoLocal News Team
NEW: Accused Student in Brown Rape Case Tells Story to Daily Beast
On June 8, the Daily Beast published, "Brown University Student Speaks Out on What It's Like to Be Accused of Rape," where accused rapist Daniel Koppin told his side of the story. "What she was saying was not true," Koppin told the Daily Beast.
Daily Beast Piece
In April, Brown student Lena Sclove levied a series of attacks against Brown University administrators for their handling of the discipline of her rape case. Now, Koppin has told his side of the story.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST"The alleged perpetrators in these accounts nearly always remain shadowy figures, their names protected by anonymity and their version of the events unknown. In a rare exception, Koppin decided to speak with The Daily Beast," wrote Cathy Young for the article.
Young described how Koppin came to tell his side of the story.
"At the end of May....Kopin and his parents, Alan and Elizabeth Kopin, agreed to an interview with The Daily Beast in the downtown Boston office of a communications specialist who has been the family’s informal advisor. They also provided the full record of documents from the disciplinary hearing. Together, these documents and narratives paint a picture that illustrates the daunting, wrenching complexity of sexual assault cases involving people who know each other well and may have a sexual history together—cases that often involve emotional ambivalence, mixed signals, and radically different claims about what are supposed to be shared events," wrote Young.
Young provided Koppin's account of the incident in question, as well as the aftermath, and concluded, "In many ways, the current system of campus trials—in which claims of sexual assault are investigated by gender equity bureaucrats with no background in criminal justice and judged by professors, students, deans, and campus activists, with no clear rules of evidence or protections for the participants—does a grave disservice to both the wrongly accused and to victims who are misleadingly promised a friendlier alternative to law enforcement channels."
Legal Momentum Fires Back
"The respondent's public claims illustrate precisely why so few survivors report their assaults to anyone: In addition to the violence they have already suffered, their integrity is called into question," wrote Legal Momentum in a prepared statement.
Statement from Legal Momentum:
"Yesterday, the Daily Beast published an article entitled “Exclusive: Brown University Student Speaks Out on What it's Like to be Accused of Rape,” which focuses on the student responsible for sexual misconduct against Legal Momentum’s client Lena Sclove in her Department of Education complaints against Brown University. Neither Ms. Sclove nor Legal Momentum was consulted in the writing of this piece, and it contains several assertions that are factually inaccurate.
Most importantly, the article’s very premise glosses over the fact that the Brown University disciplinary conduct panel did not credit the respondent's version of events. The respondent was pronounced responsible for four separate violations of the Brown Code of Student Conduct, none of which is listed in the article: (1) “Actions that result in or can be reasonably expected to result in physical harm to a person or persons”; (2) “Sexual misconduct that involves non-consensual physical contact of a sexual nature”; (3) “Sexual misconduct that includes one or more of the following: penetration, violent physical force, or injury”; and (4) “Illegal possession or use of drugs and/or alcohol and/or drug paraphernalia.
Ms. Sclove and Legal Momentum's goal in bringing the case to the Department of Education has not been to establish the respondent’s culpability under the Brown Student Code—that was decided in 2013 by Brown University's disciplinary conduct panel—but rather to call attention to the inadequacy of the sanction delivered by Brown's administration and improve the University's sexual assault response procedures for future survivors."