While still nursing her torn MCL at her work desk, Ms. Doe called the Columbus police department to file a report. The dispatcher informed her that because she was located on campus, she had to file a report with OSU’s Department of Public Safety (“OSUPD”) instead. After calling OSUPD, the dispatcher there insisted that she had to disclose Mr. Hassan’s name in order to file the report, and both interviewing officers assured Ms. Doe that word of the incident would not be forwarded to Human Resources. Already, Ms. Doe was lied to by multiple University representatives.

Ms. Doe reminded both officers not to close the report until she could follow up with documentation of her injuries, whereas Mr. Hassan came to the station that night to submit photos of his injuries.

University staff used the unfinished police report draft to generate a “Title IX Report,” and completely redacted Ms. Doe’s statements to the responding officer, so that only Mr. Hassan’s story remained to match the incomplete photo record. The Office of Institutional Equity (“OIE”) received this Title IX Report, and immediately launched an “employee” investigation into the victim who had filed the police report instead of her attacker, biasing the investigation from its onset.

Mr. Allan Williams, OIE’s assigned investigator, interviewed Mr. Hassan twice. Mr. Hassan requested an informal resolution, yet the investigator urged him to agree to formal charges against Ms. Doe (as Mr. Hassan later testified) before reporting back that the formal investigation would be moving forward anyway without the parties’ consent.

He also interviewed Ms. Doe’s supervisor [Witness 1], and after inquiring about hearsay, asked if they shared Mr. Hassan’s opinion that Ms. Doe appeared mentally unstable (and they did not share this opinion).

Here, we see the first signs that Ms. Doe was denied the presumption of innocence and open inquiry, as the investigator began building a punitive case against the victim who’d filed the report before even speaking to her.

The investigator finally emailed Ms. Doe to schedule a meeting. Despite Ms. Doe’s obvious confusion, he refused to explain that she was the respondent in an investigation, let alone the relevant policies or circumstances. He also did not provide Ms. Doe with OIE’s Investigation Resolution Standards in advance. The grievance procedures were not available on OSU’s website in compliance with Title IX— the only mention of their existence was made in Sexual Misconduct Policy 1.15, and the appropriate link was broken. Ms. Doe was denied the chance to adequately prepare for this interview, the only primary fact-finding interview she was allowed during the employee investigation.

During the interview, Ms. Doe also requested an informal resolution. She further requested the opportunity to send a written statement for more weighted consideration, since her verbal testimony was unprepared and scattered. Mr. Williams agreed to the latter.

Ms. Doe emailed the investigator a Buckeyebox link containing the complete police report (including injury documentation), a written statement thoroughly detailing the events of March 23rd, and photos and videos establishing Mr. Hassan’s history of relationship violence and kidnapping. The investigator did not save any of the evidence Ms. Doe sent him, or even view some of the files, as seen in a BuckeyeBox file audit.

OIE added Mr. Hassan as a co-respondent near this time, but refused to admit their mistake and retract the charges against Ms. Doe. The parties were each labeled dual complainants and respondents in a consolidated formal investigation, a decision made without the consent of either “complainant” and which Mr. Williams claimed was insisted on by his supervisors.

The investigator interviewed Mr. Hassan for a third time, providing him the opportunity to “cross-examine” Ms. Doe’s testimony without allowing her the same opportunity.

Ms. Doe and Mr. Hassan returned to the workplace, and resumed an on-and-off relationship until December 2020. This was in part facilitated by a power imbalance, as they had shared interests in ending the pending investigations, and only Mr. Hassan could afford a lawyer at this time.

Mr. Hassan’s physical abuse, sexual harassment, and witness intimidation escalated at home and on campus. The University had never issued a no-contact order, had actual knowledge of at least one major conflict after the respondents had returned to work together, and did nothing to remedy this hostile environment.

The investigator sent the Summary of Evidence (interview notes) for the respondents to correct. Since the investigator had only glimpsed at Ms. Doe’s evidence files only once or twice almost two months before writing this Summary of Evidence, no unique information from them was included or relied upon– just the file descriptions that Ms. Doe had written in her email.

During a phone call with Ms. Doe, Mr. Williams assured her that OIE only saw this case as an employee matter, not a student matter, and that self-defense and other mitigating factors would be considered for both the finding of responsibility and sanctioning stages. The investigator was recorded lying to the respondent on both counts and apologizing for the applicable grievance procedure not being published. He emailed a copy to Ms. Doe for the first time shortly thereafter.

The investigator allowed the respondents to submit additional testimony after viewing the Summary of Evidence, and instructed that they could only clarify their own recorded testimony and not respond to other parties’ testimony. The investigator then approved Mr. Hassan’s response to a witness’s testimony for the record— while Ms. Doe followed instructions and was denied this opportunity.

Ms. Doe’s intended response was further constrained by Mr. Hassan coercing her to include as few “aggravating” details as possible and promising to do the same. She ultimately submitted one and a half pages total while Mr. Hassan submitted several additional pages of false testimony within a twelve-page document, biasing the report even further.

The investigator issued his final Investigative Report, rushed one day before DeVos’s Title IX regulations were set to go into effect (which does not inspire confidence that the case was given appropriate care). The report determined that both respondents were guilty of relationship violence using a two-prong test: they both were in a relationship and both experienced injury. How/why those injuries were acquired and the individual facts of the case were explicitly not considered, nor were any of the mitigating factors listed in the policy. Per OSU’s written rationale, Ms. Doe was found responsible because of OIE’s zero-tolerance policy against self-defense, not because the evidence didn’t match her story.

The respondents were terminated from their positions at the lab immediately, instead of after the appeal period had elapsed, and Ms. Doe was labeled ineligible for rehire at the University. In sanctioning as well, the individual facts of the case were explicitly not considered, nor were any of the mitigating factors listed in the policy.

Ms. Doe’s employee email access was immediately revoked, and she lost access to all email records from August 2018 through August 2020 on her OSU email account. Her records requests for this email history were denied. In doing so the University directly and knowingly prevented her from accessing old case files and collecting additional evidence for her appeal and for the later student investigation. Because she had been accessing OIE's Investigation Resolution Standards from within an email attachment, she lost access to these as well. It took several months of constant demands for OIE to provide her with a new copy.

Ms. Doe submitted a “rebuttal” to OIE— a constrained appeal request allowed to employee respondents that OSU would have the power to reject or approve on a whim. Mr. Hassan also submitted a rebuttal near this time. Both argued in their rebuttals that it was improper to have been given the lesser rights of employee respondents instead of student respondents, that this investigation resulted in erroneous outcomes, and that they wanted the termination decisions to be overturned.

OIE launched another investigation without warning, this time attacking Ms. Doe’s and Mr. Hassan’s student statuses in a “double jeopardy” for the same March 23rd event. OIE again consolidated their cases into the same investigation as dual complainants and respondents, to be governed by the University’s pre-8/14/2020 “old” policies. This was despite the fact that:

1. Ms. Doe had dropped her previously scheduled Autumn classes immediately after her termination (a harm in and of itself). This ‘student investigation’ was drawn up months later when she was not an enrolled student or conducting any business on campus where she could be a hypothetical danger.
2. As mentioned, Allan Williams had previously told Ms. Doe that because the incident occurred in the workplace, OIE considered it an employment matter and not a student matter.

The student case investigator (Courtney Johnson), the Director of Investigations (Nadia Haque), and the Title IX Coordinator (Molly Peirano) repeatedly denied the respondents’ requests for informal resolution, and communicated (in writing) that OIE’s internal policy made it conditional on both respondents confessing responsibility and accepting any sanctions that OSU saw fit.

Coercing students into an imitation plea-bargaining agreement is another Title IX violation— it fundamentally violates their rights as a respondent, precludes the restorative, flexible, and nonpunitive aims of informal resolution, and subverts the “free and voluntary consent” required by the Department of Education.

The University’s Director of Affirmative Action and EEO, Terra Metzger, issued back-to-back determinations regarding the respondents’ rebuttals from August. It was determined that Mr. Hassan could appeal the employment decision using the more “fair” student investigation, but Ms. Doe could not. Even if she were found innocent by that investigation.

This is an outrageous disregard for due process standards that parties should have equal opportunities to appeal.

Ms. Doe attended a video call with the Director of Investigations and the Title IX Coordinator. During that meeting, the University’s Title IX Coordinator admitted that OIE doesn’t consider self-defense because investigating is too difficult, and that their office now automatically finds victims of relationship violence equally responsible. The origin and substance of this policy fundamentally subverts their federally mandated duty to investigate each case brought before them, and this admission decimates the validity of the University’s employee investigation.

The process of answering the respondents’ emailed questions and scheduling the hearing was subject to months of constant, unexplained delays by OIE, which they are legally required to keep respondents abreast of.

Courtney Johnson notified Ms. Doe of OIE’s decision to steamroll ahead with formal charges against her. Since OIE again refused to allow any nonpunitive informal resolution, Ms. Doe was forced to submit evidence and testimony adversarial to Mr. Hassan in order to defend her innocence.

Courtney Johnson responded to Ms. Doe’s evidence submissions with written confirmation that Mr. Hassan’s violence on other dates appeared to constitute additional violations of University policy. But when Ms. Doe requested that OIE not investigate these incidents as well, her request was honored this time. This stands in contrast to the University’s previous decisions to charge Ms. Doe against the wishes of Mr. Hassan as a complainant.

Courtney Johnson compiled all of the evidence OIE had collected to use against the respondents into a “Hearing Packet” visible to all parties in BuckeyeBox.

The packet showed that OIE had resubmitted the incomplete draft of the police report with only Mr. Hassan’s injuries, the Title IX report with only Mr. Hassan’s testimony, the investigative report with Mr. Hassan’s three fact-finding interviews vs. Ms. Doe’s one and Mr. Hassan’s policy-bending corrections to other witnesses vs. Ms. Doe’s zero all as evidence to initiate the student investigation. This immediately, structurally precluded any opportunity for a fair and unbiased process the second time either.

Brett Sokolow, the president of ATIXA, was hired to act as a third-party adjudicator.

Upon meeting with Ms. Doe, Mr. Sokolow confirmed that his interpretation of the written policy did not preclude self-defense.

Mr. Sokolow also revealed that OIE was not providing him material support in his investigation. OIE failed to find and send him a building plan of the Biomedical Research Tower where the 3/23 incident took place, and Ms. Doe had to provide these herself.

A virtual hearing was conducted for the student case. Mr. Hassan and his counsel conducted themselves poorly, interrupting the hearing at one point to accuse Ms. Doe of texting testimony to a witness before being proven wrong.

The third-party adjudicator issued his report, determining that both respondents were not guilty of relationship violence. Notably, the report characterized Ms. Doe’s actions to extricate herself as being in good faith, and justified Mr. Hassan’s unlawful imprisonment as acceptable as long as Mr. Hassan believed that Ms. Doe was a danger to herself. There didn’t need to be supporting evidence that this belief was rational – Mr. Hassan just had to claim he believed it.

Mr. Sokolow’s report was subject to review and approval by University administrators before it was released, and that review processes and the individuals involved were not disclosed in either the public grievance procedures or by Ms. Haque when Ms. Doe inquired. This lack of transparency, OIE’s previously articulated policy of issuing equivalent findings for both parties, and the contradiction between Mr. Sokolow’s condemnations of Mr. Hassan’s behavior and his final determination all raise doubts as to whether the third-party adjudicator was truly given judicial autonomy.

Ms. Metzger notified Ms. Doe that Mr. Hassan’s lab access has been restored, citing the Violence Against Women Act without irony. Ms. Doe is still blacklisted from employment at OSU.