At last! The Yale quarterback who was so grossly treated by Richard Perez-Pena—in a story that perhaps should have been a career-ender for Pena—in the New York Times—as detailed at length on this blog—has written in the Boston Globe about his experience of being kinda-sorta accused of sexual assault.

…in the hopes that my painful and humiliating experience might yet produce some good by improving the final measures adopted, I offer my own story as a real-life example of how this well-intended policy can produce disastrous consequences if it remains detached from the most basic elements of fairness and due process that form the foundation of our legal system.

..When I demanded that fact-finding be done so that I could clear my name, I was told, “There’s nothing to clear your name of.” When I then requested that a formal complaint be lodged against me — a process that does involve investigation into the facts — I was told that such a course of action was impossible for me to initiate. At any time, however, my accuser retained the right to raise the complaint to a formal level. No matter, the Committee reassured me, the informal complaint did not constitute a disciplinary proceeding and nothing would be attached to my official record at Yale.

…Days after the initial meeting with the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, I received a phone call from the Rhodes Trust informing me that they had received an anonymous tip that I had been accused by a fellow student of sexual misconduct. Next came a call from my summer employer, who, having received a similar anonymous tip, rescinded my offer of full-time employment upon graduation….

This is exactly why the current hysteria about “rape culture”—a term so over-broad and unproven that is hard to take seriously—is so dangerous. Because in politicians’ efforts to get reelected redress a wrong, and universities’ desire to avoid being scapegoated in the press, the rights of the accused are being shredded. The process Witt describes above—one not unlike what happens now at Harvard and elsewhere—should not inspire confidence in anyone who follows this issue that justice was/is done. It sounds like a Kafka-esque nightmare in which you haven’t really been accused of anything so you can’t actually defend yourself from something.

Good for Patrick Witt for speaking out now. I’m sure he will get hate mail from many Harvardians. That’s a shame. It can not be easy to defend yourself against an accusation you don’t even know….