Rape accusations follow New York student around campus and beyond

Ariel Kaminer, The New York Times | December 22, 2014

Columbia student Paul Nungesser, accused of rape by Emma Sulkowicz, who began carrying a 50-pound mattress around campus after Columbia cleared Nungesser to symbolize the burden, on the school's campus in New York, Dec. 11, 2014. Nungesser says he is innocent, that the mattress project is an act of bullying, and that the university has now abdicated its own responsibility, letting mob justice overrule its official procedures.

NEW YORK – Knit cap pulled down over his ears, shoulders hunched against the biting wind, Paul Nungesser was almost indistinguishable from the dozen or so other students traversing the steps of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library one menacing December day. But a few of those students recognized him anyway, flicking their eyes up for a discreet peek before hurrying on to the last classes of the semester.

He has gotten used to former friends crossing the street to avoid him. He has even gotten used to being denounced as a rapist on fliers and in a rally in the university’s quadrangle. Although his name is not widely known beyond the
Morningside Heights campus, Nungesser is one of America’s most notorious college students. His reputation precedes him.

His notoriety is the result of a campaign by Emma Sulkowicz, a fellow student who says Nungesser raped her in her dorm room two years ago. Columbia cleared him of responsibility in that case, as well as in two others that students brought against him. Outraged, Sulkowicz began carrying a 50-pound mattress wherever she went on campus, to suggest the painful burden she continues to bear. She has vowed to keep at it until he leaves the school.

Her story has been so compelling, and “Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)” – which doubles as her senior thesis for the visual arts department – so affecting, that large numbers of Columbia students have rallied around her. She has been honored with national awards. In October, students at more than 100 colleges carried their own mattresses (or pillows) to call attention to the problem of campus sexual assault.

Emma Sulkowicz, a senior visual arts student at Columbia University, carries a mattress in protest of the university's lack of action after she reported being raped during her sophomore year on September 5, 2014 in New York City. Sulkowicz has said she is committed to carrying the mattress everywhere she goes until the university expels the rapist or he leaves. The protest is also doubling as her senior thesis project.

Through all of it, Nungesser has hovered in the background like a specter. His name has been plastered on campus bathrooms and published in easily searchable articles. His face is visible online, too, in photos that detractors have posted as warnings to strangers.

Until now he has made no public statement. With graduation only a semester away, however, and his reputation, he says, all but demolished, he has decided to speak.

He says that he is innocent and that the same university that found him “not responsible” has now abdicated its own responsibility, letting mob justice overrule its official procedures. The mattress project is not an act of free expression, he adds; it is an act of bullying, a very public, very personal, and very painful attack designed to hound him out of Columbia. And it is being conducted with the university’s active support.

“There is a member of the faculty that is supervising this,” he said. “This is part of her graduation requirement.”

Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, while declining to address the matter directly, offered a general statement: “The law and principles of academic freedom allow students to express themselves on issues of public debate; at the same time, our legal and ethical responsibility is to be fair and impartial in protecting the rights and accommodating the concerns of all students in these matters.”

Three Women File Complaints

Sulkowicz says that in August 2012, during an otherwise consensual encounter, Nungesser hit her, pinned her down and, despite her protests, raped her. Another woman accused him of following her up the stairs at a party for the literary society they both belonged to and groping her until she pushed him off. A third woman accused him of multiple incidents of “intimate partner violence” – emotional abuse and nonconsensual sex during a months-long relationship.

Sexual assault cases can sometimes come down to a matter of perspective, but Nungesser’s accusers say there can be no ambiguity about what he did.

“It’s not safe for him to be on this campus,” Sulkowicz said this month. The women he assaulted “are forever emotionally scarred and fragile because of what he’s done to them. And me.”

Nungesser is similarly absolute.

“People were like, maybe this is a misunderstanding,” he said of Sulkowicz’s charges. “But the matter of the fact is it’s not a misunderstanding.” He insists they had consensual sex. “What was alleged was the most violent rape, and that did not happen.”

Crushed cans litter the grounds outside the The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on the University of Virginia campus on December 6, 2014 in Charlottesville, Virginia. On Friday, Rolling Stone magazine issued an apology for discrepencies that were published in an article regarding the alleged gang rape of a University of Virginia student by members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

As for groping, he says he attended the party but never went upstairs. And intimate partner violence?

“Outside of a forced marriage or kidnapping, it just seems very hard to believe that a person would over and over again put themselves in a situation where they could expect this kind of behaviour to occur.”

False reports of rape are rare, many experts say, and the federal Department of Education is investigating scores of colleges for possibly violating federal rules in handling the complaints that are filed.

Nungesser said the charges against him, all filed within days of one another, were the result of collusion. The three women said in interviews with The New York Times that they decided to take action when they heard about one another’s experiences.

The groping case was initially decided against him, with a largely symbolic punishment of “disciplinary probation,” but he appealed. By the time the case was heard again his accuser had graduated and was unable, she said, to participate in the process. The decision was overturned. The university dropped the intimate partner violence charge after that accuser, saying she was exhausted by the barrage of questions, stopped answering emails over summer vacation. And in Sulkowicz’s case, the hearing panel found that there was not enough evidence. Her request for an appeal was denied.

To Nungesser’s accusers, the refusal to punish him in any way – as well as the myriad procedural errors, delays, contradictions and humiliations, both small and large, to which the women said they were subjected – are proof that the system was biased against them. If three separate complaints against the same man could not persuade the hearing panels, how could anyone believe that justice was served?

“To me he seems like a predator who attacks women, who does not ask for consent and does not know the line,” said the student who accused Nungesser of groping her, and who asked not to be publicly identified, as did the third accuser.

To Nungesser, the fact that campus hearings have a lower burden of proof than criminal trials and that he was not allowed to bring up communications between himself and Sulkowicz after the night in question, were proof that the process was biased against him. If despite those odds, the hearings resolved in his favor, how could anyone doubt that justice was served?

His Whereabouts Are Noted

Speaking carefully, with a slightly formal bearing and an accent so faint that it can be hard to place, Nungesser, who is from Germany, says he believes sexual assault is an important cause for concern.

“My mother raised me as a feminist,” he says, well aware of how those words will strike some people, “and I’m someone who would like to think of myself as being supportive of equal rights for women.”

Most of his Columbia friends have dropped him along the way, either when the charges were first filed or when Sulkowicz went to the police last year and the Columbia Spectator made the decision to publish his name. (Sulkowicz did not press criminal charges, a lengthy process that she said would be too draining, but she and several other women filed gender discrimination complaints against Columbia with the U.S. Department of Education.)

Nungesser, an architecture major, spent the spring semester abroad, where he started dating a woman he is still involved with today. During that time, Sulkowicz went public with her story, appeared at a news conference with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and on the front page of The Times, and helped inspire a national movement.

He says he approached Columbia’s administration to see if, under the circumstances, it might make more sense for him to spend his senior year in a study abroad program. But the application deadline had already passed, and his request for a waiver was denied.

Back in Morningside Heights, his actions are closely noted. On the National Day of Action, when students brought their mattresses out to the quad, a few people also brought them to one of Nungesser’s classes. Someone there took his picture as he entered, he said; another classmate blogged about it. On another occasion, when he went to a bar with a friend, that fact made its way into a television news report on Sulkowicz’s project.

Emma Sulkowicz, a senior visual arts student at Columbia University, poses with a mattress, which she says she will carry every where she goes in protest of the university's lack of action after she reported being raped during her sophomore year, on September 5, 2014 in New York City.

Nungesser’s parents work in modest jobs, and he says he would never have been able to afford Columbia had he not been awarded scholarships. But people assume he is just another rich foreign student, he says, whose family uses its wealth to buy influence.

Nungesser has consulted a lawyer, but said he is not currently pursuing any legal action. His parents have written the university many times to decry a situation that they say “developed from a complete shock to an enduring nightmare for him and for us.”

Sulkowicz’s parents have also been active in her defense, publishing an open letter to Bollinger, the president.

In an interview, her mother, Sandra Leong, said the university left Nungesser in an untenable position. Regarding a hearing process in which so many Columbia students appear to have lost faith, Leong, who lives in Manhattan said, “I think by sweeping it under the rug they’ve subjected him to a very painful, scarring experience. I don’t see it as Emma’s fault because she just had to do what she had to do, but I do see it as the school’s fault.”

“He probably also is holding on for dear life because it’s a free education,” she added. “But ostracism is also horrible. It’s just a debacle.”

Columbia Changes Procedures

Columbia’s procedures for investigating sexual assault allegations have changed considerably since Nungesser and Sulkowicz’s case was decided. Accusers and defendants are now each allowed to bring a lawyer, for example; if they do not have one, Columbia is one of the only colleges in the country that will provide one.

But one fundamental goal of the process remains the same, says Suzanne B. Goldberg, a special adviser to the university’s president on sexual assault prevention and response. Unlike criminal trials, she explained, university hearings are designed to be educational experiences.

“I think that any university students who engage with a disciplinary process on these issues learn a lot,” she said.
Nungesser says he has learned that the university will abandon its own convictions if it is politically expedient.

Sulkowicz, whose high profile has made her the target of innumerable online attacks, says she has learned that women’s safety is expendable. For her and others, Nungesser’s continued presence is a daily affront.

Having avoided contact with each other for two years, the two adversaries are scheduled to graduate in the same ceremony in May. Sulkowicz said she may bring her mattress up on stage and drop it right there. Nungesser is ambivalent about the day, wary of further displays but eager to move on to a place where this episode does not define him. He says he does not know where that will be.

Source

In Ontario, the Ontario Provincial Government spends Billions of Dollars
promoting violence by women towards men.

Dam near every sane father knows that if the mother of his children tries to
kill him or repeatedly assaults him, as soon as he calls 911 the Local Police
will Charge him and not her.

The Worst of the Worst of these Political Police, who enforce Male Sharia Law
and promote violence by women towards men are well known.

The Ottawa Police claim 85% of all victims are female.

The Criminal Lawyers of Ontario have another story.

The vast majority of cases where men are charged the male is actually the
victim.

It's now normal for Police to charge male victims of domestic violence.

Here is True Crime Story of how the Police Obstruct Justice by Fabricating
Evidence to Support Ontario's most violent women.

Recently Peter Van Der Zander Fabricated evidence in a written report that a

woman had denied attempting to strangle her husband. The Video of his interview

showed that he never asked her the question. He was however provided with

written and verbal information by a Cst. Smith who noted he found blood and

scratch marks around the neck of the father, who happened to be the primary

parent.

Van Der Zander listened to a voice recording of the entire event and

fabricated statements that he claimed he heard however they were not on the

recording.

Van Der Zander was however concerned that she might kill him with a knife

"next time" and basically told her that he was releasing her with out charges so

she could go back and call the police herself "next time".

Despite being told by the attending officers of injuries that needed to be

photographed, he released the mother and sent her home in a Victim Witness car.

He kept the father incarcerated and for some 16 hours and failed to

interview him prior to releasing the mother.

Van Der Zander claimed in his occurrence report that her multiple assaults

must have been "a reflex action" he blamed the victim for "provoking her" .

Van Der Zander was later removed from the file, another detective then was

assigned with strict rules to NOT review Van Der Zander's actions. That

detective chose another day a few weeks earlier and charged the mother with

threatening Death and assault for some 55 assaults in one day.

The Police turned a blind eye to evidence of admissions by the mother to

multiple assaults against the children and conveniently held conferences for

which every person who attended later developed total amnesia .

The Ottawa Police spend 75% of the their budget effectively promoting

child abuse and violence towards children and fathers. Its all part of Ontario's

Gender Superiority Program that enables the various police forces of Ontario to

spend billions of dollars of tax payers money on what amounts to a Fas.cist

program of Gender Superiority.

Ottawa Mens Centre

---

These Rampant Promoters of Violence Against men and in particular
Fathers, will never ever mention the number of men raped by women.

These
same extreme feminists have faces oozing with a pathological hatred of
men generally as a result of prior abuse for which they have every right
to be angry, mad, upset and to demand justice for what happened to them
personally.

While we can have empathy for what they went through,
their pathological hatred is turned into an angry army of women who
generally never ever have another relationship with a man , and who turn
their anger and violence towards all the good men and good fathers who
love and respect women.

It breeds a society of women who believe
the Extreme Feminist Propaganda, they actively seek out unwitting c.perm
donors to inseminate them and often not even tell the father he is a
father or tell the children that they have a father.

Now some 25%
of all births in Canada fail to name a father and a large percentage of
those births resulted from a man hating woman who raped a man to steal
his c.perm to become pregnant.

In Canada sex to become pregnant without consent is NOT yet, a criminal offence.

Canada
needs to prevent Sexual Assault and Rape by women and men and there
needs to be a fundamental understanding that Women, do Rape Men all the
time and there has yet to be a single woman in Canada convicted of
raping a man and that's because our Police, our judiciary make it a
Political Offence to say that a woman is violent.

Corrupt Man
Hating Judges like Jennifer Belishen of Ottawa, a former CAS lawyer has
on a number of occasions, terminated children's relationships with their
father simply because the mother assaulted the children and the father
and expressed that concern to the court.

It is now heresy for
fathers to say anything about violence by women and for that reason,
Society is intimidated by a Corrupt Judiciary, a corrupt police who
enforce what can only be called, Male Sharia Law.

Welcome to Ontario's Promotion of Domestic Violence and Sexual assault by women towards men.