The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013

The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 changed everything about how colleges handle sexual misconduct allegations. It included the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act - the Campus SaVE Act - which imposed new requirements on how schools investigate and adjudicate these cases. The law sounds protective. It sounds fair. It sounds like it creates procedures that safeguard everyone involved. Welcome to Spodek Law Group. Our goal is to tell you what nobody else will: read the actual training requirements written into that law and you will understand exactly what you are facing.

The Campus SaVE Act requires that officials handling sexual misconduct cases receive training on how to "protect the safety of victims and promote accountability." Read that language carefully. It does not say protect the safety of parties. It does not say determine truth. It says protect victims and promote accountability. That language assumes the complainant is already a victim before any investigation has occurred. It assumes you are already someone who needs to be held accountable before anyone has asked you a single question. The bias is not a failure of implementation. The bias is written into the statute itself.

Todd Spodek founded this firm on one principle: students deserve to understand exactly what they are facing before they make any decisions. What you are facing under VAWA is a system where the people who will investigate your case, hear your case, and decide your fate have been legally required to approach these proceedings with a victim protection and accountability promotion mindset. The procedural protections the law appears to provide - advisor access, simultaneous notification, written procedures - are cosmetic reforms that cannot overcome the foundational bias embedded in how officials are trained to think about these cases.

The Training They Receive

Heres the thing that most students dont understand about VAWA and the Campus SaVE Act. The law dosent just create procedures. It creates a training framework that shapes how every official involved in your case approaches their job. Under federal regulations implementing the Campus SaVE Act, officials must recieve annual training on issues related to sexual violence and on how to conduct an investigation and hearing process that protects the safety of victims and promotes accountability.

Think about what that training requirement actualy means. Before your investigation even begins, the investigator has been trained to protect victims. Before your hearing starts, the hearing officer has been trained to promote accountability. The language presupposes the outcome. The complainant is a victim who needs protection. You are someone who needs to be held accountable. This is not neutral fact-finding language. This is language that assigns roles before any evidence has been examined.

The officials deciding your case were legally required to be trained with victim-focused language before they ever heard your name. This training dosent happen once. It happens annualy. Every year, the people who handle these cases sit through sessions reinforcing the victim protection and accountability promotion framework. By the time they encounter your case, this mindset is thoroughley embedded in how they approach their work. They are not trained to find truth. They are trained to protect victims and ensure accountability. You are the accountability they were trained to find.

Heres the part that makes this especialy problematic. The training materials used to meet these requirements typicaly focus heavily on believing survivors, recognizing trauma responses that might explain inconsistancies in complainant testimony, and understanding why victims often delay reporting or have incomplete memories. All of this content reinforces the presumption that complainants are telling the truth and that respondents are guilty. Training on false accusations, mistaken identifications, or the possibility that complainants might be confused about what actualy happened is minimal or non-existent. The training creates a mindset, and that mindset works against you.

The Preponderance Problem

OK so heres something else about VAWA that you need to understand. While the Campus SaVE Act itself did not mandate any particular standard of proof, it coincided with the Obama administrations push for schools to adopt the preponderance of the evidence standard. The 2011 Dear Colleague letter pressured schools to use this standard, and many schools that had previousley used a higher standard changed their policies in response.

Preponderance of the evidence means more likely than not. Basicly, if the decision-maker beleives there is a 51% chance you did what you are accused of doing, you are found responsible. This is the lowest standard of proof used in American legal proceedings. Criminal cases require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Many civil matters require clear and convincing evidence - something around 75% certainty. Campus proceedings require only that the decision-maker finds it slightly more likely that you did it than that you did not.

Think about what this means mathematicaly. If the decision-maker is genuinly uncertain about what happened - if they think its basicly a coin flip - they are supposed to find you not responsible. But if they lean even slightly toward beleiving the complainant, you are found responsible and face sanctions that can include expulsion. The margin of error is almost nothing. A decision-maker who is 49% sure you are innocent will still find you responsible becuase 51% is the threshold. This is not a system designed to protect against wrongful findings. This is a system designed to maximize findings of responsibility.

Heres where the preponderance standard becomes evenmore dangerous when combined with the VAWA training requirements. Decision-makers who have been trained annualy to protect victims and promote accountability are not approaching your case from a neutral starting point. They have already been primed to believe complainants and hold respondents accountable. When you add that training bias to a 51% standard of proof, the outcome is almost inevitable. The system is tilted against you from the beginning, and the standard of proof is so low that even slight bias is enough to determine your fate.

Procedural Protections That Arent

The Campus SaVE Act does include procedural protections that appear to benefit accused students. You have the right to an advisor of your choice at any meeting or proceeding. You have the right to simultanious written notification of the outcome. You have the right to appeal. Both parties must recieve timely and equal access to information. Proceedings must be conducted by officials without conflicts of interest or bias. On paper, this looks like due process.

Heres the reality. The advisor you bring can be severly limited in what they are allowed to do. Many schools prohibit advisors from speaking during hearings or cross-examining witnesses. Your attorney may be permitted to sit next to you and pass you notes, but they cannot actualy advocate on your behalf. This is not meaningful representation. This is the appearance of representation designed to check a compliance box.

The simultanious notification requirement means you find out the outcome at the same time as the complainant. It does not mean the outcome will be fair. It does not mean the investigation was impartial. It means you recieve written documentation of whatever decision the institution reached - even if that decision was shaped by training that presumed your guilt from the outset.

The requirement that officials have no conflicts of interest or bias sounds protective. In practice, it is nearly imposible to challenge. How do you prove that a decision-maker was biased when that bias was created by mandatory training they were required to complete? The training itself creates the bias, but institutions will argue they are simply following federal requirements. The bias is not a violation of the rules. It is built into the rules.

Heres what procedural protections actualy look like for accused students. You get to bring someone who cant speak. You get written notice of a predetermined outcome. You get access to evidence that has already been filtered through a victim-protection lens. You get to appear before officials who were trained to find accountability. These are not protections. These are the forms of due process without the substance.

The equal access to information requirement sounds like it should help you. Both parties must recieve the same evidence, the same documents, the same witness statements. But think about how that evidence was gathered. The investigator who collected it was trained to protect victims and promote accountability. They decided what questions to ask, what follow-up to pursue, what evidence to include in the file. The evidence you recieve has already been filtered through a victim-focused lens. Equal access to biased evidence is not the same as access to neutral evidence. You are seeing what the investigator decided was relevant - and their training shaped that decision.

Heres another thing about the procedural protections that sounds good on paper but fails in practice. The requirement that proceedings be conducted by officials without bias is esentialy unenforcable when the bias comes from mandated training. If you try to challenge a decision-maker's impartiality becuase they completed victim-focused training, the school will respond that the training was required by federal law. They were following VAWA requirements. How can that be bias? The answer is that it is bias - it is just bias that has been legaly sanctioned and institutionaly mandated. The law created the bias, and then the law says officials cannot be biased. The contradiction is built into the system.

Even Justice Ginsburg Saw It

Let that sink in for a moment. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - not exactally known for conservative views on gender issues - publicaly criticized campus proceedings for failing to provide due process to accused students. She stated that there has been criticism of some college codes of conduct for not giving the accused person a fair opportunity to be heard, and that is one of the basic tenets of our system.

When a liberal Supreme Court Justice recognizes that campus proceedings are denying accused students fair hearings, the problem is not a matter of political perspective. The problem is fundamental. The due process concerns raised about VAWA-era campus proceedings are not partisan talking points. They are legitimate constitutional concerns that cross ideological lines. Even people who strongly support protections for sexual assault survivors recognize that accused students are being denied basic fairness.

Heres another thing that demonstrates how widespread these concerns have become. By 2015, forty-five federal lawsuits had been filed by students challenging their treatment in campus proceedings. Over nine hundred articles and editorials had been published criticizing the policies governing these cases. A United Educators study found that more than one-quarter of Title IX claims were challenged by accused students through either federal lawsuits or complaints to the Office for Civil Rights. This is not a fringe concern. This is a systemic problem recognized by courts, commentators, and even members of the Supreme Court.

The legal backlash against VAWA-era campus proceedings has been growing steadily. Courts have increasingly ruled in favor of accused students who challenged their treatment, finding that schools denied them basic procedural protections. These rulings suggest that the procedures created under VAWA, despite appearing comprehensive on paper, often fail to provide the fundamental fairness that legal proceedings require. When one in four accused students challenges their case through formal legal channels, the system is not working as intended.

The Department of Education eventualy acknowledged some of these problems. In September 2017, the Office for Civil Rights withdrew the 2011 Dear Colleague letter that had pressured schools to adopt the preponderance standard and implement aggressive procedures. The withdrawal recognized that the guidance had created due process concerns. But the damage was already done. Schools had restructured their entire Title IX operations around that guidance. Training programs had been developed. Institutional cultures had shifted. The withdrawal of the letter did not immediatley reverse years of victim-focused training and accountability-promotion mindsets. Many schools continued operating exactally as they had before.

Heres the thing about legal backlash that matters for your case. Courts are now more willing to scrutinize campus proceedings than they were five years ago. Judges have recognized that preponderance standards combined with victim-focused training can produce unfair outcomes. Appellate courts have found that denying cross-examination or limiting advisor participation can violate due process. This legal environment creates opportunities that did not exist when VAWA was first implemented. But you have to know how to take advantage of those opportunities. You have to document procedural problems as they occur. You have to preserve the record for potential litigation. You have to understand that the campus proceeding might be just the first stage of a longer legal battle.

What This Means For Your Case

If you are facing a Title IX investigation at a school subject to VAWA requirements, you need to understand exactly what you are up against. The people investigating your case were trained to protect victims and promote accountability. The standard of proof is so low that even minor uncertainty tips toward a finding of responsibility. The procedural protections that appear to help you are largely cosmetic. The system was designed to produce findings of responsibility, and it does so with remarkable consistency.

This does not mean your case is hopeless. It means your defense strategy must account for these structural disadvantages. Challenging the impartiality of decision-makers who completed victim-focused training is difficult but not impossible. Documenting procedural irregularities throughout the investigation preserves appeal grounds. Ensuring that your advisor, even if limited in what they can say, is prepared to help you navigate every aspect of the process makes a meaningful difference.

Understanding exactly how VAWA shapes the process also helps you make strategic decisions throughout the investigation. Knowing that investigators are trained to interpret your nervousness as guilt rather than anxiety helps you prepare for interviews. Knowing that decision-makers are primed to believe complainants helps you understand why you need contemporanious documentation of anything that contradicts the complainants story. Knowing that the preponderance standard means every piece of evidence matters helps you understand why you cannot afford to leave anything to chance. The more you understand about how the system actualy works - not how it appears to work on paper - the better positioned you are to defend yourself effectivly.

At Spodek Law Group, we understand that VAWA fundamentaly changed campus proceedings in ways that work against accused students. Todd Spodek has seen how these investigations actualy operate - the training bias, the low standards of proof, the procedural protections that exist on paper but provide little real benefit. We prepare students to face a system that was designed to promote accountability, not determine truth. We document everything, challenge everything, and ensure that if you need to appeal or litigate, you have the record you need to demonstrate that the process was unfair.

Many students assume they can handle the Title IX process on their own and only hire an attorney if things go badly. This approach is especialy dangerous under VAWA-era procedures becuase the damage accumulates throughout the process. Every interview you attend without representation becomes part of the record. Every procedural irregularity you fail to document becomes harder to challenge later. Every deadline you miss for raising objections may be waived permanantly. By the time you realize you need help, critical opportunities may have already passed. The attorney who comes in after the investigation is already underway is working with a situation that has been substantialy compromised.

The cost of proper legal representation at the outset of a VAWA-governed Title IX investigation is a fraction of the cost of trying to undo an unfair outcome. Students who try to save money by handling it themselves often end up spending far more on appeals, lawsuits, and damage control than they would have spent preventing the problem. And some damage cannot be undone regardless of how much money you spend. Expulsion is permanant. Transcript notations can follow you indefinatly. The stigma of a Title IX finding of responsibility does not go away just becuase you eventualy win on appeal or in court. Your future employers, graduate schools, and professional licensing boards may still ask about disciplinary history, and actualy explaining what happened becomes incrediably complicated when you have a finding of responsibility on your record.

You have recieved notice of a Title IX investigation. The school has procedures that look comprehensive. The officials have been trained. What nobody tells you is that the training they recieved primed them to view you as the accountability they were required to find. Call us at 212-300-5196. The consultation is free. The consequences of facing this system without proper representation could be permanant.

The law requires officials to protect victims and promote accountability. You are the accountability they were trained to find. Your defense needs to account for this reality from the moment you learn you are under investigation.