Al Jazeera America quotes Sokolow on KU case

“I don’t understand why [the sex before] would be relevant to anything, let alone mitigating it,” said Brett Sokolow. “Look at marital rape. No matter how many times they’ve had consensual sex, the one time he rapes her it’s still rape. Why would you treat this any differently?” 

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A Summary of NCHERM Group Leadership and Innovation since 1997

Various media outlets and interest groups have recently presented a narrow view of The NCHERM Group’s activities. We thought we would take this opportunity to review some of our contributions and accomplishments over the last seventeen years in order to offer a broader perspective.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education quotes Sokolow in "Presumed Guilty"

But the crackdown, say young men and their lawyers, has come at a cost. Since the Education Department issued a "Dear Colleague" letter in 2011, admonishing colleges to process students’ reports of assault uniformly—with the goals of investigating all cases and preventing new ones—many campus officials believe the underlying message is that they should side with victims, says Brett A. Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, a consulting and law firm. The department’s letter also emphasized that colleges should determine responsibility using the "more likely than not" standard of proof. That’s lower than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard required for a criminal conviction.

In the past few months, Mr. Sokolow says he has gotten nearly 60 calls from accused students and their parents—a steep rise from just a year ago. He takes the cases he feels are the strongest (for now, a dozen). "The last thing I want to do," he says, "is represent a rapist."

Of the cases Mr. Sokolow has accepted, at various stages of resolution, three young men have had charges against them dismissed following campus investigations or hearings. Three others whose colleges had found them responsible had those findings reversed on appeal, and two who were found responsible reached settlements with their institutions. The rest of the cases are pending.

The problem with that reasoning, say lawyers representing those accused, is that colleges often apply it in cases in which both parties were drunk but not incapacitated. "If the university poorly distinguishes between being merely intoxicated and being incapacitated—and many do—it’s discriminatory to charge only the man," says Mr. Sokolow. But that is what often happens, he says.

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Minnesota Daily quotes Sokolow on University of Minnesota case

Brett Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, said recommending counseling is generally a mild response to retaliation, but appropriate remedial measures vary by case.

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Huffington Post quotes Sokolow on University of Kansas sanction

Brett Sokolow, president and CEO of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, who frequently counsels schools on how to handle incidents of sexual assault, said that applying such a sanction in this case did not appear appropriate.

The KU case shows why leaving these matters in the hands of student conduct administrators who lack training in the complexities of sexual violence -- rather than in the hands of a Title IX coordinator -- is a bad idea, Sokolow said.

"They want desperately to believe they can use a reflection paper to teach him to stop next time," Sokolow said. "They don't think about the next victim, if he does not stop."

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Lewis and Sokolow quoted in The Daily Camera’s “CU-Boulder defends motives in handling of sexual misconduct cases”

Much of the renewed interest around Title IX can be attributed to more guidance from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights and communication from the White House about campus sexual assaults, said Scott Lewis, a founder of the Association of Title IX administrators.

Lewis, who's also a partner with the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, has helped train thousands of college and university investigators.

Schools have been criticized in recent years for not doing enough to make victims of sexual misconduct feel safe on campus and for questioning victims' character, sexual behavior and drinking habits, among other things, Lewis said.

It's possible that some schools are overcorrecting now for past mistakes, he said.

"For a long time, the pendulum was swung very heavily to the due process rights of the accused, at the expense of the victim at times," Lewis said. "So as the pendulum begins to come back to the middle, and we have good impartial decisions made by investigators, there are some schools that have swung that pendulum a little far."

In an April 2014 newsletter, Brett Sokolow, executive director of the Association of Title IX Administrators, described his recent involvement in five cases where he believed universities mistakenly found men guilty of sexual misconduct when alcohol was involved.

"Finding each of the accused in violation of sexual misconduct is sex discrimination," he wrote. "We are making Title IX plaintiffs out of them."

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