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PROVIDENCE — A suit brought by a former Brown University student alleges that the university improperly handled the investigation of a rape allegation and facilitated his ouster at the behest of the father of the alleged victim.
William McCormick III denied in legal documents having raped the woman and said that the woman’s lawyer threatened him in 2006 with criminal charges if he didn’t sign a confidential settlement promising to withdraw from the university. McCormick, who was a Brown freshman in 2006, also named the female student and her father in the suit as defendants.
“McCormick brought this lawsuit in no small part to clear his name,” his lawyer, J. Scott Kilpatrick, said at a hearing April 12 in U.S. District Court. “He was essentially run out of Brown University, sent back home to Waukesha, Wis., to his parents and had to seek alternate education. … He still lives under the accusation of being accused of rape and having left the school as a result of it.”
No criminal charges were brought against McCormick in connection with the alleged rape, according to the suit.
Kilpatrick and the McCormicks have refused to comment on the suit.
In separate motions, Brown, the female student and her father asked the court to dismiss the suit. The university says the suit offers no proof of wrongdoing. The student and her father point to the settlement agreement as grounds for dismissal and are asking that they be awarded court fees.
McCormick and his parents filed the suit in Superior Court in October. Brown, the female student and her father had the suit transferred to federal court and sealed. The McCormicks successfully moved in court April 12 to unseal it.
The suit names as defendants 15 Brown employees, including President Ruth Simmons, both as agents of the university and as individuals, in addition to the female student and her father. Among the claims the McCormicks make in the suit are negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, libel and breach of contract.
Judge William E. Smith Wednesday ruled that the suit can move forward, but he denied some of the claims by the McCormicks.
He said he was satisfied that the McCormicks alleged “a pattern of wrongful conduct based on the collective actions of the agents of Brown University that, if proven, could be considered outrageous, atrocious and utterly intolerable conduct on the part of Brown.”
Left in the suit are the McCormicks’ claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence by the university. Smith did not rule on a breach-of-contract claim against the university.
Smith granted motions by Brown to dismiss claims against the university members, as individuals, of intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as claims of false imprisonment, libel and breach of contract.
Smith deferred ruling on the motion by the female student and her father to dismiss the suit.
McCormick, an honors student and nationally ranked wrestler, enrolled at Brown in 2006 after being recruited by the university, the suit says. During his first few days at Brown, the suit says, McCormick became friends with a female student living in his dorm. The woman, according to the suit, exaggerated McCormick’s actions toward her, telling university officials that he was stalking her.
McCormick was issued a no-contact order by the Office of Student Life to stay away from the woman. The suit says that he was not allowed to give his account of the events, nor was he given a copy of the woman’s complaint, though he was told he’d been accused of harassment. Hours later, according to the suit, the woman reported that McCormick was violating the order and he was moved to a different dorm.
The suit alleges that the woman was pressed by friends and Brown officials over the coming days to add to the complaint against McCormick, at the same time as the woman’s father — a Brown alumnus and donor who cofounded a private equity firm in New York — regularly contacted the university’s administration asking them to act on his daughter’s behalf.
Under pressure from university officials and friends, according to the suit, the woman said that McCormick raped her on Sept. 6, 2006, when she was studying in her dorm room. McCormick said he had no contact with her during the time of the alleged rape.
At the April 12 hearing to unseal the case, Joseph V. Cavanagh Jr., lawyer for the alleged victim, said that his client did not lie about the incident.
“We oppose this because our client is a victim of a rape and it’s been stated in the [legal] papers,” Cavanagh said. “For some reason, the plaintiffs keep saying that [the female student and her family] don’t deny that this was a false charge. We take their pleadings in the light most favorable to them, so we can’t deal with that issue, but in no way has our side backed away from the fact that [the woman] was the victim.”
Kilpatrick said at the hearing that that the declaration was the first he’d heard from the defendants that the woman’s allegation was true. Up until that point, he said, the defendants had never denied claims by William McCormick that the allegations were false.
The Journal does not identify the victims of alleged sexual assault.
McCormick was barred from campus on Sept. 14, 2006, and given a one-way ticket by Brown to fly home to Wisconsin. McCormick says in the suit that the university didn’t cooperate with his attempts to clear his name, a claim his former adviser, Michael Burch, corroborates.
“Anyone standing next to me for the four to five weeks of the investigation could see that Brown University operated with a spirit of intimidation toward William McCormick,” Burch said in an interview Tuesday. Burch, who was an assistant wrestling coach in 2006, has since resigned from the university and is a lecturer at Rhode Island School of Design.
Burch said that the university told McCormick he was violating university policy when he tried to contact students to give statements of his innocence, and that the university was reluctant to cooperate with Burch’s attempts to gather copies of student statements on McCormick’s behalf.
Two months later, under what the McCormicks in the lawsuit call a “thinly veiled threat of criminal rape charges” from Cavanagh, William McCormick signed the confidential agreement. Cavanagh has refused comment on the case.
McCormick is now a junior at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, majoring in filmmaking, Burch said.
At the April 12 hearing, Judge Smith said he was troubled that the university never alerted the police if it considered the rape allegation credible.
“This is an extremely serious crime and the thought that, with all of these people involved in the matter at different levels, that determination is made to not tell law enforcement, even the Brown police, I’m having a hard time getting that,” Smith said.
In a written statement to The Journal, Marisa A. Quinn, vice president of public affairs and university relations for Brown said: “The university and its officers have acted appropriately in this matter. As in all instances, the university respects and maintains the confidentiality of student and employee records.”
When asked if a report of sexual assault is automatically directed to local police or the attorney general’s office, university officials said that they comply with the Clery Act — a federal law governing the reporting of campus crime statistics and campus crime notifications — and directed a reporter to Brown’s sexual misconduct policy.
The policy states: “In addition to the University disciplinary process, rape and other forms of sexual assault may be prosecuted criminally by the Attorney General of the State of Rhode Island. Use of the University procedures or a lack thereof, does not preclude a complainant from filing charges under state criminal statutes.”
Rhode Island law requires a person who knows a rape is occurring to report it to the police as it is happening, but that law does not apply to those who learn about an alleged assault after the fact.
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