SWBTS responds to sexual abuse lawsuit

SWBTS President "Greenway responded to a personal injury lawsuit that alleges "Jane Roe" was forcibly raped at gunpoint on at least three occasions from October 2014 through April 2015 by a fellow student with an extensive criminal history who also was employed as an SWBTS plumber." - BPNews

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Mark_Smith's picture

Bert Perry wrote:

"Roe" is sitting on a treasure trove of documents that is going to make life "very interesting" for both SWBTS and Paige Patterson.  Worth noting as well is that the plaintiff has engaged a lawyer with 23 years of experience in education law--she is not playing around.  

And yet the student never completed a full police report, and the accused has never been charged with anything. Yet, Patterson is the most evil scumbag on the face of the earth and the school owes Roe millions... OK.

Funny how the school is to blame for the guy's actions, yet he is not? Weird.

TylerR's picture


Agreed. Call police! Pastor or college leader who tries to steer a complainant away from that course of action (for any reason) is a fool.


Bert Perry's picture

Nearly five decades of precedent with Title IX, and the university's responsibility to protect its students.

Regarding why the student at SWBTS talked to the President instead of an underling, it's called "because it's a small school, and that's how no less than Paige Patterson wanted it."  Quite frankly, if SWBTS has a lot of Title IX sexual harassment/rape cases, they ought to be questioning how they're screening prospective students, don't you think?

No doubt that it is better if people go to the police, but again, Mark, I've explained the dynamics to you several times, and you're just not getting it.  The conviction rate for sexual assault (vs. complaints made to police) nationwide is 2%, and the Fort Worth police had shown just how seriously they were taking the case by not prosecuting an open and shut case against a gentleman who had broken the law by possessing guns on a college campus.

You gonna trust your safety to that, Mark?  You gonna tell your college president that if the local police don't enforce the law, even in open and shut cases, that they have no responsibility to take action to protect their students?   Seriously?

You can blame the victim here all you want, but the system you're endorsing spoke loud and clear to her about why she would do better just to hide and not go forward.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Jay's picture

I work at a university. I am trying to imagine a woman calling the president's secretary and saying, "I would like to schedule an appointment to meet the President." The administrative assistant asks why. "Because I would like to report a rape." The assistant gives the police phone number...

If you had read the complaint, you would know that Roe did call the police, who sent two officers related to SWBTS employees (one was the brother of the SWBTS police chief and the other is the son of the police chaplain) to take the initial report and that Paige Patterson repeatedly involved himself with the case over the objections of the local police department even after being told explicitly not to.

Oh, and SWBTS was sued as well.  Nobody is picking on The Red Bishop.


Bert Perry's picture

Re-read Jay's link, and again, the police came and found firearms in his dorm room and car on campus, but no charges were filed for something that was against SWBTS rules and state law at the time.  Open and shut case.  Again, if you know that police and prosecutors won't work with an open and shut case with physical evidence collected directly by the police, exactly why would you think you'll be safe if you ask for them to go forward with a vastly more difficult he said/she said case?  

If you want people to go forward with the police (and I do too), you've got to understand that if they have clear evidence that the vast majority of perps will not suffer a conviction, they're going to take that into account.   They will know they're still in danger, and they either won't report, or won't go forward with charges.  None of that should effect how colleges and universities respond, except perhaps to give the more forward thinking among them an idea like creating safe houses for victims/accusers to use, or some such thing. 

Also, news from my alma mater: Provost Youatt has just resigned after MSU was fined a record $4.5 million and forced to submit to outside audits of their Title IX efforts because, among other things, Youatt did not respond effectively in the case of John Strampel.  This follows the earlier firing/resignation of former President LouAnna Simon for her role in the Nassar and Strampel cases--and she's now being prosecuted for lying to investigators for the same cases.

So we know from experience that even in schools with 45-50000 students, many of these things do indeed get to the top.  The same thing was observed after Sandusky at Penn State, and it's being observed at Ohio State and USC.  All of these schools are 10-20x bigger than SWBTS, and reality is that they know that when a problem could cause huge legal issues, that goes to the deans/provost/President very quickly.   As it should.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.