Mothers Of Accused College Rapists Fight Back
Well, they're trying, anyway.

A bunch of moms whose sons have been accused of rape on campus get together on Skype once a week to chat about it, and one of them started the group Families Advocating for Campus Equality that pushes for universities to get out of the business of adjudicating sexual assault cases.

The reality is, they're pretty powerless in the face of Obama administration requirements that campuses try -- well, let's be honest, men -- in kangaroo courts. In Josh Strange's case, a librarian headed up the committee.

Nicole Grether and Christof Putzel write at Al Jazeera:

Allison Strange wants those cases to be left to the criminal justice system, and she says you only need to look at her son's case to understand why:

Josh Strange had dreamed of attending Auburn since he was 12. Toward the end of his freshman year in 2011, he pledged a fraternity and began dating a young woman he'd met through mutual friends. After a month, they changed their Facebook statuses to "in a relationship."

Then, on June 29, 2011, they went back to his apartment after a night of heavy drinking. Strange said that a little while after going to sleep, the couple woke up and started having sex.

"My girlfriend had woken up, and she initiated everything," he said. "We started having sex that night and all of a sudden, about midway through, she just loses it."

Strange's girlfriend called the police, who detained him for questioning. She said Strange had forced himself on her. He said that she initiated the sex. His accuser didn't press charges. In fact, he said she returned to his apartment the next morning to apologize for the misunderstanding.

"I was just confused," he said. "She looked at me and said, 'Well, it was nothing, you know, I freaked out. I'm sorry.' She said [it was] a misunderstanding. I don't really know what she meant by that, but she just kept apologizing and apologizing."

The couple continued to date and sleep together for another six weeks. Then, their relationship started to fall apart. On Labor Day Weekend of 2011, a month after they cut off communication, Strange was again arrested at his home. He said she made a second false charge of dating violence, accusing him of slapping her in the face with a set of keys in a parking lot of a frozen yogurt shop back in September.

He flatly denies the charge, and said witnesses confirmed that he was 15 miles away from where the incident allegedly took place. This time, however, the accuser did press charges for misdemeanor simple assault, as well as for the earlier alleged incident: felony forcible sodomy.

Strange was cleared of all criminal charges, but a campus kangaroo court decided to expel him.

The university denied America Tonight's request for an interview, but provided a statement: "As you are doubtless aware, federal requirement from the U.S. Dept. of Education mandate that all public universities follow a process that differs from the judicial and law enforcement systems in many ways. Those requirements are very clear and come with severe penalties for noncompliance. We at Auburn take these requirements very seriously and that is reflected in our Code of Student Discipline."

Colleges that don't comply with Title IX risk losing their federal funding. And while no school has ever faced that penalty, critics caution that the current administration's more active tack in investigating schools are rushing some to hasty judgments. The recent trend of "yes means yes" or "affirmative consent" policies have further fanned the fears. These conduct codes put more of the burden on the accused to prove that the other person consented, as opposed to making alleged victims prove that they were forced.

"Many legal scholars are actually talking about how there's now a presumption of guilt against the boy who's been accused of sexual assault," Rosenberg said. "...They don't get the due process rights that many Americans would expect to have occur."

His mother said:

"How in the world can we be in a situation where someone's words - without any evidence, without any witnesses, without anything - how in the world can someone's life be turned upside down, or basically ruined?"

via @instapundit