Jezebel.com
9.8.16 | Stassa Edwards
In an op-ed for the Harvard Crimson, an anonymous rape survivor writes of her alleged attack on the university’s campus and its subsequent aftermath. “Harvard could have helped me afterwards,” she writes, “and they didn’t.”
She points to a number of potentially systemic flaws in how Harvard handles rape claims, including the university’s insistence that a university-run trial that could potentially last from six months to a year was the only way to see her alleged attacker expelled. She writes:
Already halfway through the semester, six months would mean that even if I did agree to a trial, he would not only still be in my class, but know that I was pressing charges. Over a year? He was a senior and would be long gone from campus by the time justice was served.
Harvard, she says, would not suspend him, regardless of a positive rape kit. She also notes that Harvard University Health Services, where she went after the alleged attack for medical care, did not have any rape kits available to victims. Instead, she had to go to a local hospital. She writes:
