Sexual assault is a widespread problem on college campuses, but as if it wasn’t already bad enough, Alyssa Leader, a 2015 Harvard graduate, was literally forced to live in the same building as the man who assaulted her.
According to the Huffington Post, Leader had dated her assaulter, “John Doe 1” for nearly a year until March 2014. The relationship was extremely abusive and she was violently coerced into having sex. During the relationship, there were multiple times when she reported her boyfriend’s abuse to Harvard’s Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response as well as her own residence dean, but no steps were taken to remove Doe from their dorm.
Even after the relationship ended, Doe continued to harass her. She continually reported their encounters, but Harvard completely ignored her despite being aware of what was happening. It reached a point where she did not feel safe in the dining hall, her workplace or her dorm.
“I think his behavior was unacceptable, but my priority was just to have him gone from my home and workplace. Any further punishment is up to Harvard,” Leader said in an interview with the Huffington Post last week.
After a year of her requesting that Doe be removed from her dorm, she became fed up with the lack of response and filed an official school complaint in February 2015, which led to a university investigation. This too went nowhere, so she finally reported the sexual assaults to Harvard’s police and was able to obtain a court-ordered restraining order in April 2015. Only then—nearly two years after her reports started—did Harvard finally remove Doe from her dorm.
No woman should ever feel unsafe in her own living environment, and it’s an outrage that Harvard let this continue for so long, especially since they were completely aware of the violence that Leader had been experiencing.
What’s really horrifying is that this incident is not even uncommon on Harvard’s campus. The university is under federal investigation because there are 12 cases similar to Ashley Leaders in which Harvard has not given proper treatment to campus sexual violence, and victims were forced to live with their harassers.
“After I graduated I kept hearing stories of people in similar situations as mine or more difficult situations,” Leader told the Huffington Post, and this is the reason that pushed her to finally file a lawsuit against the school last week.
She is a brave woman taking a stand for those before her and after her who are victims of sexual assault and harassment at Harvard. We can only hope that the suit will truly initiate a change in Harvard’s policies and handling of cases, because no one should ever have to be a victim of dating violence.