Education official apologizes anew, this time to victims
Published 7:52 am Friday, July 14, 2017
WASHINGTON — The Education Department’s top civil rights official’s “flippant” remarks are raising questions about the government’s commitment to fighting campus sexual violence, even as she issued her second apology in as many days for attributing 90 percent of sexual assault claims to both parties being drunk.
Candice Jackson, assistant secretary for civil rights, told victims of sexual assault meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday that she was sorry for her remarks.
“As much as I appreciate apologies, which are difficult, unfortunately, there’s no way to take it back. It’s out there,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, who attended the meeting and relayed Jackson’s apology Thursday. “What’s extremely important now is that they do the hard work to counter those sorts of rape myths. They need to explicitly reject them.”
DeVos also met Thursday with people who say they were falsely accused and disciplined and representatives of colleges and universities to talk about the impact of stepped-up efforts by the Obama administration to enforce the law known as Title IX as it relates to sexual assault. “This is an issue we’re not getting right,” she said afterward.
The lawyer for a college football player who says he was falsely accused of sexual assault says DeVos sees federal rules on enforcement as unfair and in need of change.