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Judge agrees with Harvard that it did what it could to protect a student from abuse by ex-boyfriend

A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit by a woman who charged Harvard University failed to do enough to protect her from assaults and harassment by her ex-boyfriend and his pals while they were students there.

In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Boston, Alyssa Leader, who graduated in 2015, detailed what she said was abusive behavior by her then boyfriend, identified only as "John Doe I" and what she said was a harassment campaign by him, his pals and his new girlfriend at the campus cafe where both she and he worked. She alleged Harvard didn't act to stop him.

But in a ruling today, Judge Denise Casper ruled Leader had failed to prove the "deliberate indifference" she said Harvard showed towards her complaints, that in fact:

Harvard offered Leader a range of options for protecting herself during the pendency of [disciplinary] proceedings, including providing a no-contact order (and even a modification of that order to allow for staggered use of common spaces by Leader and Doe) and offering to move Leader out of Cabot House. Leader points to no support in the record for the contention that Harvard’s actions in providing Leader with these options fell below the standard of care for a reasonable university in this situation.

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Comments

Interested to understand the //s between this case and the one with the Emerson student who was filing chapter nine charges because her rape fantasies weren't being taken seriously.

In any event, I'm glad that Adam is taking a more moderate approach to these sorts of things.

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