WASHINGTON (AP) – The Education Department’s civil rights chief says she’s sorry for making “flippant” remarks attributing 90 percent of campus sexual assault claims to both parties being drunk.
Wednesday’s apology by Candice Jackson, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, came on the eve of a series of meetings that her boss, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is holding to examine the impact of the Obama administration’s stepped-up efforts to hold schools accountable for investigating sexual violence.
Jackson was quoted in The New York Times on Wednesday as saying federal rules have resulted in many false accusations under the law known as Title IX.
In most investigations, she said, there’s “not even an accusation that these accused students overrode the will of a young woman.”
“Rather, the accusations – 90 percent of them – fall into the category of, ‘We were both drunk, we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right,'” Jackson is quoted as saying in an interview.