A Stanford graduate has publicly accused the university of letting her rapist remain eligible to finish his degree this fall, four years after she reported the attack.
The woman, who has kept her identity private, laid out her allegations in a first-person essay published in The Stanford Daily, the student-run campus newspaper. She was 19 when she says a fellow student vaginally, digitally and orally raped her in her dorm room. Stanford’s Title IX investigation dragged on for two years, she wrote, and ended with a two-year suspension rather than expulsion for the man it found responsible.
“Over the last four years, I have struggled to make sense of what happened to me, and what continues to happen,” she wrote in the essay, which The Stanford Daily published with an exception to its usual policy against anonymous bylines after reviewing emails, text messages and documents to corroborate previously unreported claims.
The delays consumed her undergraduate years. She skipped classes they shared, feared running into him on campus, and missed opportunities including studying abroad as proceedings were repeatedly delayed and rescheduled, according to her account.
The criminal process fared no better, she wrote. Stanford campus police waited four months after her initial report to contact witnesses and conduct phone interviews. In late 2023, the Stanford University Department of Public Safety submitted the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. But when she sought an update nearly four months later, the offices gave conflicting accounts of who had the case.
The DA’s office said it had returned the matter to campus police for further investigation, while the department denied receiving it, she wrote. Only after she and victim advocates followed up did police discover the original submission was incomplete and missing witness reports.
In May 2024, a detective told her prosecutors had decided to file charges, which the DA’s office confirmed by email, she wrote. Yet the charges were not entered into the system until five months later, despite repeated messages from the survivor and victim advocates. The office eventually responded with a brief apology: “I apologize for the delay.”
“Years of my life were wasted by preventable errors, prolonged delays and the repeated failures of the institutions responsible for handling my case,” she wrote.
The criminal case remains unresolved, she said, even after she left Stanford, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees and moved to another state.
She also took aim at the university’s sanction. “If finding a student responsible for vaginally, digitally and orally raping their peer didn’t warrant an expulsion, what would?” she wrote.
Last year, she contacted Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez, who connected her with Patrick Dunkley, vice provost for institutional equity, access and community. Dunkley told her the university would conduct an attorney-client privileged review of sanctions imposed by its Office of Community Standards and Title IX over the previous five years, looking for patterns that might warrant more consistent outcomes. She criticized Stanford for not disclosing the review’s outcome.
Her essay arrives as national attention fixates on the so-called “Cornell 7” case, in which a former Cornell student has accused seven fraternity members of sexually assaulting her.
“Since the Cornell story broke, I have had to face the reality that despite all the ways Stanford and law enforcement have failed me — along with countless others — they do not have to face the same reckoning as Cornell,” she wrote.
Stanford University, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office and the Stanford University Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to requests for comment.