Doe v. R.I. Sch. of Design
| Decision Date | 02 February 2021 |
| Docket Number | C.A. No. 18-10-JJM-LDA |
| Citation | 516 F.Supp.3d 188 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Rhode Island |
| Parties | Jane DOE, Plaintiff, v. RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN, Defendant. |
David C. Williams, Nadeem A. Bezar, Kline & Specter, PC, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff.
Steven M. Richard, Nixon Peabody LLP, Providence, RI, for Defendant.
FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW, AND VERDICT AFTER A BENCH TRIAL
The Court conducted a bench trial, received the parties’ proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, heard closing arguments, and now renders its findings of fact, conclusions of law, and verdict under Fed. R. Civ. P. 52.
Jane Doe attended a Rhode Island School of Design ("RISD") sponsored three-week art program in Ireland. RISD provided the housing for the students. RISD did not investigate the safety or security of the rooms to which it assigned students. The houses were co-ed and contained four individual rooms. There were no workable locks on the bedroom doors. On the first night of the program, a fellow student walked into Jane's unlocked bedroom and raped her. She was raped as a direct and proximate result of RISD's failure to provide housing that was safe and secure and allowed her to lock her bedroom door. As a result, Jane has been permanently injured.
1. RISD, through its Continuing Education Department and its Global Office, offered a three-week summer program in 2016 in Ballyvaughan, Ireland entitled "Ireland: Illustrating Myths and Legends in the Burren" ("Ireland Program").
2. Jane Doe (a pseudonym used to protect the identity of a rape victim) was a student in a joint degree program at RISD and Brown University. She attended the Ireland Program having paid $5,375.00 to RISD to participate.
3. A RISD Professor proposed the Ireland Program to the RISD administration that approved the program. He was supposed to ensure the welfare and care of the RISD students participating in it. For it, he selected a recent graduate of the Brown/RISD dual degree program to serve as a Teacher's Assistant and Resident Advisor ("TA/RA").
4. RISD managed and controlled all aspects of the program including transportation, housing, and student safety.
5. RISD secured housing in Ireland for its students through its on-site partner, the Burren College of Art ("Burren"). Burren arranged for the RISD students to be housed at the Burren Atlantic Hotel and Holiday Village ("Burren Atlantic"). RISD did not require that the housing be safe when it contracted with Burren Atlantic. Because of the size of the RISD group, the students were assigned four-bedroom "houses" at the Burren Atlantic. RISD made assignments for each student.
6. Each house had a key to lock the door to the outside. Yet every individual bedroom door could only be locked with a separate key. No one from RISD, the local sponsoring college, or the owner of the housing informed the students of the need for bedroom keys, nor where they could access them to lock their bedroom doors.
7. Before the Ireland Program began, RISD held a training session for students participating in its upcoming international programs, including the Ireland Program. It provided training on student conduct standards and behavioral requirements, including a presentation on the prevention of sexual misconduct and an instructional video on the mandatory requirement to obtain consent in all aspects of sexual interactions. RISD also held a pre-departure training session for the faculty advisors and TA/RAs addressing reporting obligations, health and safety concerns, leadership responsibilities, Title IX reporting and responding, and how to manage risks and incidents during international programs. During the training session, RISD reviewed with the faculty advisors and TA/RAs a chart titled "Faculty/Program Leader Incident Response," which delineated prescribed steps and measures to take when responding to a reported sexual assault or other incident that might arise.
8. Upon arriving in Ireland, no one from RISD investigated whether students could lock their bedrooms. No one asked anyone at Burren or Burren Atlantic if students would be given keys to their rooms to allow them to lock their individual bedroom doors.
9. The TA/RA did not receive any training about identifying safety issues in the student housing or inspecting the residences for security purposes.
10. As its standard procedure, the Burren Atlantic does not distribute any interior keys to the bedrooms in the houses.
11. All the bedroom doors in the housing where the RISD students stayed – including those in House-17, where Jane stayed – could lock but required a key. Burren Atlantic kept the House-17 bedroom door keys on the window ledge of the boiler room, but no one told Jane or any of the students.
12. RISD officials acknowledged that RISD had a responsibility to do all that it could to provide safe housing to students participating in RISD off-campus programs, including providing students with keys to lock their bedrooms if needed.
13. RISD's Risk, Property, and Emergency Manager acknowledged that Jane's inability to lock her door put her at an increased risk of unauthorized intrusion during the Ireland Program. No one at RISD informed or warned Jane about this risk.
14. RISD established no policies related to the ability of students in RISD study abroad programs to lock their bedroom doors.
15. RISD's Lieutenant of Public Safety for Support Services acknowledged that RISD had a responsibility to provide its students with the ability to lock their bedroom doors. He professed that students had a reasonable expectation that RISD would provide them with reasonably safe and secure housing, with secure buildings that limit access by strangers.
16. RISD could have and should have inspected the students’ housing before they arrived. Moreover, RISD could have and should have conducted a risk assessment before allowing its students to reside in the houses used for the Ireland Program.
17. Jane and her fellow RISD students arrived in Ireland as participants in the Ireland Program on June 18, 2016. That evening a group of students, including Jane and the male RISD student who would later rape Jane in her bedroom ("Perpetrator"), headed into town for a celebratory drink.
18. Jane and the Perpetrator left the pub later that evening and walked back to their house. They both had bedrooms in the same house.
19. Jane and the Perpetrator went up to Jane's room where the Perpetrator requested a goodnight kiss from Jane, and Jane told him that she would kiss him only on the cheek. After giving the Perpetrator a kiss on the cheek, the Perpetrator asked for another kiss. Jane said "no" and showed him to the door.
20. After the Perpetrator left Jane's room, she closed her bedroom door. She tried but could not lock her bedroom door because the lock required a key, which neither RISD nor Burren Atlantic provided her.
21. She then got into bed and messaged her friend in the United States.
22. Sometime later, Jane awoke and felt a "heavy weight on top of" her. Jane recalls feeling like she "couldn't move" as she realized that the Perpetrator was on top of her. He smelled "like vomit and alcohol." Jane also realized that she no longer had on any clothing. He begged her to "just suck on it, please just suck on it a little." See , ECF No. 84 at 25–26.
23. The Perpetrator raped Jane in her bed. The Perpetrator used his mouth on her vagina and penetrated her with his penis. Id. at 26. Jane felt horrified.
24. Jane stared at the ceiling "feeling really profoundly sad." She felt like she was "hovering just below [her] body, sort of detached and unable to access" herself – "like being in a sunken place." Id.
25. Shortly after he left her room, Jane felt "agitated," "like [she] couldn't be in that room and couldn't be in the house" anymore. Id. at 27.
26. The next day, Jane approached the TA/RA and spoke to him privately. Jane told him that "something had happened" between the Perpetrator and her during the early morning hours and that she was not okay. Id. at 28. Jane was crying as she spoke to him. The TA/RA comforted her until she managed to speak about the incident.
27. RISD promptly arranged for Jane to receive medical care. The next day, the TA/RA accompanied Jane to a local medical center for an examination and a pharmacy to obtain medication. Jane had a "very distraught couple of days going to see doctors." Id. at 29.
28. By the end of that week, RISD dismissed the Perpetrator from the Ireland Program and ordered him to leave Ballyvaughan. After both an investigation and a hearing, RISD found that the Perpetrator had violated the RISD code of student conduct on sexual misconduct. There is no question that RISD responded appropriately to the rape, in both how they assisted Jane and how they adjudicated the situation. Janes described the TA/RA's response as "[o]verwhelmingly kind," noting that "[h]e was very concerned and very gentle and helpful." Id. at 85.
29. In the summer of 2013, a RISD student reported being sexually assaulted in RISD housing while studying abroad in Rome, Italy as part of RISD's European Honors Program. The student housing was one building with a couple of floors. RISD housed students of all genders together and provided students with bedrooms that did not have workable locks on the doors.
30. RISD officials were aware of this sexual assault. The facts are strikingly like those surrounding Jane's assault less than three years later. RISD knew that students placed in mixed-gender housing were at increased risk of sexual assault, and how critical lockable bedroom doors might be for their safety and security.
31. Jane's rape was a catastrophic event in her life. She suffered intensely at the time...
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