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Settlement Reached in Brown U. Lawsuit Over Student Said to Be Falsely Accused of Rape

December 21, 2011, 3:08 pm

A lawsuit that said Brown University had falsely accused a student of rape in 2006 and then pressured him to withdraw from the university has been settled.

The suit, filed against Brown by the former student, William R. McCormick III, and his parents, also named as defendants the female student he was accused of raping and her father, a wealthy alumnus and university donor. The suit asserted that the father had used his status to prompt Brown to take unjustifiably swift action against Mr. McCormick, who in 2006 was a freshman on a full scholarship.

No criminal charges were ever filed against him, and no rape allegations were reported to the police.

As part of the suit, the McCormicks sought—and a judge granted—an order requiring Brown to disclose detailed records of the donor’s gifts, an unprecedented step against a private university.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but in a statement issued by lawyers for Mr. McCormick and his accuser, they said they had “resolved all of the disputes between them … to their mutual satisfaction.” Mr. McCormick, his parents, his accuser, and her father all declined to comment.

For its part, Brown said in a statement that it had been informed today that “a private settlement” had been reached in the case. “The university is not a party to the settlement,” the statement said, “and did not participate in any settlement negotiations.” Brown reiterated that it had “acted appropriately with respect to both parties,” and stood ready to demonstrate that in court.

Mr. McCormick subsequently graduated from Bucknell University, according to the Associated Press. His accuser graduated from Brown last year.

Word of the settlement became public today, when the judge, John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Providence, R.I., dismissed the case.

The Chronicle has a policy of not naming alleged victims of sexual assault; to protect the identity of the female student The Chronicle is also not identifying her father.

Correction (4:13 p.m.): As several commenters have pointed out, Brown does not offer athletic scholarships, so the original post’s reference to Mr. McCormick’s receiving a wrestling scholarship was an error. The post has been updated to reflect this correction. Also, since the post’s original publication, Brown has issued a statement about the settlement. It has been added to this post.

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  • Think68

    People can be falsely accused of many things.  The world is full of diabolical kinds of individuals.  

  • jthelin

    Correction:As with all members of the Ivy League,  Brown University does NOT offer athletic scholarships or athletic grants in aid.  Mr. McCormick did not receive a wrestling scholarship.  Any scholarship he received was based on financial need, as with all students at Brown.

  • 99911292

    But the Chronicle has no hesitation about printing the accused’s name? Sweet.

  • jlowery

    The accused student elected to sue as a named individual, rather than as a John Doe as others, have done so his name is part of the public record.

  • CU_Alum

    I was about to make the same point.  Mr. McCormick may have had a scholarship and he may have been on the wrestling team, but the former did not arise from the latter.

  • CU_Alum

    But the accuser was named as a defendant in the lawsuit.  Presumably her name is part of the public record as well.

  • 11227291

    Good example of what is so often done – jumping without suffficient proof from ‘accusation’ to ‘verdict.’ And acting as if ‘verdict’ is true.

  • 11284814

    @Jlowery,

    Because the defendants’ names are also part of the public record, that doesn’t distinguish the cases. I can understand a general policy of protecting the victims of crimes, especially of sexual violence, but here the plaintiff’s complaint is that he’s been falsely accused and there was no crime. That complaint is apparently substantial enough so that the case survived through discovery that Brown vigorously opposed. Under these circumstances, it’s at least possible that the Chronicle’s policy is furthering a false accusation and shielding a defamer.

  • nyrigamdvacail

    It is quite easy to determine all names of the defendants by searching William R. McCormick III vs. Brown University on Google.  I just found the entire case.

  • blesstayo

    Happy endings in this case, BUT can money always buy you happiness???

    Still thinking about FALSE-POSITIVE and FALSE-NEGATIVE accusations, even though I will never end up in law schoool.

  • fragtown

    The same is true of the accuser. The press just chooses not to repeat that name. 

  • sxmcp

    “The Chronicle has a policy of not naming alleged victims of sexual assault; to protect the identity of the female student The Chronicle is also not identifying her father.”

    But like all media outlets, you will publish the name of an accused rapist … gotcha.

    It’s one thing if you’re Kobe Bryant, but this publishing double standard really needs to end.

  • cronicao

    “The Chronicle has a policy of not naming alleged victims of sexual assault; to protect the identity of the female student The Chronicle is also not identifying her father”

    But apparently The Chronicle has no qualms about naming the victims of wrongful accusations, which is a blatant instance of a double standard.

  • bigfig

    There’s an enormously sexist assumption, a ’70s assumption, that women never lie about sex and that men are sexual predators. In this case, the Chronicle’s policy is one that might have been enlightened 40 years ago, but one that is archaic.

    The victim here, in the eyes of the law, is the man.  Yet the perpetrator’s name, the woman, is protected. 

    Perhaps the editorial board will discuss their policy.  Likely not, as political correctness frightens people away from deep thought.

    And, if one wants, all it takes are a few Google clicks to find the name of the wealthy alumnus, his daughter, his investment firm….just click McCormick and Brown University. It’s all public record, 

  • jwperry

    Accusations by students and helicopter parents strike all too close to home for me. And the Chronicle just picks up on things, just like the popular media, be it accurate or not. So much for objectivity and the academic way.

  • Caleb50

    It does seem like an odd policy.

  • http://twitter.com/kbp69 kbp

    In this case it seems more like they
    are withholding the name of the complainant of an alleged sexual assault, never
    reported as a crime.

  • newsoffice

    If “No criminal charges were ever filed against him, and no rape allegations were reported to the police” then why was the student pressured into leaving Brown? Allegations don’t mean any crime occured. So the alleged victim gets her Brown degree and he gets a Bucknell degree… It appears that evidence that a crime was commited wasn’t very strong since no criminal action of any kind was taken. That the judge ruled that Brown had to disclose the amount of money the accuser’s father has donated — tells you all you need to know about what the judge thought of the case….

    -A woman’s perspective

  • pianiste

    Might the Chronicle explain the reason–other than, “Well, everybody else withholds the name”–its policy?

    It seems to be an instance, near the fair end of the same continuum that says that an actual rape victim is somehow at fault and therefore must (in some societies) be ostracized, forced to marry her attacker, or even killed herself?

    We know that in America, sexual assaults on women by men are all too commonplace, that it happens to all kinds of women in all kinds of circumstances, and that drunken, drugged or non-violently coerced consent does not mitigate their nature as sexual assaults. Why, then, perpetuate the implication that a woman who is the victim of a sexual assault, or says that to the authorities that she is, is somehow dirtied, or in disgrace enough to be protected from having her name mentioned in public accounts of the accusation?

  • blesstayo

    I hope the wealthy Alumnus helped paid for the settlement of the false allegation!!! –the power of donations at work here???

  • Guest

    Does the Chronicle have a policy of protecting false accusations as well?  Apparently so.  Or protecting victims of slander and/or blackmail?  Apparently not.

  • William Graves

    Comité de salut public:  Citizen Maximilien Robespierre found to be alive and well, and hanging out at Brown University.

  • orbicularioculi

    It’s possible that at least 40% of accusations of rape and date rape are false. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Welker/1157592320 Brian Welker

    The Chronicle has it backwards. It names the victim, Mr. McCormick, and protects the perjurer.

    Hopefully, in the interests of justice, the false accuser will be named, shamed and punished in the court of public opinion.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Kelly-Walters/100000131466359 Kelly Walters

    If no charges were filed, and nothing was ever reported to the police, why is the identity of the ‘victim” still protected?  She doesn’t sound like much of a victim to me. 

  • Oxbay

    If there was no sexual assault there was no sexual assault victim. If there were no charges filed with the police any other “charge” is bogus. You claim “The Chronicle has a policy of not naming alleged victims of sexual assault; to protect the identity of the female student The Chronicle is also not identifying her father.” These false charges will be associated with this man for the rest of his life. Yet the woman who lied about him gets a free pass. You, The Chronicle, don’t mind ruining his life yet you persist in defending the woman who lied about him. What if she tells a similar lie about someone else? Don’t her future male acquaintances deserve to know who they are dealing with?

  • kalle_kanin

    The Chronicle: Protecting politically correct perpetrators at all costs. Why am I not surprised at that sort of policy coming from a source that covers what’s laughably referred to as higher education in America?

  • http://www.facebook.com/Happyfeet.Hates.Socialisms Happyfeet Hates Socialisms

    Marcella E. Dresdale is her name, the girl what lied and lied and put this guy through an unimaginable hell

  • http://www.facebook.com/Happyfeet.Hates.Socialisms Happyfeet Hates Socialisms
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Welker/1157592320 Brian Welker
  • kryon77

    It might be fun to lodge charges of rape or other sexual misconduct against an editor of Chronicle of Higher Education.  Even if the charges are false, and even in the absence of a criminal complaint, the accuser will be protected by a cloak on anonymity, while the editor’s name will be damaged forever.

    So it will be a good result for all.

    The accuser’s name is Marcella Dresdale, BTW.  Privileged daughter of private equity guy Richard Dresdale.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UNZU74NIXQBSAAC5PR2B36VMWM Edward

    Which of course has nothing to do with daddy running a $2.1 billion dollar investment corporation.

  • rightactions

    Females have been lying about sex and falsely accusing honourable men of rape since the ancient days of Potiphar’s wife (at least).  And journalists have been occulting the name of the female false accuser for just as long.

  • choirboy626

    The Chronicle may have a misguided female-accusers-are-always-telling-the-truth policy which allows them the sanctimony of protecting the identity of the fabulist whose family apparently paid to have the engine of student discipline grind up an innocent young man’s future, but in this case the young man is the actual victim; their sanctimony moves into hypocrisy in that they have named the true victim repeatedly. It’s a shame Brown won’t be forced to acknowledge the institutional rule-bending Marcella Dresdales’ father apparently bought her. Make one wonder what else he’s bought.

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