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Education Department Leaders Blasted over Sexual Assault Comments

HeadlineJul 14, 2017

In Washington, D.C., the Education Department’s top civil rights official apologized Thursday after making false claims about sexual assault on college campuses. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candice Jackson’s apology came after she told The New York Times, “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 9 investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.’” Jackson made the remarks as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos met with so-called “men’s rights activists” who oppose Obama-era rules cracking down on campus rape. Survivors of sexual assault and their supporters said Thursday the Education Department was failing to take sex crimes seriously. Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women’s Law Center told the AP, “What’s extremely important now is that they do the hard work to counter those sorts of rape myths. They need to explicitly reject them.”

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