Recent press accounts telling the story of how Clemson University cleared the record of and compensated a student wrongly accused of sexually assaulting another student also report the student's winning a $5.3 million defamation lawsuit against his wrongful accuser. Clemson University had suspended the wrongly accused student for a year but, in a confidential settlement with the student, did what it could to make its alleged due process and Title IX violations good. The account of the accused student's $5.3 million defamation award against his accuser, one of the largest verdicts ever for a wrongly accused student, teaches other lessons from the whole sad and sordid story. False accusations of sexual assault carry enormous social and reputational impacts. The $5.3 million award against the accuser and another lying witness illustrates the cost to the wrongly accused student. If you face false accusations of sexual or other misconduct at your college or university, get a skilled and experienced college misconduct defense attorney-advisor to help you need to defend and defeat those allegations. Retain national Title IX attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm's college misconduct defense team now.

Title IX to the Rescue

Fortunately, Title IX procedural protections and due process laws enable the wrongly accused to hold liars accountable and, moreover, hold accountable the schools that inappropriately favor liars with biased proceedings. Title IX and associated college and university policies prohibit false accusations and other misuse and abuse of Title IX misconduct proceedings. Yes, Title IX holds sexual wrongdoers accountable. But Title IX and school policies also hold accountable those who wrongly accuse innocent students of sexual misconduct. Due process laws also give the wrongly accused student a remedy when a college or university, especially public schools but in many cases private schools, too, don't give the accused student a fair hearing. Those laws are how and why the Clemson University student in the above story was able to get his school record cleared, even though it took far longer than it should have.

Liars Beware of Defamation Liability

Yet civil tort laws, specifically for claims of defamation, can further hold the lying accuser accountable. False accusations within a Title IX proceeding typically have some immunity. But spreading lies around campus, as the wrongful accuser and a lying witness in the above Clemson University matter did, according to the civil jury, gets no immunity. The wrongly accused student may or may not collect on the $5.3 million defamation award. Winning a verdict is one thing while collecting on it is another. Yet the principle of the matter can be just as important, in this case, fully clearing the accused student's record and restoring the student's reputation.

National college misconduct defense attorney-advisor Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm has successfully defended hundreds of college and university students nationwide against false, unfair, and exaggerated misconduct charges. Attorney-Advisor Lento and the Lento Law Firm's college misconduct defense team are available nationwide for your aggressive and effective defense. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now.