The Dept. of Education's Top Civil Rights Officer Is Really Very Sorry She Said 90 Percent of Campus Rape Accusations Were Not Rape

Life comes at you fast. For me, for you, and for Candice Jackson, deputy assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights. On Wednesday, Jackson was quoted in The New York Times claiming that “90 percent” of rape accusations made on college campuses were not actually rape.

Instead, they “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right,’” she explained.

Jackson is in charge of the office that enforces Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex- and gender-based discrimination in education—including rape and sexual assault—and so it’s really pretty significant that she appears to think that 90 percent of rape claims made on college campuses are not actually rape but are instead a revenge plot or regretted sex.

Perhaps realizing this, she issued an apology:

As a survivor of rape myself, I would never seek to diminish anyone’s experience. My words in the New York Times poorly characterized the conversations I’ve had with countless groups of advocates… All sexual harassment and sexual assault must be taken seriously—which has always been my position and will always be the position of this Department.

This is airtight. Jackson takes all accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault seriously by using her platform in national publications to make flippant and entirely unsourced comments that diminish the credibility of rape victims.

In unrelated and entirely coincidental news, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will be meeting with men’s rights activists later today for a discussion about campus rape. I wonder what they’ll talk about.