The Yale University basketball captain expelled after a university panel found he’d had sex with a fellow student without her consent has filed a lawsuit against the school claiming he was unfairly used as a “poster boy for tough enforcement” in the wake of national attention against Yale’s handling of sexual assault.
Jack Montague’s civil lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the US district court for Connecticut, claims that the female involved – referred to by the pseudonym “Jane Roe” – was “misled” into filing a formal complaint of sexual misconduct against him.
In February Montague, then 22, was dismissed from Yale, after a female student filed a complaint in December 2015 saying that he had had sex with her without her consent. A university-wide committee upheld the complaint and recommended Montague’s dismissal.
Montague’s departure from Yale kicked off weeks of unrest at the school over whether the basketball team – which had just won the Ivy League championship and reached the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1962 – was supporting their team-mate at the expense of female students on campus.
The lawsuit outlines the complaint made against Montague by the female student, which says that after a party on 18 October 2014 at Montague’s house, the pair engaged in consensual sexual activity in Montague’s bedroom. Montague then “got on top of Roe in order to engage in sexual intercourse”. Roe, according to the documents, says that she “put her hands up, pressed them against the front of Mr Montague’s shoulders and pushed him, but not very forcefully” and told him: “No, I said I wanted to hook up but not have sex.”
According to the documents, Roe said Montague behaved as if he had not heard her and proceeded to have sexual intercourse with her. Montague denies that Roe told him she wanted to “hook up but not have sex” and that she pushed against his shoulders, saying he believed the sex was consensual.
After the incident, Roe spoke to deputy Title IX coordinator Angela Gleason – named as a defendant in Montague’s suit, along with senior deputy Title IX coordinator Jason Killheffer and the university itself – who handles complaints of discrimination, including gender and sexual assault.
Montague’s lawsuit says that after an initial discussion, where Roe said she wanted to make an anonymous informal complaint against Montague and requested he receive training in consent, Gleason told her that was not possible because of a past incident for which Montague had already received training.
That incident was from Montague’s last day of freshman year, when a graduating female senior said Montague rolled up a used paper plate from a pizza restaurant and “shoved it down [her] shirt between her breasts”, according to the lawsuit. A university-wide committee ruled that it was an incident of sexual harassment, placed Montague on probation for four terms and required him to undergo sexual harassment and gender sensitivity training.
Montague’s lawsuit says Gleason caused Roe to believe the past incident was also sexual assault, “misleading” her into filing a formal complaint against him.
Roe later told the university committee that upon learning Montague had already been disciplined for an incident, “[her] perspective broadened … as [she] began to think about the other people on this campus and how [her] choosing to remain silent on this matter could harm them”, according to the lawsuit.
Montague announced his intention to sue Yale back in March, when his lawyer Max Stern said Montague was used as a “whipping boy” for Yale’s past failings over the handling of sexual assault incidents.
In 2013, the US Department of Education fined the school $165,000 for underreporting sexual assaults a decade earlier. Yale has the highest number of reported sexual assaults of all the Ivy League universities, according to a campus climate survey released in September
“[Yale] seized the opportunity to make an example of him because he was one of the most prominent male figures on campus,” the lawsuit reads.
A statement released by Montague’s lawyers and his PR rep added: “Expelling Mr Montague – as rare a sanction as that was for Yale – served the desired end: dramatic proof that the University is able and willing to severely punish male students, even the captain of Yale’s basketball team, when they ‘victimize’ female students on Yale’s campus.”
Montague was due to graduate in May this year. “His promising future crumbled into dust,” reads the lawsuit. The lawsuit calls for Montague to be reinstalled as a Yale student, the incident to be expunged from his student records and transcript and requests unspecified damages.
A statement from Yale, provided by spokesman Thomas Conroy, said: “The lawsuit is factually inaccurate and legally baseless, and Yale will offer a vigorous defense.” Conroy noted that only about one in 10 incidents of sexual misconduct hearings at the university end in expulsion.
