Waco Tribune Herald
Garland's Email Shows Baylor Culture of Victim-Blaming, Title IX Plaintiffs Say
Then-Baylor University interim President David Garland cited Scripture while writing that victims of sexual assault “seem willingly to make themselves victims” in a 2016 email to a senior administrator, according to documents filed late Wednesday in a Title IX lawsuit against the university. Garland sent the message to Vice President for Student Life Kevin Jackson after he said he listened to a radio interview with Sarah Hepola, an acclaimed writer and the author of “Blackout: Remembering Things I Drank to Forget,” a book chronicling her alcoholism while in college. Hepola spoke to Baylor students in February. He then cited verses in the New Testament book of Romans that refer to God’s wrath on those who commit sexual sin. The plaintiffs, 10 former Baylor students who allege they were sexually assaulted, argue it is “telling and central” to their case that Garland “would conclude that these young women made themselves willing victims of sexual assault” and “would then immediately find relevance in ‘God’s wrath’ upon them in connection with their ‘sinful desires,’ ‘shameful lusts’ and ‘unnatural’ sexual relations,” the motion filed Wednesday states.