Dr. Nicole Bedera

And I'll agree that I think cross-examination, it's a particular dagger to the heart because there is so much research that cross-examination is ineffective in sexual assault cases.

It's ineffective if the thing you want is the truth.

Because essentially what it does is it triggers survivors intentionally.

to make it difficult for them to speak fully and freely the way that they would if they were answering questions in a trauma-informed setting.

This is something that a lot of the general public doesn't know.

There is no cross-examination requirement in the criminal justice system for sexual assault survivors.

A lot of survivors choose to go on the stand or a prosecutor will say, I don't think the case is strong enough unless you take the stand.

But there are sexual assault cases that work their way through the criminal justice system where the survivor never, ever submits to cross-examination.

This is something unique to educational institutions, but we see it most on college campuses.

Cross-examination was banned under the Obama administration's approach.

And one of the reasons that it came back is because men's rights activists and their allies wanted to traumatize survivors and punish them for coming forward.

One of the things that I heard from the perpetrators I interviewed is that they enjoyed the hearing process.

They found it fun and entertaining because cross-examination allowed them to exert dominance over their victims and to humiliate them publicly.

Universities very, very often ended up siding with the perpetrator and

And so they got to humiliate the victims.

They got to get this formal support on their side from this institution and feel so valuable.

It's another one of those moments where I feel like we're all worried about is the Title IX process too hard on perpetrators?

And there's no evidence it's hard on them at all.

It's built to cater to them in a really specific way.

The other thing is that we are seeing this weird disparity where the survivor has to attend the hearing for disciplinary proceedings for a perpetrator who is not required to be there.