2017: Fransico Sousa, wrongfully accused, received settlement

Gary Warth with the San Diego Union Tribune reports the settlement between San Diego State University and Francisco Sousa.

….. Francisco Sousa was a 20-year-old foreign exchange student from Portugal when he was arrested by SDSU police Dec. 9, 2014, and charged with sexually assaulting and imprisoning a woman near campus. ….

Sousa denied the accusations and the charges were dropped in January 2015, but the school would not lift the suspension. He sued SDSU that April to demand information about the accusation against him, ….

The school lifted the suspension against him that September, and Sousa later sued for monetary damages and to seek an apology from SDSU for sending a campus-wide e-mail announcing his arrest.

Besides the monetary award, the settlement changes the record of his arrest to a police detention, and the school has agreed to additional training for employees who investigate sexual assault claims.

Specifically, the settlement states three employees would be sent to a Civil Rights Investigator Training and Certification course or a similar training program.

Another settlement agreement refers to the Clery Act, a federal law that relates to crime reporting, security and the prevention of and response to sexual assaults at publicly funded colleges and universities. The settlement will result in the school’s Clery director and campus police participating in a webinar about “timely warning notices and immediate notifications.” …..

“My main objective was to vindicate my name.” …

Sousa had worried that the arrest and suspension would prevent him from getting a job, which was one of the reasons why he continued to fight the school to clear his name.

Lombardo said he had asked campus police to change Sousa’s arrest record to a detention, which iscommon after charges are dropped, but they refused. …..

The entire article can be read at San Diego Union Tribune

 

 

Helpline US Department of State

1-866-283-9090 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) The Department of State activated the helpline to ensure the health and safety of its exchange participants. Students have a right to be treated fairly and to report abuse without retaliation or threat of program cancellation. (Dep of State)

Blind trust in exchange organisations

You would not send your child to a house at the end of your street if you knew nothing about the person living there. Yet on the strength of a glossy brochure, the payment in some cases of vast sums of money, and an assumption that someone else has asked the right questions, we send our children thousands of miles across the world to stay with strangers.

The companies, organisations and individuals that abuse this blind trust cannot be allowed to continue to profit from it and we must all take responsibility for the care and safety of our young people. (Chris Gould)