Nearly three years after she was raped, Leah Francis still deals with the trauma of the assault.
“I think the biggest thing is restoring trust in the world and in other people because my trust was breached so dramatically,” the 24-year-old told the Empire by phone last week. “Believing that you never know what anybody is going to do and it’s going to be bad is something I’m still trying to shake. It’s gotten better, but I still feel like that was an experience that scarred me.”
Now, she’s trying to crowdsource funds for therapy costs after turning down money she claims Stanford University offered in exchange for her silence.
Francis, a Stanford University grad, said she was raped on Jan. 1, 2014, in her hometown of Juneau by an ex-boyfriend and fellow Stanford student. Local authorities didn’t file charges in the case, but Francis and her assailant went through Stanford’s adjudication process, which Francis described as a “mini court trial within the university.”
[Juneau DA: No charges in Stanford rape case]
In April 2014, Stanford found Francis’ assailant responsible for sexually assaulting her. The school issued sanctions against him, but he was never expelled.
Although expulsion had always been “a possible outcome” for sexual assault, it only became “the expected outcome” in October 2015, said Stanford spokesperson Lisa Lapin in an email to the Empire Wednesday. Stanford’s current student conduct guidelines state, “Expulsion is the expected sanction following a finding of sexual assault.”
Francis filed a complaint against Stanford with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in December 2014. OCR is responsible for investigating violations of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding.
[Stanford denies rape survivor’s appeal]
Francis’ complaint is one of several filed against Stanford. An OCR investigation into possible Title IV violations is a multi-year process. Francis said she’s supposed to be interviewed by OCR in the next few weeks. Lapin said OCR staff has communicated with the university by phone and plans to come to campus next month.
“We have been fully cooperating with OCR for 18 months and will continue to do so,” Lapin stated.
This past fall, Francis claims Stanford reached out to her through her lawyers with an offer of $60,000 for mental health counseling.
“At first, I kind of thought it was a good faith effort to promote a better relationship with me as an alumni,” Francis said. “They weren’t originally asking for anything.”
She said she needed the money and wanted to accept it.
“There’s a lot I could do with that money that would be helpful. I have expenses from therapy, but there are other expenses that you incur when you have mental health problems, like just not being the best at holding down a job or feeling like life is more challenging than it was before. I could’ve used the money for living costs and for therapy,” Francis said.
But, she said, Stanford’s money was only available if she removed her complaint with OCR. She said no.
“I’m not going to be swayed by the university’s money and power,” she said. “I filed a complaint with OCR with the hopes that Stanford would get the help they need to change.”
Francis turned to GoFundMe and started a fundraising campaign on Dec. 7 to help pay for therapy she needs stemming from the 2014 sexual assault. As of Wednesday afternoon, it’s raised about $6,100 of its $11,000 goal, which Francis said totals about two years of out-of-pocket costs for therapy.
“I am pledging to keep my complaint open no matter how much money Stanford offers me. Stanford’s strategy appears to be to dangle badly needed money for mental health services in front of survivors in exchange for secrecy,” the fundraising page says.
Buzzfeed News reported Stanford offered money to another woman — who requested anonymity — on the condition that she withdraw her Title IX complaint. Like Francis, the woman turned down the money, Buzzfeed News reported.
Stanford denies it tried to silence Francis or anybody else.
“The university has nothing to hide about its handling of these cases,” according to a statement Stanford issued on Dec. 8.
The university contends the recent allegations “fundamentally misrepresent” what occurred in discussions between Stanford and complainants in Title IX cases.
“Stanford does not have and has never had the intention of curtailing any federal Title IX investigation,” the statement said.
Francis said Stanford reached out to her lawyers about the $60,000. The university’s statement claims it was the other way around.
“What Stanford has done in settlement discussions is respond to demands from lawyers that Stanford pay money to their clients or be faced with costly and time-consuming litigation. Opposing lawyers initiated these discussions,” the statement said. “When Stanford considers a financial settlement in response to a demand from a lawyer threatening a lawsuit, the university requires that the party receiving the money withdraw any personal claims under which they could receive more money for the same matter — in this case, through the OCR process.”
Permanently changed
Francis’s sexual assault was heavily publicized in 2014 after she wrote a campus-wide email in June 2014 criticizing Stanford’s handling of her case. It sparked campus rallies and the hashtag #standwithleah.
The Empire generally does not name victims of sexual assault, but is in this case as Francis has been outspoken about the rape and events that happened as a result of it.
“It felt good to build a network of people who had had similar experiences but took different routes to healing, and to know that other people go through similar things even though it’s not necessarily talked about,” she said.
Ever since the rape, Francis has been in therapy for symptoms of PTSD including panic attacks, anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares and depression. She used to see someone as much as three times a week.
“I did a type of therapy called exposure therapy where you listen to a recording of yourself telling the story in the first-person every day, and it’s pretty harrowing at first. It’s just incredibly sad to hear your own voice and to hear the emotion in your voice or the lack of it,” she said.
She was also tasked with doing things that scared her.
“A lot of people who have PTSD start avoiding more and more of life and their world can really shrink, and that was the case with me. I was avoiding other people, crowds, just all kinds of things that I used to enjoy,” Francis explained. “The idea is that you’re stuck on one page when you have PTSD and your mind just keeps flipping back to that page when you least expect it. This therapy helps you read the whole book and then put it down and then move on.”
Francis said the exposure therapy, which lasted five months, helped her a lot. She no longer has nightmares, but she still experiences other symptoms of PTSD.
Since graduating from Stanford in winter 2015 — her original academic plan, prior to being sexually assaulted, was to graduate in spring 2014 — Francis has held various jobs, like working in a coffee shop and being an academic coach. She lives in California near Stanford and periodically visits Juneau.
She was a creative writing major at Stanford, but isn’t working on any specific projects right now.
“I’m putting my full energy into healing and the tasks of becoming a capable young adult,” Francis said.
Being sexually assaulted has permanently changed Francis, but she’s hopeful for the future.
“I think it just becomes part of who you are. There are positive things that have come about because of this assault — people that I’ve met that I care about now, relationships that I have that I didn’t have before, the ability to empathize with people based on the experience,” she said.
“It’s been terrible and I wish it hadn’t happen, but I’m fine. I’m incorporating it into who I am, but I’m not going to be the same. People have told me I’m really different and that’s something I have to just accept.”
Any money she raises beyond the GoFundMe goal of $11,000 will go to the YWCA and to Juneau’s AWARE, which helps women in rape and abuse emergencies.
Francis plans to take down the fundraising page on Jan. 1 — the three-year anniversary of when she was raped.
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
