Opinion ID: 6320161
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Doe’s 2015 Claim of Sexual Assault

Text: Saifullah Khan, a citizen of Afghanistan, was born in a refugee camp in Pakistan, to which country his family had fled after having their lives threatened by the Taliban. When Khan was sixteen, his family settled in the United Arab Emirates, and it was from there that Khan applied for and received acceptance to Yale’s undergraduate class of 2016. In addition to providing Khan with the financial assistance necessary for him to attend Yale, the university helped Khan receive admission to (and financial support for attendance at) the Hotchkiss School, where he spent a preparatory year before entering Yale in the fall of 2012. On Halloween night in 2015, Khan and fellow Yale student Jane Doe separately attended an off-campus party hosted by one of the university’s “secret societies.” At some point, Khan and Doe left the party together to attend an on-campus event. When Doe began to feel unwell, she and Khan left the event and returned to Trumbull College, the Yale dormitory where both resided. Khan asserts that 5 after he dropped Doe off at her room and started to return to his own, Doe called him back and asked him to check on a friend. After Khan did so, he returned to Doe’s room where the two had consensual sex before falling asleep. The next morning, Doe told friends that Khan had raped her. That same day, however, when Doe sought contraceptive assistance at the university’s health center, she reported having engaged in consensual, unprotected sex. A few days later, when Doe publicly repeated her rape claim, she was directed to the Yale Women’s Center. There, a counselor (defendant David Post), assisted Doe in preparing a formal university complaint against Khan. Upon receipt of that complaint, a Yale deputy dean (defendant Joe Gordon) suspended Khan, ordering him to vacate his dormitory room and to leave campus. Soon thereafter, Yale began a disciplinary proceeding against Khan under the university’s Sexual Misconduct Policy. At and about the same time, the Yale Police Department opened an investigation into Doe’s sexual assault claim. This ultimately resulted in the State of Connecticut criminally charging Khan with sexual assault in the first, second, third, and fourth degrees. See Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 53a-70, -71, -72a, -73a. At Khan’s request, Yale agreed to stay its disciplinary proceedings pending the conclusion of his criminal case. 3 3 As then in effect, Yale’s Sexual Misconduct Policy, which we discuss infra at 1316, stated that university disciplinary proceedings should not be deferred pending criminal proceedings. See App’x at 79. But see Procedures of the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, Yale Univ. (eff. Sept. 10, 2021), 6