SIMCHA FISHER

Christendom College says it has offered an apology to rape victims and their families. “We have failed our students,” said President Timothy O’Donnell.

But some alumni say that the statement is too little, too late, and that O’Donnell should resign.

It was less than a week ago that Christendom College responded to our articles exposing gross mishandling of sexual assault and harassment. Christendom at that time claimed our articles contained “misleading information and serious inaccuracies.”

But yesterday, a spokesman for the college said, “I want to extend my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Fisher for giving these women a platform to share their voices with us.”

The college never clarified what was inaccurate or misleading in our articles. It said that the administration “has ordered a thorough review of their policies and resources for cases of sexual assault and harassment” and that the college “has issued an official apology to the victims and their families.”

The college’s entire January 24th statement is as follows:

“WE WILL DO BETTER,” CHRISTENDOM COLLEGE EXTENDS SUPPORT TO VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND HARASSMENT
College Executive Vice President Offers to Meet with Victims

Front Royal, VA (Jan. 24, 2018) – Following recent alumni accounts of administrative mishandling of sexual assault reporting at Christendom College, the administration has ordered a thorough review of their policies and resources for cases of sexual assault and harassment. The College has issued an official apology to the victims and their families, and has reaffirmed its commitment to ensure the people from whom its students are seeking assistance are equipped with training, resources, and the capacity to respond to a victim’s needs with compassion, knowledge, and the ability to help.

“We have failed some of our students,” said Dr. Timothy O’Donnell, Christendom College’s president. “I am grateful to each woman who has come forward with her story. We need to hear you and your experience. Disclosing abuse and its aftermath is painful and difficult, and it takes a tremendous amount of courage. To those students who have been harmed, I am deeply sorry. We will do better.”

Ken Ferguson, executive vice president of Christendom College, has offered to meet personally with each and every victim in the presence of a certified trauma counselor. Anyone who wishes to meet is welcome to bring her own support personnel as well.

“We invite these victims to come forward and be heard,” said Ferguson. “We value their insight on concrete ways we can make this campus as safe as possible for women. And we ask, if possible, for their forgiveness. I want to extend my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Fisher for giving these women a platform to share their voices with us.”

Additionally, the College has hired experts to review campus compliance with best practices in sexual assault and harassment. Christendom revised its protocols in recent years and is constantly reviewing these protocols to ensure they are effective when a student reports sexual assault or harassment.

“Since I arrived four years ago, I have thrown myself into improving campus life for the student body,” said Ferguson. “We recently established a new wellness initiative so that any student who needs these services has ready access to them. We’re expanding that initiative to include trauma counseling and support for Christendom students and alumni who have suffered sexual assault.”

Those seeking to meet are invited to reach out to Ken Ferguson at (540-636-2900) or by email at ken.ferguson@christendom.edu.

The statement  was originally only searchable through the Christendom website, and could only be found by using a direct link. It is now available on the site’s homepage.

Adele Chapline Smith, the first Christendom almuna and rape survivor to share her story with readers of this site, said she forgives O’Donnell and is grateful for the college’s stated intention to change. Smith said:

“From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank Christendom College and Mr. Ken Ferguson for an excellent first step in repairing the damage done to the women of Christendom and their families under the O’Donnell administration; it is both welcome and appreciated. I am disheartened that this was not their initial response, but I am open to further dialogue with the college and am eager to hear how the administration plans to implement these changes. I forgive Dr. Timothy O’Donnell for 25 years of negligence toward those women in the Christendom community who suffered sexual assaults.”

But Smith wants O’Donnell to resign for the good of the school:

“[W]hile I forgive him, as Catholics we know that true contrition involves amending one’s life – and forgiveness does not negate natural consequences. For the good of the school, for the good of the vision of Dr. Warren Carroll, and for the good of the generations of students that have walked across that graduation stage in the past — and will walk across it in the future — it is my firm belief that Dr. O’Donnell should step down from his position as President of the college, and that Christendom College should implement Title IX regulations to ensure a safe and transparent environment for all current and prospective students.”

Why now?

The college says it has already changed and will continue to change. It says it wants to hear from students so it can help them.

We ask: Why now? What’s different? Why is today different from last week? Why is today different from last year, or ten years ago?

Last year, Christendom billed itself as “Almost Heaven.” Today, Christendom is calling for a day of fasting for its sins.

The only thing that has changed is that two blog posts were published on the internet. A handful of young women had the courage to speak up and tell their painful stories in public. But their stories have been available to President O’Donnell for years.

Timothy O’Donnell has known about rapes for years

Today, the school is acting. New members of the administration pledge real reform. But Timothy O’Donnell already knew for years what the rest of the world knows today.

Long before the college apologized, O’Donnell knew that this anonymous student also says she was raped by a Christendom student; that he also got away with it; that he also was protected by Christendom professors. She says that Timothy O’Donnell knew and decided not to act.

The woman says in her letter, “The college knew about it. But REDACTED continued his education at the school his daddy helped found without any ramifications. The college allowed a sexual predator, a rapist, to walk the halls of that institution for 4 years without a single thing being done to halt his reign.”

O’Donnell received this letter in December of 2017. We have confirmed that it was addressed to O’Donnell and that it refers to Christendom.

Adele Smith and other critics denied entry to alumni group

The school said on Wednesday that it is interested in hearing from “each and every victim.” But Adele Smith, the survivor who forced the story into the public eye, has been denied entry into the official Alumni group on Facebook. She has received no explanation for the denial.

Her rapist, though, is a member. Other alumni have requested entry and have been accepted during the same time frame that Smith requested entry and was denied. Several alumni say they have been removed from the group without explanation after they shared Smith’s story.

Positive testimony welcome; critics silenced

Just days earlier, Tom McFadden, Vice President for Enrollment & Marketing, solicited stories from Christendom alumni on the official alumni group, which is moderated by Vince Christe, Assistant Director of Alumni and Donor Relations.

Jane Riccardi, an alumna of Christendom, then suggested in the group that former students collect positive stories into a file to promote the idea that Christendom is an unusually safe place that “promotes the dignity, inherent worth, freedom, and safety of all women on campus.” Riccardi said in an email that she “was hopeful to begin a constructive and helpful conversation.”

Shortly after stories began coming in, it became apparent to some alumni that the stories were not all positive.

“If someone unsympathetic gets hold of the link [to the page for testimonies], it’s all over,” said one alum.

“This is definitely a concern,” another agreed.

Riccardi responded, “Thank you for pointing this out. I’ve changed the privacy settings and will instead collect responses by email.”

Riccardi then collected the positive testimonies into a document called  A Letter about Christendom College Culture and emailed it to the Fishers, calling Christendom “[a] pocket of fresh air offering an oasis away from the sewage of the culture at large.”

As of Friday, January 19, the official alumni group included in its guidelines the rule: “[P]lease refrain from posting articles or engaging in discussions about topics that criticize . . . Christendom College.”

Several almuni have reported being thrown out of the Facebook group, apparently for violating this rule by discussing the articles detailing  Smith’s rape.

Christendom says it wants students to come forward and report sexual abuse, to tell their stories. Some alumni express deep skepticism that the same college that excluded unfavorable testimony from alumni one day will be open to hearing and acting on damaging testimony from students the next day.

More stories of rape are ahead

We are currently working on corroborating seven other stories of sexual assault of Christendom students, including students who are currently enrolled at Christendom. These reports were grossly mishandled by the administration that is still in office.

Title IX would require the college to collect and report data

In the North Virginia Daily, Executive Vice President Ken Ferguson said:

“[W]hen [Director of Student Affairs] Amanda [Graf] and I arrived on the campus we built and documented the current (policy) which Amanda and I believe meets the rigorous requirements of Title IX despite the fact that the college is one of the few colleges in the nation that doesn’t receive any federal money and is not under the auspices of Title IX.”

Alumni say they are grateful for Ferguson’s efforts, but cannot trust the school’s intentions until O’Donnell is held accountable for his failures.

Gassman said, “I hope [Wednesday’s apology is] sincere. Sadly I’m skeptical since the school went 25 years without opting into Title IX reporting despite numerous rape and assault allegations. Taking GI Bill funds during that time while insisting they take no federal funds takes real concentrated effort to avoid Title IX and its reporting provisions.”

According to the latest available tax returns, O’Donnell’s compensation from the college totals over $320,000.

O’Donnell considered the college helpless to punish likely rapists a mere seven years ago . Despite claims that the school voluntarily meets Title IX requirements, the school still does not collect or report incidents of sexual assault or harassment.

Positive: School no longer expels pregnant students while allowing fathers to stay

According to alumnus John Connolly on his Facebook page,

“Though supporters of the college assert that the college would never abuse its right to expel and that the failure to take action in the 2009 case [of Adele Smith] was a protection of fairness and justice, we must remember that the college for many years would expel women for the crime of getting pregnant out of wedlock. Fathers of these children were allowed to stay on campus, while the women were forced to pay back crushing student loans without a degree. This hypocrisy eventually was reformed… when the word started getting in the public eye.”

Several alumni note that the school no longer expels students who become pregnant, and indicate that it is one of many positive signs of change at the college.

Amanda Graf’s name consistently comes up among alumni and current students as a dedicated and tireless force for change.

Alumna Donna Provencher said, “Ken [Ferguson ] has come out swinging for the victims, and we’re grateful for his support.”

Smith said, “I applaud Mr. Ferguson’s new policies, and suggest the administration reach out to the Bishop of Arlington requesting His Excellency’s aid in reforming the campus culture, student life formation, and curriculum. I love Christendom College. Those who are standing up for victims also love Christendom College. I very much look forward to further dialogue with Mr. Ferguson about our next step forward. Christendom can and must become the gold standard among Catholic colleges when it comes to upholding the dignity of the human person and protecting victims of sexual violence — a place where graduates truly do go on to restore all things in Christ.”

There are good things about Christendom, current and former students say. Dozens of letters of support continue to arrive in our inbox, expressing deep love for the school and a trust in the administration’s desire to change.

We believe women, and we that means we believe the many, many women who have good things to say about their experience at Christendom. We have read every one of their letters, and there were many.

But their good experience does not negate the horrific experience of the victims, including Adele Smith, the anonymous blogger, the anonymous women in our second story, and the seven others whose stories we continue to research.  O’Donnell’s continued presence, and his continued refusal to take direct responsibility, is an insult to all of them.

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Image: the front of a flyer for Christendom College. The flip side allows that they “cannot exactly guarantee Heaven upon graduation from Christendom College,” but touts their impressive stats: “only 1 known apostate” among graduates, and “only 1 known divorce.”

The flyer is  echoed by sentiments in this article by Tom McFadden in Seton Magazine. McFadden has worked for Christendom since the year 2ooo. Photos used with permission.

Timothy O’Donnell, president of Christendom College, has just posted this official response to our recent  two posts. Tom McFadden, VP for enrollment, has verified that it was written and posted by the college, and that the same statement will be posted on the Christendom homepage on Thursday, January 17.

We are glad the school took the trouble to respond. We are nowhere near done with this story. 

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OFFICIAL RESPONSE FROM CHRISTENDOM

A recent blog, which contains misleading information and serious inaccuracies, was posted about Christendom College. Despite those inaccuracies, the hearts and prayers of our entire Christendom College community go out to all involved in the incidents described and to anyone who may be a victim of sexual harassment or assault.

We would like to apologize to any of those in our community who feel they were not properly responded to concerning an alleged sexual harassment and assault.  Christendom College will continue to do everything it can to understand how to best respond to these very difficult and tragic situations. In retrospect, the College may not have served these victims as well as we could have, and for this hurt we are truly sorry for any additional pain that this may have caused.

Please be assured that Christendom College is committed to maintaining an academic environment free of discrimination and all forms of coercion that impede the academic freedom, security, or well-being of any member of the community.

As a campus dedicated to following the teachings of the Catholic Church, we strive to foster an environment where every student feels safe and respected and where the dignity of the human person is upheld and honored. Sexual harassment and assault is inimical to such an environment. As part of this commitment, the College undertakes to educate the student body about sexual harassment and assault.
•       We have a new sexual harassment and assault policy published in the Student Handbook with instructions on how to report sexual harassment and assault and how to receive resources for recovery (page 29 of the student handbook).
•       New student orientation includes a session that covers sexual harassment and assault, reporting, and on-campus resources for support.
•       RAs are now trained in responding to and reporting sexual harassment or assault.
•       Our on-campus nurse and counselor are available at no cost and can help with trauma and recovery.
•       We now have a formal grievance policy students can use to make a complaint against any campus community member who is not covered by the student policy (e.g. faculty, staff, etc.). We can use this process to address inappropriate comments or unreasonable behavior that makes students feel uncomfortable.
•       A female Residence Life staff member now lives in the women’s residence halls. This gives women more of an opportunity to share a concern or incident with a staff member they trust. A male Residence Life staff member also lives on campus to assist the men.
•       We now offer both a men and women’s monthly formation series that addresses mental health, healthy relationships, and other gender-specific topics.

If some believe that our efforts and policies have failed to bring justice to their particular situations, please understand that despite being fallen human beings, the faculty and staff do their very best every day to provide a just and safe environment.

Respect and honor for women was at the heart Christ’s mission and therefore it is at the heart of the mission of Christendom College. We are committed in our policies, our procedures, and in our on-campus culture to uphold and promote the dignity of women and men.

We will continue to do so in fidelity to our mission: to restore all things in Christ.

Dr. Timothy T. O’Donnell
President
Christendom College

In Part I of this article, Adele Smith related how she was raped by a fellow student from Christendom College, but the school failed to acknowledge the rape or punish the student for it, imposing only minor sanctions for harassing her after the rape.  Smith claims the school’s sheltered, highly structured campus culture actually facilitates sexual assault — and that the administration works harder to protect its reputation than it does to protect its students.

Smith is not the only female student who makes this charge.

This has happened before

Adele Smith mentioned that there was nothing to prevent a rape like hers from happening again at Christendom. In fact, it had already happened, more than once.

A female student, a friend and classmate of Adele Smith’s older brother, says that her boyfriend raped her just off campus, too, in January of 2005. The woman has told very few people about the assault, and she does not wish to use her name.

She didn’t even know to use the word “rape” to describe what happened to her, until the moment she heard that yet another friend, a former Christendom student, had also been raped by yet another Christendom male student just off campus.

“I honestly thought it was just me,” she said. “Then I started hearing more and more stories, and I realized it was happening to a lot of people.”

“That’s Christendom culture.”

She believes if she told anyone on campus she had been raped, she would have been blamed, and would have heard, “What were you doing? What were you wearing?”

“That’s Christendom culture. We had hours and hours and hours of talks on modesty, dress code, how to act, how to keep boys chaste, all of those things,” she said. “The guys were just told to wear ties to Mass. I didn’t realize at the time there was any imbalance. What a girl wore and how she carried herself or what she said  . . . she was responsible for both her actions and men’s.”

She describes the PDA policy in the same way as Smith did.

“It was almost like you’d see in a prison: No touching! Even just to sit next to a person, you had to go off campus. Which made it easier to go further,” she said.

Her boyfriend was a Catholic young man she had met that year at Christendom. He wanted to take her out after they got back from Christmas break, and she was excited at the prospect of a “real date” off campus.

Dressing for the evening was “above and beyond your average giggling and getting ready for a date,” she said. She remembers going to her RA twice to check her outfit, to make sure it was not only nice, but “classy and feminine, modest and dignified, all that good stuff.”

“He was the man.”

She was disappointed when her boyfriend told her their date would consist of simply sitting in his car and watching a movie on his laptop.

“He was the man. He planned the date, he decided things, and I went with him,” she said.

They drove out to a local park in Front Royal. She doesn’t know where they went. It was dark. She says it seems crazy now, but she didn’t feel she had the right to question him.

He suggested they move to the back seat where there was more room. She became alarmed, because “that’s what people do in movies,” but told herself that, while she was short, he was tall, and he probably just needed more leg room.

She says she didn’t mind him getting physically affectionate at first, but as he persisted, she became uncomfortable, and told him several times to stop.

“He had me give him a blow job,” she said. “Forcibly, he held me there. It can’t have been very good, because I had no idea what I was doing.”

She told him she didn’t want to do it, but “that didn’t matter.” He was very strong. She pulled away several times.

“I didn’t hit him or anything. I couldn’t put what was happening together with what should be happening. It was just too unreal,” she said.

He then penetrated her with his fingers. She told him “No,” and pushed him away several times, but again, “That didn’t matter. ” She was in “complete shock.”

About ten minutes later, he abruptly told her, “We can’t keep going like this.” He then said he was afraid she might get pregnant, and that they needed to break up.  He immediately drove her back to campus.

Some of her friends were watching a movie in the gym, and she blindly went and sat with them.  One friend later told her that he could see there was something wrong, but he thought she had just had a bad night.

“I hoped he would forgive me.”

She later told her friends she and her boyfriend had broken up, but never said why. She blamed herself for not being a good enough girlfriend. “Was I not dressed modestly enough?” she asked herself.

After the rape, she saw herself as “a complete failure, as a Catholic, as a woman, as a horrible girlfriend who had caused him to sin.” She repeatedly apologized to him, hoping he would “forgive her” and maybe take her back as his girlfriend.

“That makes me want to barf now,” she said.

A source close to Christendom says that people send their children to Christendom because “they’ve raised them in a bubble and they want that bubble to continue.”  She said mothers of students have told her they don’t want to talk to their children about consent, because it might make them curious about sexual matters. She says that, in recent years, the male students have been given more talks and education about how to treat female students with respect and dignity, but the word “consent” is not used.

“Is there a poster hanging up in a common area, telling you what to do if you’ve been sexually assaulted? No. I’d bet my right arm on it,” this source said.

“Didn’t something like that happen to you?”

The young woman who was assaulted that night in 2005 revealed small portions of her story to a friend, who suspected that what she was describing was rape. The story was passed among friends, but it wasn’t until 2007 that the young woman acknowledged to herself that it was rape. The realization happened when another student told her she’d heard another story which sounded horribly familiar: A girl was parked with her boyfriend, a Christendom student, off-campus to watch a movie on a laptop, and he raped her. The male students was friends with the male student who perpetrated the first assault. The first woman’s friend asked her, “Didn’t something like that happen to you?”

The first young women immediately drove to the house of the woman who had just been assaulted, to talk to her about what had happened.

“This happened to me, and I didn’t say anything until literally right now,” she told her. “I don’t want to force you into something, but I don’t want you to make my mistake. I’m just now realizing this is a big problem.”

She persuaded the second young woman to go to the hospital and get a rape kit done. The second young woman also went to the police, but, because she didn’t have any bruises or cuts, they advised her that her case would not go anywhere.

“This is Front Royal; no judge is going to convict a rapist.”

An official whom the first woman describes as “the battered woman counsellor” told the second young woman, “I’ve seen a lot of these, and I can tell you right now it’s not going to go anywhere. This is Front Royal; no judge is going to convict a rapist, even with evidence.”

She was also told that, in Front Royal, a prosecutor will assume that a religious young woman such as herself is simply feeling guilty for having had sex, and is calling it “assault” to assuage her conscience. So the second young woman stopped pursuing a legal case.

According to the first young woman, all of Front Royal is “a notorious boy’s club.” She says a female employer once told her, “Basically, guys don’t have anything to worry about.”

The second young woman went to the Christendom administration with her complaint, according to the first young woman.

“She was confident it was going to be dealt with seriously and professionally,” she said. “I was less sure.”

Just looking for drama

Nothing ever came of the complaint. The Christendom student who assaulted the second young woman ended up transferring out, which was hailed as good news for the girls. The young woman who was raped in 2005 said that one professor told her the female students were making too much of it, “just looking for drama.”

She says sexual assault is “something we stick our heads in the sand about, as conservatives, as Catholics. ‘Don’t be a slut, and it won’t happen to you!’ But that’s not how it works.”

The ordeal has not damaged her faith, but it has changed her perspective.

“By the time I saw [the school] brushing things off, I had moved to a place where I could say, ‘No, that’s wrong. They’re not representative of the entire faith,’” she said.

She was able to separate their actions from Catholicism itself; but she was disillusioned with Christendom.

“A lot of their policies create an environment where stuff like this can happen, and especially where it can go unreported,” she said.

Perception is so important.

She says the school heavily promotes the idea that the campus is like a safe, happy family, that “[p]arents can send their homeschooled, sheltered, don’t-know-anything-about-the-world kids there, and they will be safe. Curfew’s at ten, everyone wears skirts, and it’s just perfect. The closest thing to having them at home.”

But current students and alumni say the school has a “boys will be boys” attitude which allows the male students to harass and grab at the women. If a young woman is raped or assaulted, the other students are ready to assume she did something wrong. Several students interviewed for this story made a distinction between “rape” and “date rape,” and only acknowledged when pressed that rape is rape.

The school administration has a vested interest in failing to punish male students who commit sexual assault.

“People see it to be a traditional Catholic School, and there’s a tendency to whitewash anything that did happen,” Elizabeth Foeckler, former RA, said.

More than one alumna said that many of the teachers at Christendom are excellent and caring, and that many of the students are sincere and faithful people. When asked what they would say to a student interested in attending Christendom, they said it could work out, as long as you go in with your eyes open.

In many cases, says a source close to the college, the rules regulating campus life arise from an ideology, and not from a practical understanding of student behavior. The lower echelons of the administration, those who deal directly with students, struggle with trying to convey ideas like safety and consent without subverting the founders’ notions of what virtuous student life looks like.

The result is an unusually vulnerable population of young women who don’t know how to navigate basic relationships, and who are terrified to express their wishes for fear of being rude, and are afraid to speak out when they or their friends are hurt.  They don’t have the words to describe what happened to them if they are assaulted, and they feel very strongly that they will be blamed for anything that happens to them.

And there is the reputation of the school to guard. “Perception is so important,” said the woman who never reported her rape at Christendom. “We have to evangelize, so everything untoward would be covered up.”

Adele Smith says there was a running joke among the student body about the fountains on campus.

“The school had lots of fountains,” she said, “But the carpets were the original carpets. They were thirty-eight years old. If you lived in the dorm, you were going to be sick. They installed fancy fountains, visible to everyone. But in student living, you can’t get new carpets.”

“Let’s craft and paint the outside,” she said. “But if the inside is not so good? It’s okay.”

Timothy O’Donnell, president of Christendom, was unavailable for comment when we called. He is still welcome to return our call.

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This story was researched and reported by Damien and Simcha Fisher. Part I can be found here.