Janick Fielding secured the discontinuation of disciplinary proceedings brought by a University against a vulnerable student

Janick Fielding and Polly Kerr at Tees Law, secured the discontinuation of disciplinary proceedings brought by a University against a vulnerable student alleged to have raped another student. Having ignored the special needs of accused student, a young man the university had themselves identified through previously conducted expert assessment as requiring time and care for the processing of oral information due to longstanding difficulties not of his own making, the university trampled all over its own processes in a focused and determined effort to proceed to a conclusion without any necessary exploration of the inconsistent and highly unsatisfactory evidence, and absent any real consideration given to the rights and entitlements of the accused student. The University also saddled him arbitrarily with what they misleadingly termed ‘a neutral suspension’ pending determination of the matter, a desperately unfair interim sanction precluding him from attending the campus, finishing his course or obtaining his degree, the events having unfolded in the final term of his course.

Janick and Polly immediately secured two adjournments, then the lifting of the suspension, followed by the university’s capitulation in two sets of judicial review proceedings brought to compel them to afford proper time for the compilation of reports, and thereafter the discontinuation of the disciplinary proceedings in totality, as well as full and substantial costs for the loss and damage of his property following him having been barred from the campus initially.

This is another good example of a student disciplinary proceeding where the binary outcome is a very stark one indeed; he loses and his degree is over, his career is dead before it has begun and he is labelled a rapist and endures forever the stigma that follows; he wins and life goes on. Given the growing preference for educational bodies to engage in the determination of matters that should be left only in the hands of specialist police teams, the risks to those without legal representation are enormous.