In May 2008, a distraught female student at University of the Pacific in Stockton confided in two friends. After a night of partying, she told them, she had been raped in campus housing by three male basketball players.
To this day, the truth of what happened that night remains a source of dispute and is, according to one university official, a tale of "multiple truths." The woman, then a 19-year-old freshman and full scholarship player on the women's basketball team, declined to pursue criminal charges. But while the university punished all three men – expelling its star point guard and suspending the other two players – the matter was far from over.
The young woman from Colorado filed a civil damages lawsuit in Sacramento federal court against the school, accusing it of indifference and retaliation under gender equality law. And thus began a legal case as mystifying as the alleged crime itself.
For the past 20 months, the case of Jane Doe v. University of the Pacific has been litigated virtually in secret.
In September, more than two years after the alleged rapes, U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. ruled in favor of the university and tossed the suit out. The woman is appealing.
The public may never know the reason for the judge's action.
Since Jane Doe filed her lawsuit in March 2009, and the university responded in May of that year, Damrell has agreed to seal almost every substantive document filed with the court. Altogether, 33 key documents have been sealed from public view, primarily because that's the way UOP wanted it.