No charges filed against graduate student accused of rape

Oct. 10, 2016, 1:47 a.m.

The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office will not file charges against a Stanford graduate student arrested Sept. 24 on suspicion of rape in a campus residence.

“After reviewing all available evidence … we have decided that there is insufficient evidence to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Luis Ramos, supervisor of the sexual assault for the D.A.’s office.

Ramos said that the D.A. does not typically provide any further information about a case when no charges are filed. The office finished reviewing the case Thursday.

Stanford police responded on Sept. 24 to a report of an early morning sexual assault at Lyman Graduate Residences. The male graduate student was booked into the San Jose Main Jail later that day. The alleged victim, a 28-year-old woman who does not attend Stanford, was dating the graduate student at the time, said Stanford Department of Public Safety spokesperson William Larson.

The report was Stanford’s second report of rape in the first two weeks of fall quarter. On Sept. 30, a woman told campus police that a man she did not know raped her early that morning in his dorm room on East Campus. The University sent out a community-wide alert containing some details of incident in order to comply with the Clery Act, which requires schools to warn the community of crimes that involve an “ongoing threat.” Stanford did not send an alert about the Sept. 24 incident because the suspect did not present a threat once jailed, Larson said.

Both rape reports followed heightened scrutiny of sexual assault at Stanford sparked by the highly publicized case of Brock Turner, the former Stanford student who served three months of jail time this summer for sexual assault of an unconscious victim.

Contact Hannah Knowles at hknowles ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Hannah Knowles is senior staff writer from San Jose who served as Volume 253 Editor-in-Chief. Prior to that, she managed The Daily's news section.

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