The Reed Guard

[July 2nd, 2008]

UPDATE: Read new information on this case at wweek.com/wwire/?p=12393.

A writer’s claim that a Reed College security guard raped her has thrust the private school into an uncomfortable spotlight for the second time this year.

As first reported June 30 on wweek.com, Janine Wonnacott of Arlington, Va., is suing the college and Noble Powell, the security guard she claims raped her in a dorm during a summer writers’ workshop in 2006.

“It was just a horrific incident,” says Wonnacott’s attorney, Salem lawyer Daniel Gatti. He says his client, a 28-year-old writer of nonfiction for magazines, has been hospitalized for emotional trauma three times since the encounter.

The lawsuit, filed June 27 in Multnomah County Circuit Court, seeks $4.6 million for Wonnacott’s psychological injuries and medical expenses, in addition to $1 million for suffering caused to her husband, Alan Wonnacott.

Reed College spokesman Kevin Myers declined to comment.

Reed has already settled one lawsuit this year, that one from a former campus security guard. The ex-guard, Josh Chambers, sued the school Feb. 29 claiming he was fired in 2006 for raising concerns that administrators had covered up evidence of heroin use in a campus apartment.

The school settled with Chambers for an undisclosed sum in March, a month before freshman Alejandro “Alex” Lluch died in his dorm of a heroin overdose (see “Higher Ed,” WW, May 14, 2008). Lluch’s family has not brought a lawsuit.

According to Wonnacott’s suit, she was attending a writers’ workshop put on by local publisher Tin House at Reed’s campus in Southeast Portland’s Eastmoreland neighborhood.

On the night of July 10, 2006, the lawsuit claims Wonnacott became intoxicated and fell down on a path near the college’s student union. Wonnacott’s speech was “slurred and incomprehensible,” the lawsuit says.

Two women who attended the conference called campus security. The lawsuit says two guards arrived, took Wonnacott to her room in a campus dorm, and said they would check on her throughout the night.

Several women on the hall who were attending the workshop became concerned when one of the guards, Powell, stayed alone with Wonnacott in her room, holding her hand under the covers while she laid in bed and cried, the lawsuit says.

According to the lawsuit, one of the women, Lisa Schappell, told Powell she was uncomfortable with him being there. The lawsuit says Powell told Schappell he was a medical professional.

Around midnight, the lawsuit says, Schappell returned to Wonnacott’s room, walked in and “found Powell with his legs apart, his pants down, and in the process of having intercourse with Wonnacott.”

According to the lawsuit, the police were called immediately and interviewed witnesses. No arrests were made, the lawsuit says.

The Portland Police Bureau has so far declined to release a copy of its report. According to the lawsuit, Powell told police he denied raping Wonnacott and said she gave consent.

Wonnacott told police she may have given consent. But because she was drunk, the lawsuit says, she “did not and could not have consented to having sexual intercourse.”

The lawsuit names Reed College and Powell as defendants. It claims Reed was negligent in failing to supervise Powell and enforce safety standards, and it alleges Powell was negligent for taking advantage of Wonnacott when he should have been protecting her.

According to Gatti, Powell, who was 40 years old at the time, was fired soon after the incident. Now 42 and living in Beaverton, he did not return a phone call seeking comment. An Oregon court records check shows Powell has no criminal record.

Federal law requires colleges to report crime statistics, including sexual assaults. But Reed, which has a reputation as one of the most academically rigorous schools in the country, has not always been forthright about sexual assaults.

In 2004, Reed sophomore Alison Mahan told The Oregonian she reported to administrators being raped in her dorm room in September 2003. But The O’s 2004 report said then that Reed’s official crime stats showed no reports of rape in the past three years. Mary Catherine King, a former dean of students, had told the newspaper a year after Mahan reported the assault that rape “just doesn’t occur here like it does at the larger state schools.”

According to the most recent data available, submitted by Reed, there were two forcible sex offenses on campus in 2006, two in 2005 and one in 2004.