Zoe Katz, a 22-year-old senior and star tennis player at the University of Southern California, has been under a Title IX investigation for six months and says she was “misled, harassed, threatened and discriminated against” by overzealous officials who painted her as a sexual assault victim at the hands of her boyfriend, even though she says none of it's true.
Her boyfriend is a former kicker for USC, Matt Boermeester. Katz said their treatment during the investigation was “horrible and unjust.”
The Blaze reports:
Katz’s attorney, Kerry L. Steigerwalt, told the Los Angeles Times that the investigation began after a neighbor saw Boermeester and Katz roughhousing. The neighbor told his roommate, who told a coach in USC’s athletic department that Boermeester was abusing Katz, the paper said, adding that the coach then reported the incident to the Title IX office.
In the wake of the reported incident, Katz released the following statement defending her boyfriend’s innocence:
“Terrible and untrue things have been said about Matt by people who don’t even know him, including apparently the third party who contacted Title IX, and these bizarre assertions have been treated as fact in this investigation. Words, including mine, have been incompetently or intentionally misrepresented, misquoted and taken out of context, which should not be that surprising since no statements were recorded or verified.”
Katz went on to say in her statement that she has “never been abused, assaulted or otherwise mistreated by Matt.” She said she stands behind him 100% and called the investigation unwarranted, unfair, and biased.
But officials interpreted her vigorous defense as the words of a battered woman. She “must be afraid of Matt,” they said, and treated her as a victim and Boermeester as abusive throughout the investigation.
Boermeester has not been arrested or charged with any crime, but was suspended from USC, barred from campus, and was forbidden to contact coaches or teammates and even his girlfriend, according to The Blaze.
“I was told that if I contacted Matt, ‘things would not go well for him,'” Katz said. “I was also told that I could be charged and investigated if I spoke to anyone who they decided to call in as possible ‘witnesses.'”
Katz will graduate this fall but is not listed on the 2017-2018 tennis roster. She says that she is “afraid of USC’s Title IX office” but won’t stop “speaking up for myself and for Matt.”
“I will not permit anyone to portray me as a victim, I am not,” Katz also said in her statement. “Nor will I stand by silently and watch a good person like Matt be railroaded by a rigged system.”
Meanwhile, USC stands behind its investigation and its conclusions. Its records for student disciplinary actions remain confidential. However, if Katz or Boermeester waive their confidentiality rights, “the university will offer a detailed response.”
And the Left’s war on women continues.
