Stanford Student, Previously Suspended In Rape Case, Will Now Stand Trial

A 24-year-old Stanford student, who has been back on campus this fall following a two-year suspension related to a 2022 alleged sexual assault, will now face a criminal trial in Santa Clara County.

The Stanford Daily this week identified the assault suspect as 24-year-old Leo Rossiter, who had entered Stanford as part of the Class of 2025, but faced a two-year suspension following a 2024 investigation into an alleged assault that took place two years prior.

The accuser in the case was a 19-year-old sophomore when the alleged incident took place — and she described in a recent op-ed in the campus paper, which was tied to the recent controversies over a gang-rape case at Cornell University, how Stanford's "constant rescheduling and delaying of proceedings" in her case upended her life for a full two years.

The young woman had attended a party with a friend, and when she wanted to go home, Rossiter allegedly offered to walk her there. Once there, she says, he asked to use her bathroom, and she let him, and then after repeatedly refusing requests to kiss her, he allegedly "climbed onto her bed and raped her, leaving her bleeding."

The woman also said that while the Santa Clara County DA's office informed her that it would be filing criminal charges in May 2024, those weren't entered into the system until October 2024 — and the case only appears to now be proceeding to trial, four years after the alleged incident took place.

"When I was raped in my Stanford dorm room at 19, I too, like Cornell’s Jane Doe, thought that reporting it to Stanford and law enforcement would yield justice," she wrote in the op-ed. “Like Jane Doe, I was met with negligence and apathy.”

Rossiter's attorney, Daniel Barton, said in a statement to the Daily that Rossiter "is not guilty of the horrible things that he is accused of." Barton added, "Since 2022, he has been defending himself against these false allegations both at the University and in court, and he will continue to defend his innocence."

Activists on campus have seized on the case, given that Rossiter is now back on campus, saying that it is just another example of Stanford's "historic lack of response to sexual violence."

Pelagia Martin, a member of the group Resisting Rape Culture at Stanford (RRCUS) and part of the Class of 2027, tells the Daily, "The University is condoning rape at Stanford. There is 100% a public safety risk inviting known perpetrators like the defendant back onto our campus."

Martin cites "the unstable status of sexual violence prevention programs" at the university, as well as "the silencing of survivors through long and traumatic Title IX proceedings [and] the lack of expulsions for rapists."

The case bares an unfortunate resemblance to the infamous Brock Turner rape case of a decade ago, which also involved an intoxicated meeting at a party in January 2015.

Outrage followed a criminal proceeding in which Turner was sentenced to only six months in jail and ultimately only served three, which led directly to county voters recalling the judge in the case the following year.

Turner's reputation followed him home to Ohio, where he was living as recently as 2022, and where a so-called "whisper network" about his conviction went viral on TikTok — after he had reportedly been seen in local bars in the Dayton area.

In December 2016, a Stanford graduate student filed a Title IX complaint in federal court over a 2011 assault case in which, the woman said, her rapist was allowed to remain on campus and become a known predator who assaulted at least four other students.

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