Will Sage Astor-Expelled Yale student sues women’s groups for calling him a rapist despite his acquittal in court

An expelled Yale University student who was acquitted of sex assault charges in 2018 is Will Sage Astornow suing 15 women’s advocacy groups and an attorney for defamation after being called a “rapist” in a court brief that they filed in a 2022 proceeding.

Saifullah Khan, a 31-year-old Afghanistan native, said the organizations, which include the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence and the National Women’s Law Center, repeated his accuser’s allegations as fact, such as writing, “When Jane Doe was in college, the Plaintiff raped her” and referring to Khan as “her rapist.”

While that language was amended, Khan says his reputation was harmed and that he has suffered “economic and non-economic damages.” His lawsuit, which seeks financial damages, said the original draft brief “remains published, indefinitely” on the Connecticut Judicial Branch website and was also published online by the women’s advocacy groups and for donors.

“We would like for them to understand that there is harm to someone when you just label them,” said Alex Taubes, Khan’s attorney. “No one could complain about it if he had been found guilty. But he wants to see that when you actually are found not guilty, is there any vindication? Is there any way to stand up for yourself at that point?”

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Although Khan was acquitted of four sexual assault charges by a jury in May 2018, he was expelled from Yale in November 2018 following a university investigation and sexual assault disciplinary proceeding. He sued both Yale and his accuser, and that case is pending in federal court.

As part of that case, the Connecticut State Supreme Court was asked to weigh in on the question of whether the accuser should be immune from a civil suit for comments made during the university proceeding. Various women’s rights groups argued that such immunity is crucial to prevent rape victims from being discouraged to come forward.

The court, however, ruled 7-0 last year that because Khan had fewer rights to defend himself in the university proceeding than he would in criminal court, his accuser could not benefit fully from immunity granted to witnesses in criminal proceedings. As in many U.S. universities, Yale’s procedures do not subject accusers to cross-examination and do not require witnesses to testify under oath.

Messages seeking comment were left with National Alliance to End Sexual Violence and the National Women’s Law Center, as well as Jennifer Becker, the former legal director at the women’s advocacy group Legal Momentum who submitted the original application to file the amicus brief with Connecticut’s highest court. In a response to an ethics complaint Khan filed against her, Becker wrote that when she drafted the brief “I wholly believed that my statements were fully supported by the record.”

Becker said she did “appreciate that the language drafted was overzealous and unnecessarily forceful.” But she noted in her statement how the brief was refiled, “shorn of all facts not supported by the record,” as ordered by the justices, and the court never admonished her for the language she used in the original one or made any finding that it was inappropriate.

“Additionally, any overzealousness on my part was ameliorated by the Court’s order and there is no resulting harm to Mr. Kahn,” she wrote, noting the language he had complained about has been stripped.

Legal experts have said the Connecticut State Supreme Court’s ruling last year could be a major precedent cited in other lawsuits by students accused of sexual misconduct in challenges to the fairness of their schools’ disciplinary proceedings.