Aug 19, 2014 04:16 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

A student at Pace University has filed a federal complaint accusing the school of forcing her into a sexual assault investigation only to find the alleged assailant not responsible.

According to the Huffington Post, the complainant said the school then made both her and the accused attend a course on alcohol abuse and date rape. Wishing to remain nameless, the student said the U.S. Education Department (ED) notified her that their Office for Civil Rights (OCR) had received her complaint. The student also provided the HP with a copy of the letter she received upon completion of the investigation.

Unlike many cases before hers, the student did not want to report her assault in order to protect her identity and maintain her privacy. Sexual assault policy reform advocates have stated that it should be the choice of whether or not to report the crime should be the victim's.

"I said I don't want an investigation, don't want the police involved at all, don't want an in-school investigation, but they told me it had to happen," she told the HP. "I did not want to report my rapist, because it is a very miserable and tedious process in which the victim rarely gets justice."

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) issued an "unprecedented" and "extensive" survey in April to 236 U.S. colleges and universities, the HP previously reported. She found that 40 percent of the respondent schools had conducted no sexual assault investigations in the last five years. In response, prominent lobbying group the American Council on Education (ACE) outlined the complications of investigating sexual assault, such as victim cooperation.

"Imagine someone overriding your wishes, talking to every single person in your social circle [about an alleged sexual assault]," Laura Dunn, founder of the survivor advocacy group SurvJustice, told the HP. "How could you stay on campus? You have no autonomy, no privacy."

The incident in question for the student at Pace occurred in Feb. 14, 2014 and she reported it on Feb. 27 to the school's health center. Still, she said she never intended to pursue a criminal investigation against her assailant.

She said Pace administrators met with her in an exam room and they spoke for two hours because she felt like she could not leave. Sensing she had no choice, she said she finally yielded and agreed to cooperate with an investigation. She then said she was never contacted or interviewed in the month-long investigation and the school only wound up finding the assailant not responsible (colleges and universities do not use the term "guilty.")

"The Title IX investigators never met with me, not once," the student said. "They never told me how they questioned people or which of my friends they questioned. But they ended up with the conclusion there wasn't enough evidence to really punish him."

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