News Archive

A woman is suing the Lebanon Community School Corporation, accusing the district of violating Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment when she was a middle schooler. A high schooler coerced her into sending him explicit photos, which the older student then distributed to others. Her parents complained to school officials to no avail. If true, the allegations are a "serious violation of Title IX," Professor Jennifer Drobac says in the story. It was published in the Indianapolis Star on June 12.

In the story, the woman says the harassment started after sexually explicit videos of her were shared, and the school district did nothing. The parents went to the police about what was going on, and police turned their investigation over to the Boone County Prosecutor. The harassment eventually became so pervasive that the woman left school, and remains in counseling over the depression and anxiety she suffers as a result of the experience.

Professor Drobac’s latest book, Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination, and Consent Law, was published in 2016 by University of Chicago Press. Professor Drobac was a Visiting Scholar during the Spring 2018 semester at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, and Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Law, Brain and Behavior. She was there conducting research for her next book, The Myth of Consent, which she is co-writing with Professor Oliver Goodenough. That work will explore the neuroscience of adult decision making and how the science should influence law reform. She is the R. Bruce Townsend Professor of Law at IU McKinney.