A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge will determine on Wednesday whether harassment accusations made against Associated Students President Branden Parent are substantial enough to grant a permanent restraining order against him.
The accusations come from a former San Jose State student who described herself as a survivor of Parent’s alleged behavior. She spoke to the Spartan Daily on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“I’ve come to realize a lot of Mr. Parent’s actions were abusive not just emotionally, but physically, and I feel like that could be a very appropriate term to use,” she said over the phone. “I initially brought the issue to Title IX Aug. 28 after harassment from Mr. Parent.”
The former student currently has a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Parent. While she is technically still enrolled at SJSU, she is no longer actively attending classes at the university.
The self-described survivor said she dated Parent for eight months in 2018.
In an email statement, Parent’s lawyer, Mark Hathaway, said the two only dated for three months.
She claimed he engaged in harassment long after they ended the relationship, prompting her to lodge a formal complaint against Parent with SJSU’s Title IX office in late August.
It was an attempt to end what she described in several court documents as harassment.
Hathaway said Parent had not contacted the former student since she had texted him in July telling him to stop contacting her.
“It wasn’t until Mr. Parent escalated to in-person stalking that [the SJSU Title IX office] finally started to take it seriously and it took even longer for them to actually initiate an investigation,” she said.
Her attempt went virtually unheard and unenforced, she said.
She claimed Parent called her incessantly and continued to stalk her over social media accounts less than a day after receiving a mutual No Contact Order issued by the university.
Through his lawyer, Parent denied the claims.
A mutual No Contact Order was first issued by the Title IX office on Aug. 29, and was updated on Sept. 17. Hathaway said on the phone the updated order was “not substantially different,” and was mostly “to conform to California State University standards.”
Parent is scheduled to appear with his lawyer on Wednesday to defend himself against the allegations made by the self-described survivor.
In an email, Title IX Officer Tracey Tsugawa, who issued the mutual No Contact Order, described how the office handles potential violations of No Contact Orders.
“If violations of the [No Contact Order] occur during an ongoing Title IX investigation, unless the violations are egregious (in which case the Student Conduct office will respond immediately), the allegations of violations are incorporated into the Title IX investigation process,” Tsugawa said. “If substantiated, they are adjudicated at the end of the investigation process.”
The self-described survivor said her most recent interaction with Parent was Sept. 12, at a Greek life “Toga” party, hosted at the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity house.
Members of Pi Kappa Phi, of which Parent is a brother, attended the party, according to a video posted on Twitter and provided to the Spartan Daily by Hathaway.
President of the SJSU chapter of Pi Kappa Phi, Jomari Buenavista, said on Twitter that Parent was not barred from attending the “Toga” night because he was not suspended at that time.
The day after the party, Mark Timmes, CEO of the Pi Kappa Phi national fraternity, placed Parent on an interim suspension because of the allegations, Hathaway said.
“Pi Kappa Phi takes all accusations seriously, when a claim is made it is protocol to be put on temporary suspension for an investigation by nationals,” Buenavista wrote on Twitter. “This does not necessarily mean that accusations are true or not.”
The suspension was lifted on Friday by Brooke Kingsley Isbell, assistant executive director of prevention and accountability for the national fraternity, because of “the unreliability of the information provided” by the former student, Hathaway said.
The national headquarters for the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity did not respond to requests for comment from the Spartan Daily concerning the fraternity’s internal investigation.
The SJSU Title IX investigation is still ongoing, both Hathaway and Christine Hutchins, SJSU senior associate vice president of strategic communications and marketing, told the Spartan Daily.
In response to questions from the Spartan Daily regarding the No Contact Order, Hutchins said in an email, “As the questions you ask involve an ongoing investigation, SJSU’s Title IX office will not be making comments.”
After what the self-described survivor outlined in court documents as inaction on the part of the Title IX office to pursue her claims seriously, she went to the Santa Clara County Superior Court and requested a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Parent.
In the request, she alleged that she suffered a bruise on her left arm because of “excessively rough grabbing” from Parent, as well as several incidents of harassment and stalking.
Based on her application, a Santa Clara County judicial officer issued a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Parent.
A judge will examine the evidence at a hearing on Wednesday and determine whether to put in place an full restraining order, or lift the temporary one.
The self-described survivor said she requested the case be taken up in family court to preserve her privacy.
Privacy is something that remains important to her, she said, and it would have remained that way were it not for those around her urging her to speak up about the alleged harassment she endured.
“It’s not that I’m waiting until now to come forward, it’s that people are pushing me to come forward,” she said. “I’ve been screaming this to the rooftops for as long as I can remember, since the school year started. People are pushing me to come forward.”
Jonathan Austin, Mauricio La Plante, Kunal Mehta, Chelsea Nguyen Fleige, Marci Suela and Kelsey Valle contributed reporting to this article.
