It’s been a month since 20-year-old Grace Mann was murdered in her Fredericksburg home. The University of Mary Washington student had been active with a group called Feminists United, which had been the target of threatening posts online. Now, a national group has filed a complaint with the federal government – charging the school did too little to protect women on campus.
The man accused of killing Grace Mann was a 30-year-old student at the University of Mary Washington – returning to finish his degree after dropping out in 2007. Steven Vander Briel shared a rented home with Mann and two other women, but police say they were not in a relationship. Indeed, Mann -- the daughter of a Fairfax County Judge, was openly gay.
Friends have described Vander Briel as "non-threatening", "laid back", and “a sensitive guy” whose nick-name was "Care Bear," yet police say he told Mann’s roommates he had assaulted her.
Now, a national group called the Feminist Majority Foundation has filed a federal complaint – alleging the university did too little to protect women who had been threatened.
“Activists in Feminists United were being threatened repeatedly through a cyber program called Yik Yak.”
That’s Eleanor Smeal, the foundation’s president. She says Grace Mann was active in a campus affiliate called Feminists United – a group that opposed the establishment of fraternities on the Fredericksburg campus and supported sanctions against the school’s rugby team when it recorded this sexually explicit and derogatory chant at a private party.
Not all members of the rugby team were at the party where that chant was recorded, but the school suspended the entire team and required members to undergo sensitivity training. That’s when the online threats began. Again, the Feminist Majority’s Eleanor Smiel.
“There were hundreds of them. Some were very specific and very threatening, but overall it was a total disrespect, really, for women, the serious issue of campus sexual assault, just horrific language. And then there were some specific threats that talked about killing.”
Smiel says the complaint was planned well before Grace Mann’s murder, and while Vander Briel once played rugby for the university, she has no idea if connection is relevant to the case. The foundation’s Director of Policy and Research Gaylynn Burroughs, says the University of Mary Washington should have followed the lead of other schools in working with the social media app Yik Yak to identify the source of threats. She cites actions taken by Towson University in Maryland.
“At Towson there was a threatening post that a student would carry out a ‘Virginia Tech Part Two,’ referring of course to the killings that happened at Virginia Tech. Another student took a screen shot of the threatening post, and it was passed along to the university, and then the poster was arrested, charged and banned from the campus within 24 hours of making the post, so it is possible for the university to take swift action and for there to be investigations that lead to real results.”
Vander Briel is being held without bond at the Rappahannock Regional Jail. He goes to court Tuesday. University officials refused to talk with us about this case but said they’d been actively engaged with members of Feminists United to address issues of safety and campus culture. The University said it takes any charge of gender-based violence very seriously and would cooperate fully with a federal investigation.
