Ohio University faces appeal in lawsuit over abuse by ex-police officer

ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio — Alison Arocho has filed an appeal of a 2022 court judgment that found Ohio University was not liable for repeated sexual abuse she suffered from one of its police officers in 2005, when she was 15. 

In December 2022, Ohio Court of Claims Judge Dale Crawford ruled that the university was not liable for Arocho’s abuse by then-OU Police Department Officer Robert A. Parsons. 

Parsons pleaded no contest to unlawful sexual conduct with a minor in 2007 and was sentenced to six months in the Southeast Ohio Regional Jail. Arocho has argued OU’s employment of Parsons as a police officer helped facilitate the abuse she suffered. 

After a bench trial, Crawford issued a judgment in favor of OU on all claims. But a docketing statement filed on Feb. 3 within the state’s 10th District Court of Appeals by Arocho’s attorney, Michael Fradin, argues that the court erred on eight points. 

The most notable error of the trial court, in Fradin’s view, was quashing a subpoena for the results of a 2001 Athens County Children Services investigation into Parsons’ conduct.

Arocho’s attorneys argued at trial that OU should have been on notice that Parsons was likely to engage in sexual conduct with minors prior to his abuse of Arocho, due to the 2001 ACCS investigation. The investigation dealt with Parsons’s alleged attempt to “initiate sexual relations with a juvenile female,” according to an OUPD memo.

Judge Patrick McGrath, who presided over the case before Crawford, quashed a subpoena for the investigation at the request of ACCS and Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn. 

Crawford said at trial that he would have granted the subpoena had he presided over the case at the time. Fradin said that statement demonstrates that the court viewed the results of the 2001 investigation as pertinent to the case.

Without access to information from the actual investigation, Crawford relied on Parsons’s account of it. Crawford’s ruling stated as fact that the 2001 investigation focused on Parsons having made a pass at a minor child when he reached over her to unlock a car door. The only evidence presented to this effect at trial was Parsons’s testimony.

“That’s not the way civil litigation is supposed to work,” Fradin said.

Other errors Fradin notes in the docketing statement include that the court:

• Improperly used “inadmissible evidence” — including Parsons’ 2006 criminal indictment — and the judge’s “personal … expectations of prosecutor Rocky Coss” in finding for OU.
• Was overly aggressive in questioning Arocho and her sister, in violation of Ohio Rules of Evidence.
• Introduced in its ruling defenses for OU that the university itself did not offer and “were not supported by the evidence in the record.”

“We think that individually, each one is sufficient for the judgment to be reversed or vacated — and certainly as a whole,” Fradin said.

In an email, Ohio University Chief of Staff Carly Leatherwood wrote, “The University believes that the courts that have examined the facts and law of this case and uniformly ruled in the University’s favor were correct in their holdings. The University will continue to assert its position in the appellate process and is confident that the court will apply the law and reach the correct result.”

Arocho also previously sued OU in federal court, claiming violation of her civil rights under Title IX. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dismissed those claims in March 2022.

Fradin and attorneys for OU will submit briefs in the appeal after the court issues a timeline for the case. Fradin estimated that the appeals process will likely take about a year.

Parsons has told the Independent that he disagrees with the framing of his sexual encounters with Arocho as abuse. At the trial against OU, he acknowledged having sex with Arocho multiple times while she was 15. 

Arocho framed the encounters as abuse. Likewise, under Ohio law, minors under age 16 are unable to consent to sex with adults.