LES ASPIN: O’Brien continued attending events

reached out to a Marquette professor and the Burke Scholars director Carie Hertzberg back on Marquette’s campus April 28. They introduced him to the idea of filing a Title IX claim.

Chrisbaum is a part of the Burke Scholars Program, an intensive program that connects academics, career goals and engagement with the community. One part of the program is participating in 10 hours of community service per week during the school year.

“Then I just got really pissed off. I was like ‘I got sexually harassed by a priest, what the hell?,’” Chrisbaum said.

Chrisbaum said he filed a human resources claim in April 2022, during the last week of the program.

While he was not going to file a Title IX claim at first, Chrisbaum said he knew other peers with similar experiences who were not in a position to speak up about it.

“I’m hoping no one has to go through the same experiences I did or the things I witnessed,” Chrisbaum said.

Chrisbaum said he later filed a joint Title IX case with another student who had experiences with sexual harassment during their time at the Les Aspin Center in a previous semester. They filed for a joint Title IX case, and Chrisbaum said he had his first interview with the Title IX office May 3, 2022. He received a formal complaint from the Title IX office via email May 11, 2022.

“The Title IX Office oversees conduct that falls under Marquette’s Sexual Harassment and Sex Discrimination Policy. The policy must comply with federal regulations that govern Title IX,” Kristen Kreple, Marquette’s Title IX director, said in an email to the Marquette Wire. “Marquette’s Human Resources Department handles employee conduct that falls outside the Sexual Harassment and Sex Discrimination Policy. The investigative and adjudicative processes are different and unconnected.”

Fall 2022

While O’Brien was still in D.C. in the fall of 2022, the Marquette Wire learned he was not teaching any classes.

As a new semester rolled around, Amanda Schmidt, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said she attended an alumni event at the Les Aspin Center Nov. 15, 2022, which O’Brien also attended.

“I didn’t see O’Brien until it actually happened,” Schmidt said. “I didn’t see him until he had walked up behind me, slid his hand down my back and then rested his hand on the top of my butt.”

She said his hand stayed there for two or three minutes as he talked to everyone else in the group around her. But in the crowded classroom, Schmidt said it seemed like no one noticed.

The following morning Nov. 16, Schmidt arrived at her internship, a nonprofit humanitarian organization, where she said she told her internship supervisor about the incident.

“She was on a call when I walked in to work,” Schmidt’s internship supervisor said. “After, I remember she took her earbuds out and stood up and said ‘You are so happy you did not go to that event last night. It was awful’ and I grabbed my coffee and maybe I thought it was going to be like ‘tea time’ like ‘Oh what happened?’ She was shaking when I turned around.”

The supervisor, who wished to stay anonymous due to job safety reasons, said they recommended Schmidt file a Title IX case.

Similar to Chrisbaum, Schmidt is a Burke Scholar and reported it to Hertzberg back on Marquette’s campus. Because Hertzberg is a mandated reporter, she reported the incident to the Title IX office at Marquette.

November 17

Schmidt said she was able to speak with Kreple Nov. 17, two days after the incident. In the call, Kreple assured Schmidt that O’Brien would not be attending any more events.

But later that day — just a few hours after Schmidt’s conversation with Kreple — Schmidt said O’Brien made his way downstairs on a stair lift to join another speaker event in the Les Aspin Center classroom.

“I heard his electric chair coming down and I just left in the middle of a conversation I was having,” Schmidt said. “I just didn’t want to see him and I didn’t want to be there and I knew that was him coming down.”

After the event, Schmidt said she reached out to Kreple who tried to resolve the issue.

“Can you let me know whether Father O’Brien came down while the program was still going on, or was it afterward?,” Kreple wrote in an email to Schmidt Nov. 18.

“He is not supposed to be participating in university events at this time, so I’m trying to determine whether he did last night.”

November 28

Two weeks later, at another class event, O’Brien was there again.

The class was meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, on the main floor of the Les Aspin Center. Schmidt said O’Brien was there for the whole event.

“At the end we got up to take a photo with Dr. Fauci,” Schmidt said. “O’Brien was also in the photo and he would have stood right behind me if one of my friends did not switch places with me.”

However, while O’Brien was originally in the class photo, it appears he was cropped out in the university’s Instagram story post.

Schmidt said she reached out to Kreple after the event, and was reassured they would talk to O’Brien.

“Please know that I am advising Father O’Brien to not only stay away from university-related events but also to avoid contact with all students,” Kreple wrote in an email to Schmidt Nov. 28. “If you run into any additional issues with him, please let me know as soon as you’re able.”

Schmidt said she was concerned about how the process would be handled.

“There’s literally no one out there to enforce that,” Schmidt said. “Dr. Murray is under him, so there’s no one he answers to in D.C. It’s so easy to just ignore an email or not call people back or whatever.”

Christopher Murray, the co- ordinator of student programs and instructor in the Les Aspin Center, teaches various political science and government courses for the program. He is currently serving as interim director of the program. Murray declined to comment to the Marquette Wire about the pending Title IX cases.

Schmidt’s internship supervisor later brought up the incident to Murray. Because they work for a humanitarian group, the internship supervisor said there are safeguarding policies that don’t allow their organization to have relationships with institutions that don’t follow these practices.

“I was like ‘We need to make sure Amanda is safe this semester,’” the internship supervisor said. “I was very concerned about all these students. I wanted to get O’Brien out for the spring semester, and then I was concerned about what was going to happen to the program after he left. I had all these concerns, but I hadn’t really brought it to