UC Davis professor placed on leave, accused of sexually assaulting high school student in 2010
A professor at the University of California, Davis, has been on leave since early 2021 following allegations that he sexually assaulted a high school student multiple times in 2010, university officials confirmed this week.
Ting Guo, a chemistry professor who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1999, was accused in a late 2020 civil lawsuit of sexually assaulting a high school student who had worked in his laboratory, the university said in a statement. UC Davis officials have ordered an external review of the incident.
The allegations, first reported publicly Thursday by the San Francisco Chronicle, came from an unidentified “Jane Doe” accuser who, according to court documents, said she met Guo when she was 18 and began shadowing him in January 2010 as part of an assignment for her AP chemistry class.
Doe in her lawsuit accused Guo of raping her three times in 2010, allegedly at Guo’s home on each occasion, according to the Chronicle.
The UC Santa Barbara Police Department in 2018 forwarded a report it had received “outlining allegations of sexual assault against a UC Davis employee” to the UC Davis Police Department, according to the latter university’s statement.
Campus police then notified the Davis Police Department, “because the report indicated that three sexual assaults had allegedly occurred within the city limits but not on the UC Davis campus,” university officials wrote.
The 2018 report was filed to the UC Santa Barbara Police Department because Doe was a student at that university at the time, the Chronicle reported.
The 2020 lawsuit, which was filed in Yolo County Superior Court against Guo and UC Davis and ultimately dismissed by a judge due to the statute of limitations expiring, contained allegations related to the 2018 complaint.
UC Davis’ statement said that the 2018 report’s complainant “explicitly requested that a criminal investigation be completed before the complainant’s name or the respondent’s name were released” to the university’s Title IX office. Because of this, university officials wrote, the initial report received from UC Santa Barbara police “was not sufficient to commence an investigation at that time.”
The Title IX office was notified in January 2021 of the complainant’s civil lawsuit and Guo’s identity, according to the university statement, triggering the investigation.
“Guo was immediately placed on administrative leave and has remained on leave since,” the statement continued. “While on leave, he was instructed not to contact the complainant or any UC Davis student or employee, or to come onto campus, without prior permission.”
The statement from UC Davis also confirmed that Guo had participated as a mentor in a summer program for high school students until 2019. The program was not held in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Doe accuser was not a participant in the program, the university said.
Doe’s lawsuit indicated she was inspired to make the police report following the #MeToo movement that began in 2017, according to the Chronicle’s reporting.
The university plans an external review of the allegations against Guo, including “whether anyone in a leadership position in the chemistry department knew or should have known about sexual misconduct concerns related to Ting Guo between 2010 and 2021 and whether those concerns were appropriately reported.”
Guo is tenured. The dismissal of a tenured professor requires approval by the UC Board of Regents.
The review will be conducted by Eve Peek Fichtner, a partner with California law firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo. Fichtner serves as a neutral hearing officer for the UC and California State University systems.
Chancellor Gary S. May has also requested an external review “of all UC Davis programs involving youths,” according to Thursday’s statement.
