If you are a college or high school student and have recently gone through a breakup, whatever you do, don’t delete photos, videos, emails, or text messages from that relationship. If you are wrongly accused of any kind of sexual misconduct—sexual harassment, stalking, sexual assault, dating violence, and so forth—not having those files will place you at a grave disadvantage when it comes time to defend yourself in a school disciplinary proceeding. Unfortunately, in such cases, innocence and character alone are not sufficient defenses. The outcome is not decided by who you are as a person, but by what can be proven about the alleged incident(s).

Why People Delete Files from Old Relationships

It is understandable why people delete these files. Here are some common examples:

• They are scrolling through their phone’s photo gallery, see an image from their old relationship pop up, delete it because they want to move on, and then just go ahead and delete all the rest because “why not.”
• They get into a new relationship with someone who happens to see an old photo of them with someone else, that person is uncomfortable with it, and they ask them to purge everything from the previous relationship as a token of good faith.
• They get a new phone or computer, don’t move all their files from their old one to their new one, and then something happens to their old device.

What Can Happen in School Sexual Misconduct Investigations

If you are wrongly accused of sexual misconduct, deleting electronic evidence effectively gives up much of your influence over the investigative record to someone who—by effect or intent—is now trying to wreck your life as you know it. All sorts of things are now on the table.

• You may lack critical evidence to help establish what you, your accuser, or various witnesses were doing (or not doing) on a certain day, your intentions behind your actions, and so forth.
• Your accuser can ignore the 999 texts that make you look good, cherry-pick the two or three texts you sent on your worst day, and submit those as evidence that the relationship in general was toxic, abusive, and so forth. They are not obligated to submit any of the texts that portray you in a better light.
• Your accuser or their supportive witness can alter screenshots of text messages to make it seem like you said things you didn’t say. They can fabricate abusive or coercive language, apologies, admissions of guilt, and so forth. Since you don’t have your own texts to compare them with, it will be harder to disprove that the texts were altered.

But My Ex and I Are Good People!

You may assume that you won’t be wrongly accused because you didn’t do anything grievously wrong or because your ex isn’t the type of person to make a knowingly false accusation. Many current and former clients of our advisory service believed the same at one point or another. There are at least two problems with those assumptions.

First, everyone is guilty of doing something inappropriate in a relationship, but not everything that is inappropriate rises to the level of a policy violation. Most things don’t. Unfortunately, complainants (accusers) are rarely a good judge of what violates school policy. Often, all they know is that they feel some kind of pain, regret, and so forth. That is why many sexual misconduct “harassment” complaints are actually relationship issues rather than misconduct as defined by school policy. It is also why one or more parties can usually benefit from additional guidance and education on healthy relationships even though no policy violation has been found.

Second, many (if not most) wrongful allegations are not knowingly false allegations per se. These accusations are brought by people who have, for one reason or another, simply come to believe something that is not true. They then proceed to retroactively interpret past behaviors and events to conform to their new belief, but problems arise when those reinterpretations do not easily fit. Over time, these complainants are progressively forced to confront inconsistent and implausible behaviors and events that they—often with the support of friends, advisors, counselors, and even activists and attorneys—have rationalized up to that point. That is why their cases often appear to start strong but fall apart as time passes – if a good defense is made.

Closing Thoughts

So, please—I beg you—don’t delete anything photos, videos, texts, or emails from your romantic relationships. You don’t necessarily have to keep the on your current device. If you want them off your current device, move them to a cloud folder in OneDrive, Google Drive, and so forth, and let them sit there untouched, hopefully for all eternity. Just don’t delete them.

Separate from evidence regarding romantic relationships, deleting evidence of your activities in general may not be the best idea. You never know if you may be called to account for what you did on a specific day, months or years in the past, and long after your memory of those days has faded.

If you do happen to find yourself wrongly accused of sexual misconduct in a school disciplinary proceeding, you will need help. Be sure to consider our advisory service and read our guide on what to do if you are wrongly accused.