Juno News - University puts “IDENTITY POLITICS” over STUDENT SAFETY

00:00:00.960 Welcome to the Candace Malcolm show. I'm Melanie Bennett, co-host for today's special episode,

00:00:07.160 where I want to discuss an investigation that I published a fortnight ago about a University

00:00:13.920 of Windsor student named Phoenix Shield, also known as David Williston. Phoenix is a non-binary

00:00:21.460 trans Pride Center volunteer at the university, and he was found guilty in a university investigation

00:00:28.800 of sexual misconduct and student code violations, behavior, which according to my guest today

00:00:36.780 is a pattern for Phoenix that was covered up due to what he calls identity politics optics.

00:00:46.520 Now, the person that I named in the article is Louis Adamson, but of course, Louis Adamson is

00:00:52.660 not his real name. His real name is Jake Lenfeld, and he's here to talk about it today.

00:00:57.060 Jake, welcome to the show.

00:00:59.060 Hello, Melanie. Thank you for having me on today to explain what had happened and like how the university went to basically cover it up.

00:01:09.060 Well, I think you're very brave for coming on to the show. So thank you very much. Let's just get straight into it.

00:01:15.060 Maybe what we could do is talk about. Let's just go straight into the allegations.

00:01:21.060 We'll talk about how you met Phoenix and a situation around that maybe a little bit later

00:01:25.080 on, but I'm sure the audience will want to know, well, what is, what are the accusations?

00:01:29.240 What happened?

00:01:31.180 Well, um, there are a couple, um, he assaulted me at least twice, um, while I was unresponsive

00:01:41.880 or unconscious.

00:01:44.080 When we say assaulted, I'm just going to make that clear.

00:01:46.240 What sexual, sexual assault.

00:01:47.740 actually assaulted and i know that's a tough word to say but that's what it is yeah

00:01:57.260 and uh he uh he also has hiv which he did not disclose to me until after we had a sexual uh

00:02:07.340 consensual sexual encounter um before the assaults took place um and he's very touchy at the school

00:02:19.100 at the pride center and it's unwanted contact as well that was also covered in the report

00:02:25.740 yeah so let's describe um shield a little bit here phoenix so phoenix as far as i'm aware is 45

00:02:31.580 maybe he's 46 by now. I don't know. Yeah. Uh, you're 27. So it, you know, there's a bit of an

00:02:38.200 age gap, uh, not the same as an 18 year old, but there's still an age gap here. Uh, do you want to

00:02:44.200 tell me a little bit about how you met Phoenix and you know, how you got to know him? Okay. Um,

00:02:52.140 so I first met Phoenix, um, through a friend when I went to the pride center at the, uh, end of, uh,

00:02:58.440 2024. He was the co-coordinator at the Pride Center. At first, he was very charming, and he

00:03:09.260 didn't really start to notice red flags. He certainly didn't put the pieces together in

00:03:15.920 hindsight's 2020 here. Should have been obvious, but not always. And we kind of hit it off at

00:03:27.600 first uh he was pretty nice he was uh very attentive to um what i was saying what i was

00:03:33.280 talking about um and he always had something to say and i've struggled making friends at the

00:03:42.000 university one of my uh best friends he moved to london uh and uh i was just struggling to

00:03:48.640 make connections at the university it was my first semester there and uh i also struggle with uh bpd

00:03:55.840 and phoenix he kind of well i guess it's a red flag he tends to kind of hone in on people with

00:04:01.920 uh other mental disorders and mental health issues and uh so yeah i was dealing with a lot

00:04:13.200 and so you ended up engaging in a consensual relationship with phoenix at first right yeah

00:04:19.920 at first and obviously there was some uh sexual sexual assaults there you know and he didn't

00:04:28.640 reveal to you that he had hiv and then there was an incident in the report the investigation report

00:04:35.600 that i read from the university that you were unable to consent can you tell us about that

00:04:42.000 Yes. So the one that is substantiated on a basis of probability in the report,

00:04:53.520 that happened about a week before Valentine's Day. And I had him over at my place. I got high,

00:05:01.920 he stayed mostly sober, I ended up passing out. And I woke up to him assaulting me.

00:05:08.320 and then I passed out again and uh yeah that was so in the report Phoenix admits that it happened

00:05:19.980 yeah but he says that it's not like what you recall yeah he basically tried to down uh downplay

00:05:27.540 it say oh you know it did happen but it was consensual but even in the report he notes that

00:05:32.120 I was groggy and out of it the next morning so obviously I was not able to consent and

00:05:38.260 yeah so at some point you obviously started seeing red flags even if you were in a consensual

00:05:43.940 relationship and this was lasted a few weeks as as far as i'm aware maybe five five or six weeks

00:05:48.660 over the winter of 24 um but that was it 24 24 to uh very early 2025 yeah so you would have seen

00:05:57.860 some red flags and you would have gotten the you know the idea that maybe this isn't the best

00:06:02.420 relationship to be in so how how did that happen when did you realize this wasn't uh maybe what

00:06:07.620 what it seemed at first well I guess I started pretty early on um he was very evasive about his

00:06:15.100 age uh when I met him in the pride center the light the lighting it's pretty low and you can't

00:06:20.380 really tell exactly how old someone is and I thought at first oh maybe he's like in his early

00:06:26.120 30s and I asked him he said oh don't uh don't ask and I was just okay a little weird but

00:06:32.840 he was charming enough that you didn't really look into it too far didn't want to offend

00:06:38.260 yeah so let's talk a little bit about the investigation report then or even the

00:06:44.840 investigation process so obviously you realized something was wrong you had to do something about

00:06:49.820 it you decided to go to the university and make a complaint what happened

00:06:53.180 well at first i i had the support of the uh sexual violence office and and um they uh pursued a

00:07:02.660 investigation through a third party um an investigator out of uh toronto this was a

00:07:08.000 lawyer that was hired so they hired an outside lawyer to do the investigation

00:07:11.040 yeah and she was uh like it took forever but she was very thorough and uh she did you know she uh

00:07:19.900 uh said the uh assault there before valentine's day that was proved on a basis of probability

00:07:26.800 the hiv thing as well um and also him groping me in the pride center after everything was

00:07:35.420 off that was after you broke up with him right yeah officially yeah the interesting thing about

00:07:40.700 the report is that the investigator concluded they couldn't do anything about the non-consensual

00:07:48.640 sex yes the i don't know if we can say this on this podcast i guess we'll blur it out later if

00:07:54.740 we can't they couldn't do anything about that because it fell outside the scope of the university

00:07:59.340 which is something that i found to be a little bit disturbing yeah it's it's definitely um

00:08:05.660 really disgusting and bizarre when you look into it it doesn't make any sense and i don't think

00:08:12.600 it's supposed to make sense i think the university just wanted to protect its own image over uh the

00:08:18.620 safety of its students so they didn't want to engage in taking any more harsher uh approaches

00:08:24.760 to phoenix and so they basically just let them off with a slap on the wrist yeah because i think a

00:08:29.560 lot of parents send their children to school or university rather expecting that if a crime

00:08:36.160 happens the university will do something about it but in this case the university didn't um correct

00:08:41.120 me if i'm wrong but the consequences for phoenix was essentially a slap on the wrist it was training

00:08:46.660 it was no contact order and what was the third thing? An educational session that they may or

00:08:52.780 may not get to depending on if they have the resources. So ultimately there were not really

00:08:57.720 any consequences for Phoenix in this particular instance not even for the alleged criminal

00:09:03.100 activity which the university did agree had happened through their investigation. Now one

00:09:08.600 of the things that when you reached out to me you wanted to say make clear is that you felt that

00:09:13.820 this was an institutional failure to protect students. That's your quote. Why do you think

00:09:20.100 this is an institutional failure to protect students? And maybe what we could talk about

00:09:23.540 is other students as well. So this obviously hasn't just affected you. Other people have been

00:09:31.680 affected by Phoenix behavior. Yeah, yeah. It's not just me. And that's the whole crazy thing

00:09:38.600 about this is that there were several victims who uh spoke to me about phoenix's behavior

00:09:45.160 um one of them is now my friend and uh he was basically excommunicated from the pride center

00:09:53.000 and uh the coordinator and phoenix they spread all these horrible rumors about him

00:09:58.920 and uh i decided to reach out to this person after um after the assault

00:10:04.120 and uh i asked him about this he was like no that's completely false and i could tell he was

00:10:11.700 telling the truth and then because he was also saying uh about like phoenix's behavior towards

00:10:16.680 him and it just became very apparent that this is someone who wants to kind of divide his victims so

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00:12:28.420 Yeah, so one thing I want to ask you about is you told me that you felt this was an identity.

00:12:35.300 This was a cover-up due to identity politics optics.

00:12:39.500 and just before we recorded the show you were telling me that you felt that there was an issue

00:12:45.480 here on how male victims of sexual assault are treated uh is there a connection between those

00:12:50.440 two things i i believe so um well the university i didn't want i i think it didn't want to pursue

00:12:58.160 anything harsher against phoenix due to his identity um being trans and all a whole laundry 0.98

00:13:05.380 list of mental disorders that he claims to have and it and in the event there's a male victim

00:13:12.980 there's a lot a lot of stigma around it and it doesn't get treated with the same kind of care

00:13:18.020 as it would be like if there's a male and a female a male perpetrator and a female victim

00:13:23.700 well other than other than that i mean why would you say this is down to identity politics

00:13:28.980 obviously phoenix does identify as many things uh through his profiles that's obvious um and oddly

00:13:36.980 he i don't think he did identifies all the all those things even just a few years ago so this

00:13:41.380 is a new thing but uh in uh in the actual report itself it didn't read that way so that's something

00:13:51.140 that you believe for specific reasons what are those reasons well it the university it's pretty

00:14:00.180 woke and it's it can be pretty far left we have a bunch of uh pro-palestine rallies uh on the campus

00:14:08.580 a bunch of pro iran stuff obviously not all the students feel that way and even in the pride center

00:14:13.860 itself we have a whole list of identity uh flags and um even a free palestine flag like i mean

00:14:22.580 do you think that maybe they were viewing it through this lens of identity intersectional

00:14:26.740 identity politics here so power privilege all this and so looking at all the different identities

00:14:32.500 uh you know and oh we're measuring i don't know like a white cis gay male versus a trans non-binary

00:14:42.900 pansexual multiple uh mental health disorder like kind of trying do you think that maybe they were

00:14:49.140 trying to evaluate all the different privileges against each other yeah i think that's what it

00:14:54.340 comes down to um they probably thought like that he could use these identities as a weapon against

00:15:01.460 them as he has for against other people and they didn't want to deal with being accused of trans

00:15:06.500 phobia or being ableist even though his victims a lot of them were also trans or

00:15:12.900 had mental illness as well let's talk about other people just for a second because one person had

00:15:19.780 told me that they also engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with phoenix only to later 0.85

00:15:25.780 find out by i believe your social media posts that phoenix had was hiv positive yeah no i was the

00:15:34.420 pretty much the first person to find out at the school about Phoenix's status and the lengths who

00:15:41.500 would go to cover that up. There are two, yeah, it wasn't just that one victim who did not know

00:15:47.700 until after I'd revealed it. There's another one who is also in the article as well, the one that

00:15:53.760 phoenix defamed uh and tried to get excommunicated from the pride center um yeah it's it's 0.94

00:16:05.280 really really disgusting uh how this web of weird uh sexual perversions and uh abuse go

00:16:16.560 so is there anything that i haven't brought up about the the events and the investigation that

00:16:26.040 you would like to talk about that you would like to bring up um just it's it's um really affected

00:16:36.440 me around campus like uh myself and many others they can't even go to the main campus anymore

00:16:41.100 because phoenix might show up and he might harass people and it's not a situation that obviously

00:16:47.220 someone who survives this wants to wants to be in and when the university refuses to take action

00:16:52.480 it shows loud and clear what their agenda is that they don't actually care about the victims they

00:16:58.520 care about the image they have well that agenda would is resulting in a in a person with a pattern

00:17:06.300 of highly problematic, sexually predatory behavior

00:17:11.740 to be loose on campus without any real sanctions.

00:17:14.840 Mm-hmm.

00:17:16.360 Yeah.

00:17:18.880 It's just, I thought about this earlier

00:17:22.080 and the university, it's for they, them.

00:17:24.960 It's not for you and I.

00:17:26.780 That's such a powerful quote.

00:17:29.000 I wasn't expecting you to bring that up.

00:17:31.620 Okay, well, I would love to know what is next?

00:17:35.140 What is next for you? Where is this going? Well, I have an open case with the Windsor police.

00:17:41.660 I spoke with the major crimes unit officer, constable, and also the victim services constable.

00:17:51.400 And my open case, I started it last year after I found out about, you know, the assaults and

00:17:58.900 went to the university. And I thought like the university might have my back on a lot of this.

00:18:03.780 um but obviously the reprimands were very light and um

00:18:13.380 so i plan to take well at least the report substantiated a lot of it so i will take that

00:18:18.340 report to the police and i will have them press charges against phoenix and go from there and um

00:18:25.700 and is that is that you alone is anyone else um has anyone else reached out to i guess

00:18:31.460 participate in a complaint um not really at this time there are people who reached out to uh to

00:18:38.740 you for for the article to provide a statement for that but none so far have really offered to uh

00:18:46.340 go to the police with me and i think i'll be working on that later after yeah afterwards and

00:18:52.660 you and you told me that you if anyone else has part of the reason that you wanted to share your

00:18:58.260 story is that if this is happening to other people that they're not alone and that's certainly

00:19:03.460 someone that they could reach out to you is that right yes yeah uh people can reach out to me with

00:19:08.180 their own stories about phoenix and um i will take them to the police with me and i will have them

00:19:15.540 added to the case do you want to share maybe an email or a contact where people can get in touch

00:19:20.580 with you um so my email would probably be the best place to get a hold of me um it's jake lenfeld uh

00:19:26.980 four the number four at gmail.com and uh just shoot me an email and i'll get back to you when i can

00:19:35.700 jake i think it's really brave of you to come out i mean when i was writing the article you were

00:19:40.580 you know you really wanted to be anonymous you wanted your story to be out there you knew that

00:19:44.420 if people read it knew you or were involved in some way they would know as you but you

00:19:48.100 you know you wanted to remain anonymous and a lot of people that i speak to

00:19:51.380 want to remain anonymous uh this is very common very few people want to come forward but you did

00:19:55.460 you came not only did you come forward but you did it in a particularly difficult circumstance

00:20:00.180 um so i just wanted to commend you for your bravery and i hope that this there's a resolution

00:20:05.780 in your favor down in the long run and that people at the university of windsor and maybe

00:20:10.100 elsewhere are protected from somebody with a pattern of very disturbing behavior

00:20:15.540 yeah i wanted to come forward because um it helps to have a face and a name to put to a story because

00:20:23.220 if it's anonymous you can't see the actual harm this person has caused and you kind of dismiss it

00:20:29.460 and especially with a lot of uh what was discussed in the article you kind of think oh you know like

00:20:34.180 that's completely insane and you dismiss it and like especially when i posted it on reddit i got

00:20:40.660 people saying like oh this is just a hit piece on trans people um and then they're also questioning

00:20:46.660 my uh credibility as well and it's it's a lot harder to deny the reality of things when you

00:20:55.300 can actually see the cost of it yeah well i reviewed the things it's pretty credible i don't

00:21:01.700 think we would have published it had it not been credible i can say that my editors really poured

00:21:06.900 over the evidence we collected an awful lot just to make sure that everything was verifiable so

00:21:13.540 there's absolutely credibility within this story and again I thank you for coming forward

00:21:18.180 Jake thank you for joining the show today yeah no worries I'm glad I could join you and

00:21:23.040 I hope we get some justice here against Phoenix and stop this from happening in the future yeah

00:21:29.440 I hope so too thank you

Juno News - March 27, 2026

University puts “IDENTITY POLITICS” over STUDENT SAFETY

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