University puts “IDENTITY POLITICS” over STUDENT SAFETY
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Summary
In this special episode of The Candace Malan Show, co-host Melanie Bennett is joined by Jake Lenfeld to discuss the University of Windsor investigation into Phoenix Shield, also known as David Williston. Phoenix is a non-binary, trans Pride Centre volunteer at the university, and was found guilty in a university investigation of sexual misconduct and student code violations, behaviour which, according to my guest, was covered up due to "identity politics optics".
Transcript
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Welcome to the Candace Malcolm show. I'm Melanie Bennett, co-host for today's special episode,
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where I want to discuss an investigation that I published a fortnight ago about a University
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of Windsor student named Phoenix Shield, also known as David Williston. Phoenix is a non-binary
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trans Pride Center volunteer at the university, and he was found guilty in a university investigation
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of sexual misconduct and student code violations, behavior, which according to my guest today
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is a pattern for Phoenix that was covered up due to what he calls identity politics optics.
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Now, the person that I named in the article is Louis Adamson, but of course, Louis Adamson is
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not his real name. His real name is Jake Lenfeld, and he's here to talk about it today.
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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.
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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.
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Maybe what we could do is talk about. Let's just go straight into the allegations.
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We'll talk about how you met Phoenix and a situation around that maybe a little bit later
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on, but I'm sure the audience will want to know, well, what is, what are the accusations?
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Well, um, there are a couple, um, he assaulted me at least twice, um, while I was unresponsive
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When we say assaulted, I'm just going to make that clear.
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actually assaulted and i know that's a tough word to say but that's what it is yeah
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and uh he uh he also has hiv which he did not disclose to me until after we had a sexual uh
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consensual sexual encounter um before the assaults took place um and he's very touchy at the school
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at the pride center and it's unwanted contact as well that was also covered in the report
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yeah so let's describe um shield a little bit here phoenix so phoenix as far as i'm aware is 45
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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
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age gap, uh, not the same as an 18 year old, but there's still an age gap here. Uh, do you want to
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tell me a little bit about how you met Phoenix and you know, how you got to know him? Okay. Um,
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so I first met Phoenix, um, through a friend when I went to the pride center at the, uh, end of, uh,
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2024. He was the co-coordinator at the Pride Center. At first, he was very charming, and he
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didn't really start to notice red flags. He certainly didn't put the pieces together in
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hindsight's 2020 here. Should have been obvious, but not always. And we kind of hit it off at
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first uh he was pretty nice he was uh very attentive to um what i was saying what i was
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talking about um and he always had something to say and i've struggled making friends at the
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university one of my uh best friends he moved to london uh and uh i was just struggling to
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make connections at the university it was my first semester there and uh i also struggle with uh bpd
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and phoenix he kind of well i guess it's a red flag he tends to kind of hone in on people with
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uh other mental disorders and mental health issues and uh so yeah i was dealing with a lot
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and so you ended up engaging in a consensual relationship with phoenix at first right yeah
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at first and obviously there was some uh sexual sexual assaults there you know and he didn't
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reveal to you that he had hiv and then there was an incident in the report the investigation report
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that i read from the university that you were unable to consent can you tell us about that
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Yes. So the one that is substantiated on a basis of probability in the report,
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that happened about a week before Valentine's Day. And I had him over at my place. I got high,
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he stayed mostly sober, I ended up passing out. And I woke up to him assaulting me.
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and then I passed out again and uh yeah that was so in the report Phoenix admits that it happened
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yeah but he says that it's not like what you recall yeah he basically tried to down uh downplay
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it say oh you know it did happen but it was consensual but even in the report he notes that
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I was groggy and out of it the next morning so obviously I was not able to consent and
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yeah so at some point you obviously started seeing red flags even if you were in a consensual
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relationship and this was lasted a few weeks as as far as i'm aware maybe five five or six weeks
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over the winter of 24 um but that was it 24 24 to uh very early 2025 yeah so you would have seen
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some red flags and you would have gotten the you know the idea that maybe this isn't the best
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relationship to be in so how how did that happen when did you realize this wasn't uh maybe what
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what it seemed at first well I guess I started pretty early on um he was very evasive about his
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age uh when I met him in the pride center the light the lighting it's pretty low and you can't
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really tell exactly how old someone is and I thought at first oh maybe he's like in his early
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30s and I asked him he said oh don't uh don't ask and I was just okay a little weird but
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he was charming enough that you didn't really look into it too far didn't want to offend
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yeah so let's talk a little bit about the investigation report then or even the
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investigation process so obviously you realized something was wrong you had to do something about
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it you decided to go to the university and make a complaint what happened
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well at first i i had the support of the uh sexual violence office and and um they uh pursued a
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investigation through a third party um an investigator out of uh toronto this was a
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lawyer that was hired so they hired an outside lawyer to do the investigation
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yeah and she was uh like it took forever but she was very thorough and uh she did you know she uh
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uh said the uh assault there before valentine's day that was proved on a basis of probability
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the hiv thing as well um and also him groping me in the pride center after everything was
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off that was after you broke up with him right yeah officially yeah the interesting thing about
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the report is that the investigator concluded they couldn't do anything about the non-consensual
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sex yes the i don't know if we can say this on this podcast i guess we'll blur it out later if
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we can't they couldn't do anything about that because it fell outside the scope of the university
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which is something that i found to be a little bit disturbing yeah it's it's definitely um
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really disgusting and bizarre when you look into it it doesn't make any sense and i don't think
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it's supposed to make sense i think the university just wanted to protect its own image over uh the
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safety of its students so they didn't want to engage in taking any more harsher uh approaches
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to phoenix and so they basically just let them off with a slap on the wrist yeah because i think a
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lot of parents send their children to school or university rather expecting that if a crime
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happens the university will do something about it but in this case the university didn't um correct
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me if i'm wrong but the consequences for phoenix was essentially a slap on the wrist it was training
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it was no contact order and what was the third thing? An educational session that they may or
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may not get to depending on if they have the resources. So ultimately there were not really
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any consequences for Phoenix in this particular instance not even for the alleged criminal
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activity which the university did agree had happened through their investigation. Now one
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of the things that when you reached out to me you wanted to say make clear is that you felt that
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this was an institutional failure to protect students. That's your quote. Why do you think
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this is an institutional failure to protect students? And maybe what we could talk about
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is other students as well. So this obviously hasn't just affected you. Other people have been
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affected by Phoenix behavior. Yeah, yeah. It's not just me. And that's the whole crazy thing
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about this is that there were several victims who uh spoke to me about phoenix's behavior
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um one of them is now my friend and uh he was basically excommunicated from the pride center
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and uh the coordinator and phoenix they spread all these horrible rumors about him
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and uh i decided to reach out to this person after um after the assault
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and uh i asked him about this he was like no that's completely false and i could tell he was
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telling the truth and then because he was also saying uh about like phoenix's behavior towards
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him and it just became very apparent that this is someone who wants to kind of divide his victims so
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they don't get together they don't talk and they don't piece together uh the puzzle okay guys let's
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Yeah, so one thing I want to ask you about is you told me that you felt this was an identity.
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This was a cover-up due to identity politics optics.
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and just before we recorded the show you were telling me that you felt that there was an issue
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here on how male victims of sexual assault are treated uh is there a connection between those
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two things i i believe so um well the university i didn't want i i think it didn't want to pursue
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anything harsher against phoenix due to his identity um being trans and all a whole laundry
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list of mental disorders that he claims to have and it and in the event there's a male victim
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there's a lot a lot of stigma around it and it doesn't get treated with the same kind of care
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as it would be like if there's a male and a female a male perpetrator and a female victim
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well other than other than that i mean why would you say this is down to identity politics
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obviously phoenix does identify as many things uh through his profiles that's obvious um and oddly
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he i don't think he did identifies all the all those things even just a few years ago so this
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is a new thing but uh in uh in the actual report itself it didn't read that way so that's something
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that you believe for specific reasons what are those reasons well it the university it's pretty
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woke and it's it can be pretty far left we have a bunch of uh pro-palestine rallies uh on the campus
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a bunch of pro iran stuff obviously not all the students feel that way and even in the pride center
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itself we have a whole list of identity uh flags and um even a free palestine flag like i mean
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do you think that maybe they were viewing it through this lens of identity intersectional
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identity politics here so power privilege all this and so looking at all the different identities
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uh you know and oh we're measuring i don't know like a white cis gay male versus a trans non-binary
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pansexual multiple uh mental health disorder like kind of trying do you think that maybe they were
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trying to evaluate all the different privileges against each other yeah i think that's what it
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comes down to um they probably thought like that he could use these identities as a weapon against
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them as he has for against other people and they didn't want to deal with being accused of trans
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phobia or being ableist even though his victims a lot of them were also trans or
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had mental illness as well let's talk about other people just for a second because one person had
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told me that they also engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with phoenix only to later
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find out by i believe your social media posts that phoenix had was hiv positive yeah no i was the
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pretty much the first person to find out at the school about Phoenix's status and the lengths who
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would go to cover that up. There are two, yeah, it wasn't just that one victim who did not know
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until after I'd revealed it. There's another one who is also in the article as well, the one that
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phoenix defamed uh and tried to get excommunicated from the pride center um yeah it's it's
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really really disgusting uh how this web of weird uh sexual perversions and uh abuse go
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so is there anything that i haven't brought up about the the events and the investigation that
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you would like to talk about that you would like to bring up um just it's it's um really affected
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me around campus like uh myself and many others they can't even go to the main campus anymore
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because phoenix might show up and he might harass people and it's not a situation that obviously
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someone who survives this wants to wants to be in and when the university refuses to take action
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it shows loud and clear what their agenda is that they don't actually care about the victims they
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care about the image they have well that agenda would is resulting in a in a person with a pattern
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of highly problematic, sexually predatory behavior
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to be loose on campus without any real sanctions.
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What is next for you? Where is this going? Well, I have an open case with the Windsor police.
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I spoke with the major crimes unit officer, constable, and also the victim services constable.
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And my open case, I started it last year after I found out about, you know, the assaults and
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went to the university. And I thought like the university might have my back on a lot of this.
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um but obviously the reprimands were very light and um
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so i plan to take well at least the report substantiated a lot of it so i will take that
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report to the police and i will have them press charges against phoenix and go from there and um
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and is that is that you alone is anyone else um has anyone else reached out to i guess
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participate in a complaint um not really at this time there are people who reached out to uh to
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you for for the article to provide a statement for that but none so far have really offered to uh
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go to the police with me and i think i'll be working on that later after yeah afterwards and
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you and you told me that you if anyone else has part of the reason that you wanted to share your
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story is that if this is happening to other people that they're not alone and that's certainly
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someone that they could reach out to you is that right yes yeah uh people can reach out to me with
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their own stories about phoenix and um i will take them to the police with me and i will have them
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added to the case do you want to share maybe an email or a contact where people can get in touch
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with you um so my email would probably be the best place to get a hold of me um it's jake lenfeld uh
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four the number four at gmail.com and uh just shoot me an email and i'll get back to you when i can
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jake i think it's really brave of you to come out i mean when i was writing the article you were
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you know you really wanted to be anonymous you wanted your story to be out there you knew that
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if people read it knew you or were involved in some way they would know as you but you
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you know you wanted to remain anonymous and a lot of people that i speak to
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want to remain anonymous uh this is very common very few people want to come forward but you did
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you came not only did you come forward but you did it in a particularly difficult circumstance
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um so i just wanted to commend you for your bravery and i hope that this there's a resolution
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in your favor down in the long run and that people at the university of windsor and maybe
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elsewhere are protected from somebody with a pattern of very disturbing behavior
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yeah i wanted to come forward because um it helps to have a face and a name to put to a story because
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if it's anonymous you can't see the actual harm this person has caused and you kind of dismiss it
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and especially with a lot of uh what was discussed in the article you kind of think oh you know like
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that's completely insane and you dismiss it and like especially when i posted it on reddit i got
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people saying like oh this is just a hit piece on trans people um and then they're also questioning
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my uh credibility as well and it's it's a lot harder to deny the reality of things when you
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can actually see the cost of it yeah well i reviewed the things it's pretty credible i don't
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think we would have published it had it not been credible i can say that my editors really poured
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over the evidence we collected an awful lot just to make sure that everything was verifiable so
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there's absolutely credibility within this story and again I thank you for coming forward
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Jake thank you for joining the show today yeah no worries I'm glad I could join you and
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I hope we get some justice here against Phoenix and stop this from happening in the future yeah