I sure hope that Kyle Payne wasn’t really doing any counselling with rape and sexual assault survivors on the basis of this website, purporting to be associated with Buena Vista University. BVU’s website uses a different web address root, as you might expect, and there doesn’t seem to be any association between the two.
BVU doesn’t list any sexual assault services.
There are virtually no external links on Payne’s website. He refers to BVU’s women’s studies program and if you didn’t know better, you could believe he is linking to it. He refers to training programmes and possibilities for classroom presentations, but there are no links there either.
The photo on the home page comes from Men Can Stop Rape but, again, there is no link.
Payne is listed as the webmaster. There is reference to “Advocates”, note the plural, but none are listed, nor is there any biographical information or training credentials with reference to Payne.
I’d surely like to know more about Payne’s “advocacy” with respect to rape survivors. If he was really doing it, it would appear to have been fraud.
mirabile dictu 
Unfortunately, even though he’s a hypocrite and rapist himself, I don’t think he is a total fraud. If you take a look at BVU Women’s Studies page it says If you would like your event posted on our web site, please contact Kyle Payne via email at paynkyl@bvu.edu.
Ok, that’s NOT BVU’s site you’re looking at, that’s Payne’s site. As far as I can see, BVU’s official site has NO mention or link to Payne. And this confusion is precisely what worries me. I don’t think Payne is a danger to anyone at BVU at this point, but what he has done here, the apparent ease with which he did it, highlights the need for extreme caution.
bruh, ok, this gets creepier and creepier.
it does seem verified that he was a BVU student, at least, and an R.A., I guess. did they somehow not notice that he was advocating his services as an official BVU…thing? or…?
..I suppose it’s possible that the links used to be there but they purged them after the charges; but he kept them up in the hopes that casual passers-by looking at his CV wouldn’t notice?
o.k. so SAVE seems to be his own thing; is “Iowa Casa” also just him? note that it lists upcoming meetings, next one in September. also something about a CEU for becoming a Certified Advocate. is it possible that this is something people can do on their own steam, and that he had just set up his own little operation after getting some kind of certification, or is even that much bogus?
Ya know, somewhere along the way of tracking this story I know I read comments from people who seemed to have known Payne at BVU and to actually be students there. Damned if I can find that now. Haven’t looked at Iowa Casa yet but will do. I actually find the idea that this perv may have been doing some sort of “rape victim counselling” almost more terrifying than anything else. And the idea he might have been doing it without BVU knowing. Or caring? I’d sure like to hear from some BVU students, wouldn’t you?
No, Iowa Casa can’t possibly be him, can it? Much too professional, too many people involved. And I don’t see his name anywhere. Have you found info that would indicate he was actually certified? Funny that Iowa Casa doesn’t seem to have said anything about Payne – you’d think they’d know about it and be concerned. And anyway, what kinda screening do places such as this do anyway? This is all kinda freakin’ me out.
It was back at Eleanor’s Trousers in February that I saw people who seemed to know Payne dropping comments, here:
http://eleanorstrousers.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/disturbing-web-connections/
It sure would be nice if some of those commenters would give us more info.
Can you believe I don’t even know how to drop a link on my own blog?!
I’ve submitted a request for info from Iowa Casa. I’ll let you know if they get back to me.
There was an article on SAFER about how part of the problem was in fact there -isn’t- generally enough screening, because people are just glad for any help they can get–something to that effect. eh:
http://safercampus.org/blog/?p=495
–oh, I see, they saw the same thing you did, but maybe they didn’t see that site had a different root and came to different conclusions:
I suppose one could ask BVU what the what is, there; I did get the impression they just wanted to see the back of this whole thing. Maybe Lynda Waddington, the journalist who’s been covering all this, might find that a good angle to explore for another piece?
I think you are wrong about the web root. Buena Vista University own bvu.edu, consequently it controls all subdomains of bvu.edu, in particular web.bvu.edu. My guess is that this is just the server on which all student organisations are given webspace.
If you click on the “become an advocate” link, bottom left, you go to a page advising you to contact “Nichol Kleespies”. Kleespies seems to be a real person and a Google search will turn up a contact address, if any feels like asking her what the hell is going on.
Wow. Thanks. And it appears that Nichol Kleespies is a man who was, at least in 2005, Director of Community Services at BVU. Stranger and stranger.
Thanks Daran.
Ok, I’m wrong again. Nichol is a woman, a graduate of BVU and, as of January 2008, a day care owner who is still in contact with BVU but who doesn’t appear to have any formal affiliation with the school. And now, I’ll stop writing about this until I feel that I might know what I’m talking about.
I’ve been reading BVU’s Web Policy (http://www2.bvu.edu/departments/president/unicomm/webpolicy.asp). Addresses that have the “web.bvu.edu” format are Unofficial (i.e., not by BVU, but by a student or employee of BVU).
I’m trying to decide if the “SAVE” pages and the “Women’s Studies” pages run by Kyle Payne fall far enough outside the standards in the policy to report them for review.
And for more sketchiness, he claims that a local paper published an article about him (http://kylepayne.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/ida-county-courier-article/). When I searched the archives of the Ida County Courier (http://idacountycourier.com/), I didn’t get any hits for “Kyle Payne.”
Thanks. I don’t know enough about the web world – what you say here is what made sense to me in the beginning though. And re: the Ida County Courier stuff, yes, I noticed that too – the Iowa Independent repeated the stuff Payne put on his post without checking the Courier it would appear.
When Payne did his plea agreement, part of it was that he couldn’t be charged with anything else as a result of these events. That perked up my interest when I saw it and it’s looking more and more pertinent.
What I’m concerned about here, as much as anything, are the institutional implications and how it might have affected women at BVU that we might not know about – and how it could affect women if it’s this easy to set yourself up as a “rape advocate”. Always thought that was an odd title as well.
I wouldn’t bother trying to decide. I would report the SAVE page; it is obviously extremely inappropriate for a sex offender to run, and be the only contact on, a website “offering support to survivors”.
Ideally this should be done by someone connected with the university, or as close to it as possible, or somebody involved in a legitimate support organisation, or both, which rules me out personally as I’m not even in the US. But somebody should take it upon themselves to do this.
According to this, the current Director of Community Services is one Ashley Farmer, and there’s a telephone number for them. There’s also a Director of Counselling Services – Mandy Boothby.
Work is great. I love giving it to other people to do.