A former program director and professor at the University of Cincinnati was virtually banished from the UC community in the first half of 2019.
Matthew Irvine – accused of choking and striking his former wife, and threatening to kill her and a second person – was forbidden from speaking or otherwise working with students.
Irvine couldn't communicate with UC personnel, alumni or industry partners. The first director of UC's Digital Media Collaborative couldn't even "present himself as a representative of the University in any capacity," according to a December 2018 grievance resolution between Irvine and UC officials that The Enquirer obtained.
Despite prohibiting Irvine from performing certain core functions of a college leader, UC still paid him like one, according to the resolution.
Irvine continued to receive his base salary, more than $140,000 that school year, until his resignation became official six months later, in late June.
Some view the deal as a final error by UC after officials had already failed to properly address the various allegations against Irvine.
Irvine's former wife, who is now divorced from him, expressed disappointment in how UC handled the situation, according to an email she sent to a UC Title IX investigator.
"I just have not had a good experience with UC and investigations and Title IX," wrote the woman, whom The Enquirer is not naming because she is a victim of alleged violence.
No formal action after reported death threats
The case coincides with a period in which criticism and legal action have faulted UC for its handling of issues related to Title IX, the federal law passed in 1972 protecting people from discrimination based on sex in education.
UC currently faces a federal lawsuit brought by its former Title IX coordinator, who claims she was pushed out for investigating possible Title IX violations.
And UC is currently the subject of a federal investigation regarding possible Title IX discrimination related to sexual violence. The investigation now is just over two years old.
Irvine, 52, was hired by UC in 2015 alongside his now ex-wife, when the pair were still together. She was hired as an associate professor in the media collaborative.
Irvine's hiring was so high profile, UC's former president Santa Ono tweeted about it.
The first complaints against Irvine came later, in 2017, according to an internal UC investigation of Irvine obtained by The Enquirer through a public record request.
Irvine hacked into his then wife's Apple account and found photos of a "sexual nature" involving her and a male faculty member, according to the records. Irvine and his wife were separated.
Irvine went to one of his superiors, a dean, and indicated that if he saw the male faculty member, he would "kill him," the records say.
Robert Probst, at the time the dean of the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP), reported the incident to the Office of Academic Personnel.
Days later, one of Irvine's students told the Title IX office that Irvine had threatened to kill a faculty member, according to the records.
Irvine, in a phone interview with The Enquirer, gave divergent explanations for Probst's report.
"I made it a million percent clear ... that if it came out of my mouth – because, again, I'm as fallible as anybody else – if it did, it was in a moment of talking to a friend privately ... and (I) said, 'I'm gonna kill this guy,' " Irvine said. "But I did not say that."
Of the student's allegation, Irvine said he was overheard singing along to a song about killing.
The reports by the former dean and the student did not lead to "any formal action being taken by the University," according to the internal investigation.
However, they did result in action taken by UC's ex-police chief – action that only added to the mounting distress for Irvine's former wife.
Victim faces police chief's advances
When Irvine's former wife first got a call from a UC police investigator, she claimed she wasn't scared of Irvine's reported threats.
"...in reality I was just afraid that if Matt (Irvine) lost his job he would finally follow through and kill me," the woman would later write, according to UC records. But she changed her mind, called the investigator back and "reported everything."
Around this time, Irvine began cyberstalking the woman, according to the records. He tracked her whereabouts using the Find My iPhone feature. He also replaced a doorknob to her cellar and kept a key to access it. And he sat outside the house of a professor whom he suspected she was dating and demanded she come outside. (She wasn't there and wasn't dating him.)
As UCPD investigated, the woman bumped into Anthony Carter, the former police chief. She told him she preferred to speak with the investigator, Jennifer McMahon, about the case.
But Carter persisted, according to an external report from 2017 previously reported on by The Enquirer. Carter sent her flirtatious texts and asked her out multiple times.
She responded out of "fear of upsetting the chief of police,"
In response to a recent record request, UC released three pages of the police investigation from this period. The records show an officer contacted Irvine and warned him that if he did commit assault, he could face charges.
The records make no mention of Carter's ongoing communication with the woman.
UC received the student complaint about Irvine making a death threat, and UC officials notified UCPD of this second complaint, according to the records.
The police records obtained make no mention of any further action taken by UCPD following the student's complaint.
A spokesperson for UCPD confirmed the agency never filed charges against Irvine.
Carter eventually resigned, but UC granted him a new position as a researcher with similar pay. Today, he no longer works at UC, according to a spokesperson.
Courtney Bullard, a Tennessee-based lawyer who specializes in Title IX compliance, said by phone that universities sometimes pass along a report of wrongdoing to police without taking more action.
She added universities can reprimand employees who violate school policies.
"You’d be hard pressed to argue that making a death threat against a coworker doesn’t violate your policy in some way or form," Bullard said.
Bullard is an expert witness in the federal sex discrimination lawsuit against UC brought by the former Title IX coordinator.
UC 'didn't even discipline me'
Irvine told The Enquirer that UC "didn't even discipline me" after the reported death threats.
Grace Cunningham, who graduated from the university in late 2018, said officials failed to consider the allegations with the proper gravity.
"It really makes me angry because of UC’s history," Cunningham said of the Irvine case. "...UC knew something and didn't do anything."
Cunningham has scrutinized UC's handling of sexual- and gender-based violence after reporting her own sexual assault to Title IX as a student. She helped start Students for Survivors at UC, an activist group focused on supporting survivors.
Cunningham added that it's possible the reported abuse of Irvine's former wife would have stopped had he faced repercussions.
M.B. Reilly, a UC spokesperson, did not directly address Enquirer questions about Irvine.
"I would not generally be able to provide additional comment on a personnel matter," she wrote by email.
'Aggressive and threatening'
Irvine's abuse of his ex-wife persisted for months, according to the records. Irvine stole items from her home, threatened her boyfriend, broke her window and "came inside aggressive and threatening me," the woman wrote in court documents.
She feared Irvine would kill her, according to the records.
In seeking a domestic violence civil protection order, the woman detailed more than a dozen instances of abuse over several years. A court ruled in her favor, granting the order, barring Irvine from contacting her and ordering him to vacate her home, according to court documents.
Irvine's former wife was "fearful for her safety (due) to past behaviors and past threats that he (Irvine) would ruin her life or kill her" if she sought a divorce, the protection order states.
The order was filed in September 2018 in Hamilton County Domestic Relations Court and signed by Magistrate Karen Falter. It was in place for about a year.
"Abusive behaviors include (Irvine) pushing (his former wife) from a moving car, open hand slaps to the head, pushing, grabbing, choking and slamming her head against the ground," the order states.
In 2017, Irvine "promised to murder me if I was there when he got home from work," the woman wrote in seeking the order.
In an earlier instance, he choked the woman before she called 911, according to court documents. "He pushed me to ground and smashed my head repeatedly on the ground while continuing to choke me," she wrote.
Micaela Deming, a policy director and staff attorney for the Ohio Domestic Violence Network, reviewed the documents in the Irvine case and said they indicated "serious red flags," pointing specifically to the danger of strangulation.
Victims who have suffered strangulation are seven times as likely to be killed as those who face abuse without strangulation, according to a study in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.
In other instances, Irvine dragged the woman by her hair and hit her on the head with a "hard dog bone," court documents state.
Irvine told The Enquirer that the claims in the restraining order were "beyond false" and "garbage."
But UC's internal investigation included a text message exchange between Irvine and his ex-wife, in which he wrote, "My smacking you on the head ... That time was shitty ... I know that."
When asked about this, Irvine claimed his former wife made inappropriate comments.
"So I tapped her on the head," he said. When reminded of his word choice in the text, he added, "I could say smack. I could say tap. ... If I did physically touch (her), it was not to hurt her."
He also claimed the protection order was modified after a judge agreed with him that both parties were at fault, yet no such modification exists in the case file. A lawyer who represented Irvine for the protection order did not return a request for comment.
The order ultimately ended as part of the couple's divorce.
UC tried to fire Irvine but failed
Irvine was suspended in September 2018, as UC launched its internal investigation into his conduct.
Shortly before, a student had filed a new complaint against Irvine.
"I am concerned he will stalk me on campus," the student wrote by email to a professor, according to the records.
In an interview with a Title IX investigator, the student said he started dating Irvine's former wife after taking one of her classes, according to the records. The student said Irvine tried to sabotage his former wife's employment and "always threatens to physically abuse" her.
"Unfortunately, a degree of corruption exists on campus because when this individual was (accused) in the past for similar behavior, nothing occurred," the student wrote, according to the records. "... He narrowly escapes repercussions time after time."
The student also wrote that in a past investigation of Irvine, the chief of police "gathered evidence, but instead of assisting the victim(s), he made advances on one of them."
Irvine's former wife told a Title IX investigator in October 2018 that she had "lawyer bills for the (former UCPD) Chief Carter stuff," which was part of the reason she declined to be interviewed by the investigator, according to the records.
Taylr Ucker-Lauderman, the director of communications at the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, said a general lack of accountability for perpetrators can discourage victims from reporting crimes.
"Schools either do not understand the impact of trauma on the brain, the cues that something extremely dangerous and serious is going on, or fully grasp their duty under federal law to respond," Ucker-Lauderman said in an email.
After UC closed its internal investigation of Irvine, Stanley Romanstein, the dean of the College-Conservatory of Music, sought to fire him for cause.
In a letter to Irvine, Romanstein wrote that Irvine didn't deny the allegations against him but instead denied his former wife's "characterization of the events."
"You appear to be no closer to understanding the impact of your behaviors," Romanstein wrote, adding, "I cannot, and will not, allow you to continue to engage in these unprofessional behaviors which have had such a negative impact on students, staff and fellow faculty."
Irvine contested Romanstein's decision. He challenged the "validity of the charges" and the "severity of the proposed discipline," according to his request for mediation.
About a month later, Irvine and UC officials agreed to the grievance resolution, allowing Irvine to be paid for more than six months while he was essentially banished from campus.
Romanstein was among those who signed the grievance resolution.
Initially, UC did not release the resolution to The Enquirer when filling the newspaper's record requests. But after Irvine shared the document with The Enquirer, UC confirmed its legitimacy by releasing it.
Reilly, the UC spokesperson, did not respond to a question about the omission.
In the months before his resignation, Irvine said he did perform some work, including keeping tabs on UC social media channels "from a distance," working on a book and forwarding inquiries from parents of prospective students to other UC officials. He was only allowed contact with one person at UC – his successor.
Reilly did not respond to a question about the nature of work Irvine performed.
Cunningham, the former UC student who helped start Students for Survivors, said the time needed for UC to address the allegations was "unacceptable and a testament to UC failing to take sexual- and gender-based violence seriously."
Neal Schuett, a criminal defense lawyer who represented Irvine during the mediation process, told The Enquirer that a Title IX official was involved in the discussions, though he was unaware if the official or Irvine's former wife had an opportunity to contest the eventual deal.
"I think there were definitely parts that were favorable" to Irvine, Schuett said, adding he believed Irvine was well represented during the process. "We went in with a certain perspective. I thought we got that perspective across."
Deming, the policy director for the Ohio Domestic Violence Network, said universities generally act to avoid being sued by accused people, while victims' mental and physical suffering can be a barrier to their taking legal action.
Schuett wrote by email that "an experienced lawyer" generally should discuss with accused clients the necessary steps to take with an institution to preserve the ability to file a lawsuit.
Reilly did not respond to a question about whether the threat of litigation factored in the deal with Irvine.
While universities have the authority to impose discipline for a range of infractions, like plagiarism, Deming said near-lethal incidents of domestic or sexual violence are often met with hesitancy.
The Irvine case left Deming with the impression that UC is struggling to meet its different responsibilities, such as abiding by employment contracts and Title IX and working with law enforcement.
"The most telling thing for me is when you have a victim who is supposed to be ... protected and served by a program ... expressing that they have not had a good experience with a process – that's what needs to be addressed," Deming said, referencing the email sent by Irvine's former wife in which she wrote, "I just have not had a good experience with UC and investigations and Title IX."
The woman, who didn't wish to be interviewed for this story, resigned from UC before the beginning of this school year.
Irvine said he's left Cincinnati and now works for a film studio.
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Documents: College leader hit, choked, vowed to kill wife. UC paid him for months after failed firing - Cincinnati.com
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