She wasn’t safe at home. Now, she feels unsafe at work.

Content warning: This story includes mention of domestic and emotional abuse. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.

Rebecca, an adjunct professor at DePaul, discovered in October 2016 that she was pregnant by her boyfriend, DePaul leisure studies professor Dan Hibbler, and moved in with him shortly after. By the following January, she was frightened for her life. 

Throughout their relationship, Hibbler had been emotionally and verbally abusive toward her, diminishing her academic career and questioning whether the baby was his, she told The DePaulia. But on Jan. 4, the abuse verged on physical, according to testimony she gave the Kane County Sheriff’s Office at the time, per a police report obtained by The DePaulia. 

Hibbler appeared to have been drinking all day, and when Rebecca returned home from work, he was agitated, she told the Kane County Sheriff’s office in 2017. After a quick spat, Rebecca thought that Hibbler had calmed down, so they planned to have dinner. Hibbler started eating without her, and when she sat down, he continued to make rude comments toward her, according to the police report.

He told her not to talk to him, and she retorted the same, the police report reads. Hibbler then “became enraged,” picked up his dinner plate and slammed it down, smashing the glass table, according to the police report. 

Rebecca told the police she got up to get her phone, but Hibbler took it away, the report reads. He also took her iPad and the house keys off her key ring, according to the police report.

As Rebecca tried to retrieve her phone, Hibbler told her that he was going to “burn down the house” and that he “didn’t want to kill anybody,” according to the police report. Rebecca did not press charges, telling the responding officer that she “just wanted the incident documented,” the police report reads.

Two days after the incident, Rebecca called WINGS Safe House’s Community Crisis Center, according to documents from the center obtained by The DePaulia. She requested resources from the center, explaining the conflict. Several months later, Rebecca fled their home with their then-two-month-old baby after Hibbler allegedly verbally abused her again, according to a second police report. 

The documents obtained from WINGS Safe House show she landed there on Aug. 20, 2017, homeless.

Hibbler did not respond to numerous requests for comment through multiple channels over the span of several weeks. 

Rebecca said that she didn’t go back to DePaul the first quarter of fall 2017 out of fear that she and Hibbler would be scheduled to work in the same building. She confided her fears to her department chair, who advised her to report to Title IX, which she ultimately did, submitting documentation and photo evidence to back her allegations. 

The allegations against Hibbler were as follows, verbatim, according to the Title IX office’s closing letter:

• Dr. Hibbler belittled and demeaned [Rebecca’s] academic background.
• Engaging in public discussions of [Rebecca’s] sex life, accusing her of infidelity and repeatedly questioning the paternity of their child. 
• Calling [Rebecca] a bitch. 
• Demanding [Rebecca] limit contact with her mother and with other friends. 
• Demanding [Rebecca] contribute to household expenses, while demanding she not return to work after having their child. 
• Using gift cards given to [Rebecca] for a baby shower to cover household repairs and purchase personal items for Dan Hibbler (shoes)
• Asking [Rebecca] to do household chores while recovering from a C-section
• Threatening [Rebecca] by stating “I believe you will die first” and “Most men understand men who kill their wives.”
• Engaging in physical threats and restraining her from leaving. Specifically, in January 2017 after breaking a glass table during an argument, Dan Hibbler stated “I hope I don’t kill anyone tonight” and “I will burn this place [their home] down.” He then retained [Rebecca’s] belongings (phone, keys, iPad) to prevent her from leaving or calling for help, which included him wrestling [Rebecca] while standing to obtain her phone. [Rebecca] was five months pregnant at the time.
• Entering [Rebecca’s] car without her permission. 
• Following [Rebecca] to learn where she currently resides.

“At the time, it was Karen Tamburro who was the coordinator,” Rebecca said. “And initially getting in touch with her — it was very, I would say, proactive and aggressive. It was like ‘Yes, we take this very seriously and we’re very concerned. If you have any questions … like any time, please don’t hesitate.’”

Rebecca’s case was assigned to then-investigator Cheryl Wayne, whom she thought was “fantastic.” But Rebecca soon started to feel that the office’s attitude towards her was changing for the worse.

“There was just a point where it just all sort of was going in one direction, and then just took a 180,” she said.

Rebecca said that in her next communication with the office, she felt an “attitude” and began to feel as though she was “bothering” the office by reaching out — despite their encouragement to reach out with questions or concerns. 

“The whole shift, the whole communication [felt] like an annoyance, it was more of like, ‘Why are you bothering me?’” she said. “And of course, yes, it wasn’t verbally stated. But it was the whole tone in the response to things.”

Rebecca was scheduled to meet with Wayne on Feb. 28, 2018, according to emails obtained by The DePaulia. Before she could do this, Wayne had already arranged to meet with Hibbler.

According to Statz, DePaul’s current Title IX coordinator, the order by which parties involved in Title IX cases are spoken to is “informed by a variety of variables rather than a rigid, standardized approach to be used in all situations.”

Rebecca’s case was formally closed on April 30, 2018. The office determined the information provided by Rebecca was “insufficient” to prove the abuse took place in all but two of her claims — that she was expected to contribute to household expenses and that Hibbler entered her car without her permission. 

“He would threaten to burn the house down, he would threaten ‘I hope I don’t kill anyone tonight,’ he would take my belongings away — and I reported this, I sent them everything,” she told The DePaulia, echoing her statement to the Kane County Sheriff’s office in a report. 

Despite the office’s determination that Rebecca provided insufficient evidence, she felt the office did not do their diligence.

“I think [DePaul’s Title IX office] wanted to make it go away,” she said. 

 Tamburro, who is now the director of Northwestern University’s Office of Equity, declined to be interviewed by The DePaulia on numerous occasions. Wayne did not respond to The DePaulia’s request for comment. 

Hibbler remains a tenured faculty member in the School of New Learning at DePaul, and Rebecca remains an adjunct professor, according to DePaul’s website.