Boy, talk about a classic frame-up.
Folks, if anybody ever tells you or your children that, don't listen. State you will answer questions only with your lawyer present. If you can't afford a lawyer, ask if you are being charged and tell them you want your free lawyer, and keep your mouth shut.
If you don't exercise your Constitutional rights, you have given them up.
Spot on. We have three boys and have told them that if anyone ever tells you not to let your parents know something, they want you do something they is wrong.
And I agree with your concern -- it sure as heck looks like Duke University made a decision early on to cut these guys loose and set them up as the bad guys in public as soon as anything went bad. Which it did.
Astonishing as this may seem, this whole case is going to get far, far uglier.
There you have it, folks. Another dissatisfied customer. I see from your tag line you've been there done that. NEVER, NEVER let you kids leave the house without knowing what all of us fought and died for and what is theirs by rights guaranteed through a document, though not perfect, damned close. This is a bunch of crap that you are guilty if you lawyer up. How sophisticated and well-versed in the law are the average parents or individual?
When there is no actual investigation, the easy way out is to use all the "cooperation without a lawyer" to make the matter go away with a sitting-duck perp. Easy-peasy -- no muss, no fuss. How delightful, spray a little Channel No. 5 and the world will be so much more pleasant without the stink.