A woman is anonymously suing Michigan State University, alleging the school discouraged her from filing a police report after three MSU basketball players raped her at an off-campus party in 2015.
The lawsuit, which was filed Monday and does not name the three basketball players (who are no longer at the school), states that when the student turned to the Michigan State University Counseling Center for help dealing with what she’d been through, was told she’d be “swimming with some really big fish,” if she were to file a police report and that she, “faced an uphill battle that would create anxiety and unwanted media attention,” NBC News reports. The victim says that when she disclosed that the men who raped her were MSU basketball players, “the counselor’s demeanor completely changed,” and he or she immediately brought an additional staff member into the room with them.
To make matters worse, during her visit to the Counseling Center, the victim was allegedly not informed of her Title IX rights, and she received no information about how to seek STD or pregnancy tests.
According to the victim, who is publicly being referred to as “Jane Doe” for the purpose of the lawsuit, she was an 18-year-old journalism student at the school when she and a friend went out to a bar on the night of April 12, 2015. At the bar, they met members of the men’s basketball team, one of whom offered to buy her a drink. He later invited her to an off-campus party, allegedly telling her that her roommate was already there.
When she arrived and realized her roommate wasn’t there, the woman says she “was feeling discombobulated” and couldn’t move her fingers enough to text her roommate. After realizing she was “incredibly thirsty” she began to think she may have been drugged. She says she was invited into one of the players’ rooms, where he gave her a glass of water, before the room eventually went dark and she was thrown face-down on the bed as three players took turns raping her, the lawsuit states.
The woman says she doesn’t remember anything else until she woke up on a couch in the apartment the next morning and took a cab back to her residence hall, where she told a friend what happened the night before. Her friend reportedly took her to the MSU Counseling Center around a week later.
Doe’s lawsuit is the latest of several accusations that Michigan State covered up claims of sexual assault and abuse within the athletic department. Larry Nassar, a USA Gymnastics doctor who has been sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for molesting upwards of 200 women and girls throughout his career, was a longtime faculty member at the school, and MSU is named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit that claims that the school may has covered up and ignored complaints about his abuse. Since Nassar’s sentencing, both MSU’s president and athletic director have resigned.