MSU Discouraged Woman From Reporting Rape By 3 Athletes: Lawsuit

LANSING, MI — A Michigan State University student who says three basketball players raped her in 2015 has filed a lawsuit against the school, accusing counselors of discouraging her from pursuing allegations against the men. The counselors went as far as suggesting the woman, then 18, should "just get yourself better" and that she would be "swimming with some really big fish" if she pursued charges.

The lawsuit comes as the university faces harsh criticism over how it handled hundreds of sexual assault cases for young women and girls by convicted physician Larry Nassar.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District for the Western District of Michigan, accuses the university of creating an atmosphere and culture in which women "became vulnerable to predatory athletes," and male athletes were treated differently when sexual assault allegations were made. When complaints of misconduct are made against athletes, they were handled behind closed doors and "swept away."

The lawsuit does not identify the three MSU basketball players, but says they had returned to East Lansing earlier in April 2015 after being defeated by Duke University in the Final Four.

On the night of the attack, the basketball players met the woman at Harper's Bar in East Lansing. One of the players offered to buy her an alcoholic drink, and she accepted. He also offered to introduce her to other players.

The lawsuit also does not identify the victim, but says that she was an 18-year-old freshman at the time and aspiring to be a sports journalist, "so interacting with members of the basketball team was of interest to her." She did not have "a romantic interest in any of the team members that approached her."

The players and the woman later went to an off-campus apartment of one of the players after telling her that her roommate had gone to a party there. At the apartment, she discovered her roommate was not present. She also "was feeling discombobulated," the lawsuit states. The woman was forced into a bedroom, where she was thrown face down on the bed and held so she could not move. The three players took turns assaulting her. She later woke in the apartment and called a taxi to go home.

About a week later, the woman went to the MSU Counseling Center, where she reported the rape and said her attackers were MSU basketball players. "The counselor's demeanor completely changed," the lawsuit states. The counselor left the room and returned with another person. The staff members told her that she could either make a police report or deal with the attack "on her own." They told her, that if she chose to notify the police, she "faced an uphill battle that would create anxiety and unwanted media attention and publicity as had happened with many other female students who were sexually assaulted by well-known athletes."

The counseling staff advised the woman that they had other cases such as hers and "the best thing to do is to 'just get yourself better,'" and implied that it was not in the victim's best interest to report the incident to police. They also told her that "if you pursue this, you are going to be swimming with some really big fish."

Frightened by what the counselors said, the woman did not go to the MSU Sexual Assault Program for 10 months. The woman, who lived in a student dormitory, also often saw the men who allegedly attacked her, which caused panic and flashbacks. The woman "had become so traumatized, depressed, and withdrawn to the point that she was admitted to the Sparrow Hospital outpatient psychiatric day- program for intensive psychiatric treatment," the lawsuit states.

She eventually quit attending classes and withdrew from the university.

The lawsuit comes less than a week after Michigan lawmakers who were part of a panel to review the university's handling of sexual assault complaints against Nassar found the university created an environment that allowed the convicted sexual offender to molest hundreds of women. The report indicated that Nassar was able to identify and exploit loopholes in policies and procedures where he went unchecked for decades, molesting women and girls during routine examinations.

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