Baylor Lawsuit Alleges Athletes Committed Over 50 Rapes
The university’s Board of Regents have already admitted the school violated Title IX.
Baylor University paid for an investigation into the alleged sexual assaults last year.
A former Baylor University student’s lawsuit claims 31 athletes at the school committed 52 rapes between 2011 and 2014.
The figure, included in a lawsuit filed Jan. 27, is far higher than what the school has previously disclosed and includes at least five gang rapes, according to the New York Times.
The woman who filed the lawsuit claims she was the victim of a gang rape by two football players in 2013 but that the local police department did not properly investigate her claims. One of those alleged attackers had already been accused of rape at the university.
RELATED: Baylor University Records Significant Increase in Sexual Assault Reports
A spokesperson for the Waco Police Department, which is named in the lawsuit, did not immediately comment on the lawsuit and Baylor’s interim president did not address the specific allegations.
The latest lawsuit is similar to others that have been filed by women against the school claiming officials didn’t handle reports of sexual assault properly.
The Baylor Board of Regents acknowledged last year that the athletic department interfered with sexual assault investigations against players and that school officials had failed to cultivate a safe campus environment.
Those announcements came after an investigation conducted by the Pepper Hamilton law firm and led to the resignations of former president Kenneth W. Starr and Athletic Director Ian McCaw. Popular football head coach Art Briles was also fired.
Art Briles has since sued Baylor claiming he was unaware of the alleged and substantiated assaults.
Baylor officials announced six policies they were adopting to address campus safety following the external investigation, including improved funding for student counseling, changes to its sexual assault investigation process, improved Title IX training and more.
“We have been working with Baylor on these football cases since the start of this and though we have appreciated their efforts to fix the problems, this is one [lawsuit] that needed to be filed,” John Clune, a lawyer representing the former student, said.
Clune has represented other woman claiming to have been sexually assaulted by Baylor athletes and settled two of those claims with the school.
Read Next: OCR Investigating 225 Colleges Nationwide for Title IX Violations
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