A jury has rewarded $10 million in damages to the victim of a December 2013 rape on the Savannah State University campus.
The victim was seeking $4 million claiming that the university’s housing authority did not provide “any real or meaningful security” to protect its students, reports WSAV.
In February 2016, Torrey Scott was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for two December 2013 rapes of Savannah State students, the kidnapping and rape of a woman who he abducted from the parking lot of a local hospital in 2014, and the rape and murder of Lisa Pynn, also in 2014.
Scott did not testify in his own defense.
Twin lawsuits were originally filed in 2014 by the two victims in the December 2013 rapes, claiming the Georgia school ignored a pattern of criminal conduct which led to them being robbed at gunpoint and raped in campus housing. The second victim’s lawsuit is still pending.
The lawsuits claim Scott had been seen on campus security footage climbing a fence to gain entry to the campus. Surveillance tapes also show Scott loitering in the parking lot of the victims’ apartment building for fifteen minutes prior to the attacks.
The suit subsequently states the attack was reasonably foreseeable and the school failed to provide meaningful security on campus.
“What this jury’s verdict does, in a clear and resounding way, is it says this community is not going to put up with a company coming in, owning an apartment complex, failing to provide security that will lead to death and destruction to the student body,” says Mark Tate, the victim’s attorney.
Ordered to pay the reward is the Savannah State Foundation and the Foundation’s Real Estate Ventures, LLC.
The suit also contended that Savannah State was rated the second most dangerous college campus in the country in 2011 by the Business Insider, according to Savannah Now. The rating was determined by a review of FBI criminal data.
