Baylor was served with a seventh Title IX lawsuit Tuesday, and the claims in this one are particularly disturbing.
A former volleyball player at the university filed the suit, alleging she was drugged and gang-raped by at least eight football players in 2012. The woman, who filed the case as Jane Doe, says the gang-rape was considered a “bonding experience” among teammates and that there was video of the incident.
Doe alleges the team participated in dogfighting, too.
It gets worse, as Doe also claims she was harassed by the players and robbed by two of them after the fact and that then-coach Art Briles did nothing about it.
The suit includes multiple instances of Doe trying to report the incident with no results. According to the Waco Tribune-Herald, Doe told her mother what happened in the spring of 2012, and the mother met with an assistant coach and named the players involved. Neither Doe nor her mother heard from him after that.
The Tribune-Herald also noted that the suit claims Doe went into counseling and was “not presented with Title IX-related reporting options but with statistics about how few women report sexual assaults, ‘in an apparent effort to dissuade’ (Doe from taking action).”
Doe’s suit also alleges she dropped out of Baylor because another player told her while they were on an athletics department mission trip to Africa in May of 2013 that he heard about the gang rape. The suit says she told the Bears’ football chaplain about the rape after the trip, but nothing came of that, either.
The new suit against Baylor’s football program comes on the heels of another Title IX lawsuit alleging 52 acts of rape committed by 31 football players under Briles, who was fired in May 2016. Baylor president Ken Starr also was fired, and athletic director Ian McCaw resigned.
Thumbnail photo via Ray Carlin/USA TODAY Sports Images
