A Woman Sued Michigan State University After An Official Discouraged Her From Telling Police She was Raped By Three Basketball Players

Rebecca Cook / Reuters

A Michigan State University student filed a federal lawsuit this week alleging she was raped by three members of the school's basketball team and was discouraged from reporting the crime by a school official — who she said told her she would "be swimming with some really big fish," if she pursed the case.

According to the complaint filed in federal court in Michigan on Monday, the woman was allegedly raped by three basketball players one week after the team's Final Four loss to Duke in 2015. The woman, an 18-year-old freshman at the time studying to become a sports journalist, and the three basketball players are not named in the complaint.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of sexual assault allegations at MSU. The school has been at the center of the Larry Nassar scandal and earlier this year, and ESPN reported that MSU's basketball and football programs mishandled reports of sexual assault since 2007.

The allegations in Monday's lawsuit stem from an incident on April 11, 2015 when the woman and her roommate went to Harper's Bar in East Lansing. Shortly after midnight, members of the basketball team entered the bar.

One of the players bought the woman a drink and introduced her to his teammates. The men then invited her to a party at one of their apartments, and falsely told her that her roommate was already on her way there, according to the complaint.

"At this point, Plaintiff was having a hard time holding on to her glass even though she had not had a lot to drink," the complaint reads.

Once they got to the apartment, the woman "was feeling discombobulated. She tried to send a phone text, but she could not control her thumbs to formulate a text," the lawsuit said. She began to think that maybe she had been drugged.

According to the complaint, one of the players pulled the woman into a bedroom and told her "you are mine for the night."

The woman began to feel uncomfortable, the complaint states, and was able to leave the bedroom and head back into the living room.

Soon after, another basketball player offered to show the woman his basketball memorabilia, according to the lawsuit, and took her into a bedroom.

She "was forcefully thrown face down on the bed, held in place so she could not move, while [the basketball player] raped Plaintiff from behind," according to the complaint. "Plaintiff was crying, she could not move, nor could she speak. At no point did she consent to the sexual activity."

As soon as the basketball player finished assaulting her, a the first player who told her she was "mine for the night" and a third basketball player allegedly came into the room, held her down, and raped her.

The woman does not remember anything else from that night, according to the complaint. When she woke up on the couch a few hours later, she called a taxi and went back to her dorm room.

Al Goldis / AP

Feeling distraught and traumatized in the days after the alleged assault, the woman visited the Michigan State Counseling Center and reported the incident to a counselor.

When she told the counselor that the alleged attackers were three MSU athletes, the lawsuit states that the counselor's demeanor changed. The counselor told the woman that she needed another person in the room with her.

Another staff member came in to the room and the two counselors told the woman that her two options were to either file a police report or deal with the aftermath of the rape on her own.

According to the complaint, the staffers then “made it clear to Plaintiff 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 staffers then advised the woman they had seen many cases with "guys with big names," and that the best thing for her to do is "just get yourself better," — implying it was not in the woman's best interest to report the incident to authorities, according to the complaint.

The woman was told that "if you pursue this, you are going to be swimming with some really big fish," the complaint states, adding that the staffers did not advise her to seek STD or pregnancy testing and did not inform her of her option to report the incident to the school's Title IX office.

A Michigan State spokesperson said the school doesn't have a comment. The woman's lawyer did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News's request for comment.

The woman felt discouraged and frightened and decided not to report the rape to law enforcement. She withdrew from classes that semester and, according to the lawsuit, changed her major upon her return.

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