Former Texas student sues university for 'ignoring' her after she was raped

The perpetrator is in prison but the survivor wants to force the university to acknowledge its lack of response to her complaint

The survivor lost out on her scholarship and left the university after being raped

A former student is suing her Christian university in Texas for allegedly “acting callously and indifferently” when she told them she had been raped by a college football player.

The lawsuit, filed by Jasmine Hernandez, comes as an independent body is investigating complaints that Baylor University has mishandled sexual assault cases for years.

“Those failures amounted to deliberate indifference toward the unlawful sexual conduct and retaliatory conduct that had occurred, was occurring, or was likely to occur,” according to the lawsuit.

Several women - the lawsuit claims "at least six" - were raped or sexually assaulted by former student football player Tevin Elliott. He was found guilty in 2014 on two counts and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Ms Hernandez’s mother flew to the university the day after her daughter was violently raped at a party in 2012 and demanded her daughter was seen by the university’s counseling centre. The centre responded that it was “too busy”. Her daughter was also refused academic accommodation while she was unable to concentrate on her studies after the trauma of the assault.

Football coach Art Briles and athletic director Ian McCaw, who are both defendants in the lawsuit, were also notified by her parents of the crime, but both men replied that they could do nothing unless Mr Elliott was convicted.

The school did not investigate the rape accusation, according to the lawsuit.

A separate case at Baylor in 2013 resulted in football player Sam Ukwuachu being sentenced to six months in prison last year for sexually assaulting a fellow student two years before.

The judge barred the defense from using the university’s investigation as evidence because it was reportedly too “insufficient”, as reported by Newsweek.

Figures from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that one in five women and one in 16 men experience sexual assault at college or university, and the vast majority of these crimes are never reported.

Despite the epidemic of sexual abuse on campuses, a survey conducted by a US Senate sub committee in 2014 found that 40 per cent of colleges and universities did not report a single case of sexual assault over the previous five years.

President Obama, speaking the day before April, National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, said: “Too many women and men of all ages suffer the outrage that is sexual assault, and too often, this crime is not condemned as loudly as it should be. Together, we must stand up and speak out to change the culture that questions the actions of victims, rather than those of their attackers.”