Woman sues three Louisiana universities over failures to report sexual assault allegations
A woman is suing three Louisiana universities and one police department over failures to report information about a handful of sexual assault allegations against one student, saying their negligence led to her being raped.
Louisiana State University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Louisiana Tech University and the Lafayette Police Department “chose to disregard their most basic duties … refused to share information concerning reports of student sexual assault, (and) continued to employ disjointed approaches to sexual assault complaints,” the lawsuit filed by woman using the name Jane Doe states.
The suit comes after a USA TODAY investigation in May 2021 revealed the practices of the universities and the Lafayette Police Department had enabled one student, Victor Daniel Silva, to jump between schools after being repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct.
Silva entered LSU in 2014 and changed schools three times, each transfer coming just months after a new sexual misconduct allegation, before he graduated from UL in 2020.
Six women reported him for sexual misconduct while he attended the various schools, which should have been shared among the universities he attended under a 2015 law, but officials repeatedly failed to communicate the allegations made against him.
“All of (this) emboldened Victor Daniel Silva, a serial sexual predator who raped Ms. Doe in September 2018, when they were both students at Louisiana Tech University,” attorneys with Washington, D.C.-based Fierberg National Law Group wrote in the woman’s demand for a federal jury trial.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2022/05/26/woman-sues-lsu-others-over-failure-share-sexual-misconduct-reports/9946841002/