Student Says MSU Protected 3 Athletes Who Raped Her

A former sports journalism major says she was raped by three Michigan State basketball players in one of several sexual assault allegations to come out of MSU's athletics program and the third brought against basketball players since 2010, the Detroit Free Press reports. The then-18-year-old woman says three unidentified players tricked her into going to one of their apartments after a night out at a bar—she used a fake ID, per ESPN—in April 2015, a week after the Spartans lost in the Final Four of the 2015 NCAA tournament. According to a lawsuit filed Monday, the players told the woman that her roommate was to meet them for a party there. But there was no party. The woman, who believes she was drugged, says one male threw her facedown onto a bed and raped her before the others took turns doing the same.

The woman reported the alleged rape to a university counselor but wasn't advised to get a physical exam or to contact MSU's Office of Institutional Equity, which would've investigated, per the suit. Instead, she says she was told "she faced an uphill battle that would create anxiety and unwanted media attention and publicity" and that the best option was to "just get yourself better." Scared, she says she didn't go to police as a result and suffered in silence. By October, she'd become "so traumatized, depressed" that she withdrew from classes and began "intensive psychiatric treatment," her suit states. She now argues MSU protected its male players, giving them "unwritten permission to commit acts of sexual assault without consequence," per Reuters. Embattled by the Larry Nassar case, MSU hasn't commented. (More Michigan State University stories.)