Kara Berg | Lansing State Journal

LANSING TWP. — Police have passed an ongoing sexual assault investigation involving three former Michigan State basketball players to the Michigan Attorney General's Office.

Lansing Township Police Chief John Joseph and several Ingham County prosecutors met this week and determined the police department does not have the resources to investigate the case, Joseph said.

Assistant Attorney General Danielle Bennetts will handle the case going forward, he said. AG spokesperson Kelly Rossman-McKinney declined to comment.

Lansing Township police have had the case since the summer of 2019, a year and a half after MSU student Bailey Kowalski filed a lawsuit against MSU, alleging university counselors coerced her to not report her sexual assault to police or campus officials.

Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal

A federal judge ruled in August that it's "plausible" MSU buried sexual assault claims brought against athletes and let the university's athletics department deal with the complaints on their own.

"The Court finds that the allegations in Plaintiff’s complaint render plausible her claim that MSU maintained official policies that left her and other female students vulnerable to sexual assault by male athletes," Judge Paul Maloney wrote in his ruling.

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Kowalski's lawsuit is still pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

Kowalski said she was an 18-year-old freshman at MSU when she was sexually assaulted by three basketball players at one of their apartments. The lawsuit did not name the players, who have all since left Michigan State.

She'd met the players, who were fresh off a loss to Duke in the 2015 NCAA Final Four, at Harper's bar. She used a fake ID to enter, she said.

Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal

One of the men invited her to a party, but only a few people were there when she arrived, she said. According to the lawsuit, she felt "discombobulated" and could not control her fingers to send a text. She thought she might have been drugged.

One of the men offered to show her his basketball memorabilia and took her to his bedroom, according to the lawsuit. The room went dark and she was thrown face down on the bed and held in place while he sexually assaulted her, according to the lawsuit.

She couldn't move or speak. Two other players took turns sexually assaulting her as well, according to the lawsuit.

Kowalski went to the university counseling center about a week after she said she was assaulted. After she mentioned MSU basketball players were involved, staff discouraged her from reporting the sexual assault to police or the university, according to the lawsuit.

An Office of Institutional Equity investigation determined in June 2019 that the players did not violate university policy. Kowalski's attorney, Karen Truszkowski, filed an appeal of the university's decision, which was denied.

Truszkowski said the case has been months in the making, and while she was aware it had been passed to the AG's office, she was not aware that decision would be made public.