Suit claims male student violently assaulted several women, but the university discouraged them from filing complaints and questioned one woman’s clothes

Stanford University ignored complaints about sexual assault, dismissed victims with disturbing allegations and failed to discipline a “known predator”, according to a federal lawsuit, allowing the student to violently attack multiple women.

The complaint alleges that an unnamed male student strangled one victim and told her “no one will notice when you die” before raping her and that he repeatedly told another woman to “kill herself” after sexually assaulting her.

Despite having knowledge of the man’s attacks against multiple students – which occurred between 2010 and 2014 – Stanford officials did little to punish the perpetrator and protect other women, the lawsuit claimed. On the contrary, university officials allegedly discouraged victims from filing complaints, in one case questioning whether a victim’s clothing put her at risk for assault.

The shocking accusations paint a picture of a system that endangers students and come at a time of increased scrutiny of the sexual violence, harassment and discrimination that survivors’ advocates say are rampant on US college campuses.

Stanford spokeswoman Lisa Lapin declined to comment on the specifics of the case, citing privacy laws, but issued a lengthy statement defending the university’s record.

“We have sympathy for the plaintiff in this case, but we will be vigorously defending the lawsuit as we believe that Stanford has acted with appropriate diligence and compassion,” she wrote, adding: “Stanford’s top priority is always the well-being and safety of all of our students.”

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The suit, filed this week by advocacy group Equal Rights Advocates, raises serious concerns about support for victims who speak up at Stanford, which received international attention this year surrounding the assault case of former university swimmer Brock Turner.



The complaint was filed on behalf of a current Stanford graduate student who began attending the prestigious university as an undergraduate in 2011 and is listed as Jane Doe in the court filings.

The perpetrator, known as Mr X in the lawsuit, repeatedly attacked a different female student, named as Ms A, in 2010 and 2011, according to the complaint. He physically assaulted her by “knocking her down, dragging her, and kicking her” and in one attack “began strangling her nearly to the point of unconsciousness, preventing her from screaming, breathing, or moving”, the suit said.

According to the complaint, after Mr X raped Ms A and “whispered into her ear” that no one would notice her death, she went to a counselor who was dismissive of the situation.

The counselor pointed out that the woman was “wearing a sweater that exposed part of one shoulder and asked her to consider whether she placed herself in potentially risky situations because she wanted to appear sexually available”, the lawyers wrote.

After disclosing the abuse to others at Stanford, one official “described the difficulty of proceeding with criminal or administrative action” while an academic adviser suggested she try and improve her mental health by “renting a car and going to a beach”, according to the suit.

Later, after a dean gave the woman the impression that pursuing a case would be difficult and provide minimal protections, the complaint said, she agreed to a “no-contact directive”, which Mr X later violated.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stanford saw protests during its summer graduation ceremony over the case of former university swimmer Brock Turner, who attacked an unconscious woman. Photograph: Gabrielle Lurie/AFP/Getty Images

The suit alleges that Stanford’s failure to investigate and address Ms A’s complaints paved the way for Mr X to physically and sexually assault Jane Doe, who began casually dating him in 2013.

One time when Doe refused to have sex with Mr X, he forced himself upon her, called her a slut, told her to “kill herself” and pinned her arm behind her back, which injured her, the suit said. Administrators eventually told her they viewed her story as a “‘he said, she said’ situation” and that “Mr X’s actions toward her did not qualify as prohibited sexual behavior”.

Soon after, a third student formally reported that Mr X had thrown a table at her and punched her after she refused to have sex with him, the suit said. Stanford officials allegedly told that woman that the university wanted to resolve the complaints quickly “because Mr X might lose his job if he did not promptly receive his degrees”.

After the university determined Mr X had engaged in a “pattern of violent behavior when women refused his demands for sexual acts”, officials issued no-contact directives and banned him from campus for 10 years.

Still, Mr X graduated and was awarded two bachelor’s degrees while Doe was placed on academic probation after struggling to keep up with school work due to the stress and trauma of the assault and aftermath, according to the suit.

“The allegations in this case are really disturbing and show the importance of promptly and thoroughly investigating,” said Michele Landis Dauber, a Stanford law professor who has been outspoken about the university’s handling of sexual assault. “The key here is that we have to hold perpetrators accountable, and if we don’t, we’re really endangering campus safety.”

The accusations were originally reported in a Huffington Post story earlier this year.

The statement from Stanford spokeswoman’s appeared to raise questions about the victims’ participation, saying: “Without the cooperation of victims, regrettably the university is very limited in what it can do.”



The complaint, however, outlines in the detail how the women, including the first victim, spoke up about their assaults to numerous officials and were repeatedly persuaded not to file complains.

“Women will not have an equal opportunity to succeed academically until the epidemic of sexual violence on campus ends,” Rebecca Peterson-Fisher, senior staff attorney with Equal Rights Advocates, said in a statement. “Institutions like Stanford need to be held accountable for their failure to recognize the severity of these crimes.”