Three young women who filed a legal complaint against the University of Southern California last May announced this afternoon that the U.S. Department of Education is launching a federal investigation into the school's "gross mishandling of rape and sexual assault cases."

This marks the third time USC has been under investigation for inadequate policies regarding sexual assault on campus.

The 110-page legal complaint brought against the school by Tucker Reed and 13 other named plaintiffs, outlines the ways the university "misreported, misconstrued, mishandled, or discounted entirely" the instances of sexual violence on campus, says Reed. In the past year, similar lawsuits claiming that a university has violated Title IX laws, have been filed against Occidental College, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Amherst College .

Speaking to reporters Monday on the edge of USC's campus, Reed says she was raped by her boyfriend of two weeks in December 2010. Ten months later, in the fall of 2012, Reed filed a report with the Los Angeles Police Department. "I was in denial about it for a long time," Tucker says. The LAPD alerted the university of Reed's complaint. She was then contacted by the university's Student Judiciary Affairs and Community Standards Committee, a two-person panel employed by the University to investigate all matters of student misconduct.

No one on the panel has any specialized training in sex crimes or criminal justice. Most of the panel's investigation deals with issues of plagiarism and cheating on school tests.

To meet the preponderance of evidence standard set by the the Student Judiciary Committee, Reed turned in four separate recordings she made of her ex-boyfriend admitting he raped her. "I was assured I could expect a speedy handling of the matter," Reed recalled. The investigation into the alleged rape dragged on for six months and ended with the committee's decision to close the case because Reed failed to provide enough convincing evidence. "The process made me feel raped a second time," Reed says. The committee has not given Reed access to their findings.

After the school rejected her claim, Reed posted pictures of alleged rapist's picture and transcribed portions of the her recordings on her Tumblr. Reed wrote on the blog XO Jane that her rapist is now countersuing her for being libelous.