A former Michigan State University athlete alleged in a new lawsuit that she was drugged, raped, and impregnated by disgraced gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
Erika Davis, who attended MSU on a field hockey scholarship, said Nassar raped her in 1992 during a doctor's visit to receive treatment for an injured knee when she was 17 years old.
Nassar, who worked as a sports physician at MSU and USA Gymnastics, was sentenced in January to 40 to 74 years behind bars for sexually abusing young women athletes under the pretense of medical "treatment."
In this week's lawsuit, filed in a Michigan federal court on Monday, Davis alleges that she told multiple college staff members about the rape at the time, and that senior staff members covered up the allegations.
In a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, MSU vice president and spokesperson Emily Gerkin Guerrant said: "While the protocols and procedures mentioned in this lawsuit do not reflect how sexual assault claims are handled at MSU, we are taking the allegations very seriously and looking into the situation."
Davis was a virgin when she was sent to Nassar, at the recommendation of her coach, to get help for knee pain.
At the first appointment, Nassar told her he was working on a flexibility study for the College of Osteopathic Medicine and so a camera operator was present.
He asked Davis if she'd ever had a breast exam. When she replied that she hadn't, Nassar told her to remove her top and used his hands and mouth to make her nipples hard.
A follow-up appointment was booked for a week later to supposedly treat her knee. A camera was set up to film the appointment. The lawsuit states that Nassar made Davis drink a crushed-up pill, and she felt very "woozy" and tired, unable to keep her arms up or her eyelids open.
Around an hour later, Davis woke up to Nassar raping her.
"Plaintiff Erika, still in a daze, felt Defendant Nassar speed up his penetrations and then grunt, ejaculating into her," the lawsuit says.
Davis later miscarried, the lawsuit said.
Nassar told her to return for another appointment in two months. Davis, who had "tremendous pain" coming from her vagina, confided in two friends about what had happened. In May 1992, Davis also told her coach.
The lawsuit said her coach went to Nassar's office and demanded the video made of Davis, which she received.
However, the lawsuit said that George Perles, who resigned as athletic director at MSU in 1992 but remains a university trustee, intervened and forced the coach to "return the video, resign and sign a non-disclosure agreement."
In October of that year, Davis went to campus police and reported the rape, according to the lawsuit.
Davis said in the lawsuit that an MSU police detective told her that he was "powerless to investigate anything that takes place to the athletic department and to go to the athletic department." After Davis explained that she'd already tried to speak with the athletic department, but it had been dismissed, the sergeant told her that Perles is a "powerful man" and she should drop it.
"This proves that not only did Defendant Michigan State University have knowledge that Defendant Nassar sexually abused and sexually assaulted minors, but that it would also go to great lengths to conceal this conduct," reads the lawsuit.
BuzzFeed News reached out to a lawyer who represented Nassar during his January hearing in Michigan, but has yet to receive a response.
A former MSU dean at the College of Osteopathic Medicine, William Strampel, was charged in March for using his office to harass and sexually assault women students as well as having pornographic material on his work computer, including a video of Nassar performing "treatment" on a young woman patient.
MSU agreed in May to pay $500 million to Nassar's victims. An independent special prosecutor, appointed by the state's attorney general, is investigating MSU's actions regarding Nassar and covering up the sexual abuse.