A former Baylor University volleyball player filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday alleging she was gang raped by four or more football players after she was drugged at a party in 2012 as part of a team hazing system in which freshman players brought girls to parties with the intention of them being drugged and raped.
The woman — identified only as Jane Doe — alleges Baylor created a culture that fostered sexual violence, with gang rapes considered "bonding" experiences that were routinely recorded by football players.
The woman alleges in the complaint that she knows of at least one 21-second video of two female Baylor students being gang raped by several football players, and that the footage was later circulated among the players, who were treated as "larger-than-life celebrities on campus" due to the team's success.
According to the lawsuit, players also staged dog fights during the hazing parties, and in one match, a dog was seriously injured and almost died.
"Simply put, Baylor football under [football coach Art] Briles had run wild, in more ways than one, and Baylor was doing nothing to stop it," the lawsuit alleges.
This is the seventh Title IX lawsuit filed as Baylor continues to grapple with the scandal regarding its failure to properly respond to claims of sexual assault against members of the football team from 2009 to 2016.
Last year, the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton — hired to investigate the school's handing of sexual assault claims — released a scathing report on the university's concealment of sexual assaults by the football team and found that there was “institutional failures at every level.”
The cover-up scandal led to the firing of Briles and President Ken Starr, as well as the resignation of athletics director Ian McCaw.
The woman who filed the hazing lawsuit alleges that she attended a party hosted by the Baylor football team in 2012, where she said she consumed a few drinks and believes she was drugged by a football player.
In her haze, the woman remembers one football player picking her up, putting her in his car, and taking her to a location where she says she was brutally gang raped by at least four Baylor football players.
The woman "remembers lying on her back, unable to move and staring at glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling as football players took turns raping her," according to the lawsuit.
After the assault, the woman heard the players yell "grab her phone! Delete my numbers and texts," according to the complaint.
Following the assault, the woman says she was twice told that she was gang raped by as many as eight men.
The woman told her mother about the assault, according to the complaint, who then gave an assistant football coach a list of players' names, but never heard back from him. The woman said she also told her volleyball coach about the assault, who in turn brought the matter to Briles and McCaw, the athletic director.
The lawsuit alleges that after Briles looked at the list of players' names, he told the volleyball coach, "those are bad dudes ... why was she around those guys?"
“The alleged incident outlined in the court filing occurred more than five years ago, and Baylor University has been in conversations with the victim’s legal counsel for many months in an attempt to reach an amicable resolution," a Baylor spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson went on to say that the university has made many changes to better respond to sexual violent and has invested in student support services.
"Any assault involving members of our campus community is reprehensible and inexcusable," the statement reads.
The woman alleges in the lawsuit she was subjected to repeated verbal abuse following the assault in which players said the sex was consensual, including one who told her she "wanted it."
According to the suit, one player told the woman "he never came on to her because she was 'easy' and 'like coach said we [Baylor football players] don't want easy.'"
The players allegedly allegedly openly talked about "riding train" on the woman, "a reference to the night they took turns raping her as she laid there barely conscious," according to the lawsuit.
A year after the assault, the woman alleges a football player burglarized her apartment in addition to sending her harassing text messages.
“These girls affected by this are seeking their day in court,” the plaintiff’s lawyer, Muhammad Aziz, told the Waco Tribune. “We thought about this a lot, and … eventually, we decided to proceed. Really, what we are seeking to enforce is just a safe education environment for the girls at the school.”
A previous lawsuit filed against the school alleges that Baylor's football players committed 52 rapes, including five gang rapes involving more than 31 different players between 2011 and 2014.
