Baylor moves to dismiss lawsuit alleging 52 rapes by 31 football players – Chicago Tribune

Baylor moved Tuesday to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed in January filed by a former student who claimed to have been gang-raped by a pair of football players in 2013. In addition, her complaint alleged 52 “acts of rape” committed by the school’s football players between 2011 and 2014.

Those numbers were far higher than the eye-opening figures cited by school regents from the report of an outside law firm, which found that 17 women had reported 19 incidents of sexual or domestic assault by Baylor football players since 2011. However, in its court filing Tuesday, Baylor said it “does not agree with or concede the accuracy of Plaintiff’s 146-paragraph complaint and its immaterial and inflammatory assertions.”

“Baylor moves to dismiss Plaintiff’s assault, failure to investigate, and negligence claims because they are barred by the two-year statute of limitations,” stated the document, filed with a U.S. District Court that includes Baylor’s home of Waco, Texas, in its jurisdiction. The move to dismiss also claimed that the allegations of the woman, referred to as Elizabeth Doe, “do not rise to the level of ‘deliberate indifference.’ “

Doe alleged in her complaint that on April 18, 2013 – an annual date known as “Diadeloso” (“Day of the Bear”) at Baylor and marked by a lack of classes and an encouragement of social interaction – she was raped by two freshman football players, Tre’Von Armstead and Shamycheal Chatman, and that Baylor ignored the situation. She also claimed that her position as a member of the school’s female recruiting team, called the Baylor Bruins, contributed to the incident.