The Baylor football program as well as the university itself has seen its fair share of negative headlines over the past several months. Come Thursday morning, it should brace itself for more negativity.
According to the Waco Tribune, a former student who claims she was raped by a Baylor football player plans to file a lawsuit against the university in which she will allege the school was deliberately indifferent to her complaint. The alleged victim, Jasmin Hernandez, and her attorneys, Ryan Cohen and Alex Zalkin, have scheduled a press conference for Thursday morning in which they will lay out the Title IX allegations against the university.
Hernandez claims that she was raped by former Bear Tevin Elliott. In 2014, Elliott was convicted of sexually assaulting a different BU student at a party in 2012 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Elliott’s conviction, ESPN‘s Outside the Lines reported in January, came after he was accused of either rape or assault five other times from October of 2009 to April of 2012 while he was still a member of the football program. In the OTL report, one of Elliott’s alleged victims, identified only as “Tanya,” alleges that the university essentially ignored allegations because the sexual assault happened off-campus and, in her mind, a football player was involved.
One of the more disturbing portions of the report was that, two weeks before “Tanya” was raped by Elliott, another woman, identified as “Kim,” had filed a police report accusing Elliott of sexually assaulting her.
From the Tribune‘s report on Hernandez’s impending lawsuit:
In addition to Elliott, former Bear football player Sam Ukwuachu was convicted of sexually assaulting a BU student in October of 2013 following the Homecoming win over Iowa State and was sentenced to 10 years felony probation. In December of last year, the victim in that case reached a settlement with the university.