Couch: MSU's handling of alleged rape by basketball players shows university's sickness

Lansing State Journal

A lawsuit filed this week alleges three MSU basketball players sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman in 2015.

Perhaps Larry Nassar is “merely a symptom of the sickness which plagues the very core of Michigan State University,” as one of his victims said.

The allegations in this latest lawsuit against MSU go straight to the disease itself.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court Monday, alleges that university counselors in 2015 dissuaded an 18-year-old freshman from reporting her rape by three Spartan basketball players. MSU, in a release Wednesday evening, gave its own version of events, saying the care given to the plaintiff and information provided to her was appropriate.

If the allegations are true, this lawsuit is the most damning indication to date of a cultural cancer on MSU’s campus and further proof that former MSU president Lou Anna Simon was either ignorant or lying when she said a year ago, “There is no culture of tolerance of sexual assault or harassment (at MSU).”

This is not worse than Nassar in scale. It is worse in what it might say about MSU.

Nassar was a master manipulator, a serial predator, a doctor. It took failed oversight and an unwillingness to believe his victims for his abuse to fester for two decades.

This is different. MSU’s Counseling Center should be a safe haven for scared young people in their most vulnerable hour. If the school’s counselors aren’t believing victims of sexual assault and, instead, are protecting their alleged perpetrators, beloved athletes in this case, MSU is sicker than we realized.

This is what all of Nassar’s victims were shouting about. This, in part, is what ESPN was reporting — that MSU’s athletic department had a role in this sickness.

You may not like how ESPN has treated MSU. The original Outside the Lines story, published on Jan. 26, questioned the handling of sexual assault cases by MSU’s athletic department and chastised the school for a lack of transparency. The story, though, had holes. It appeared rushed. The television coverage was, at times, irresponsibly salacious. The author didn’t show up herself to ask the tough follow-up questions. She later made a walk-on basketball player collateral damage to fit a narrative before he had been charged with anything. But if the contents of this lawsuit are true, the premise of Paula Lavigne’s original reporting is accurate.

And if you believe Nassar’s victims, you cannot now turn your back on a young woman because her story is inconvenient.

If we say we are to believe victims of sexual assault, that means believing them without preconditions. Those who are accused also deserve our ear. Believing victims and withholding judgment about the accused are not mutually exclusive mindsets. For the plaintiff to establish that the MSU Counseling Center failed her, she’ll have to establish that she was raped.

Know this: Very few women lie about this. The percentages are in the single digits, according to several advocacy groups. Reporting a sexual assault is a miserable, traumatizing, toxic experience.

Imagine being all but turned away.

The young woman in this case, who remains enrolled at MSU, alleges the following in the lawsuit:

-When she disclosed to the counselor that the three attackers were notable MSU athletes, members of the basketball team, the counselor suddenly announced that she needed another person in the room with her and the plaintiff. The counselor’s demeanor completely changed.

-She was told by the MSU Counseling Center staff that they had seen a lot of these cases with “guys with big names" and the best thing to do is to “just get yourself better,” implying to her that it would not be in her best interest to report the incident to law enforcement.

-She was expressly told that “if you pursue this, you are going to be swimming with some really big fish.”

-The MSUCC staff did not notify her of her option to report the rape(s) to the Office of Institutional Equity. Nor did they notify her of her Title IX rights, protections and accommodations.

-The MSUCC staff referred her to the Michigan State University Sexual Assault Program. Because she felt so discouraged and frightened after her encounter at the MSUCC, she did not seek assistance from that program until 10 months later. Nor did she report her assault to police.

It’s a stunning dose of callousness and malfeasance. After a gang rape.

And, if this is in fact how the university responded, what are the odds it’s an isolated reaction?

We already know it’s not an isolated sexual assault involving MSU athletes.

The woman said the rape occurred just after MSU’s 2015 Final Four run. The three players are not identified by name in the lawsuit.

“There are procedural reasons why we didn’t name them,” the plaintiff’s attorney, Karen Truszkowski, said Tuesday. “At this point, they haven’t been charged with anything. We made the strategic decision at this point not to name them as defendants.”

Their alleged crime, detailed in the lawsuit, is heinous. After meeting the young woman at an East Lansing bar, they invited her to a party at an off-campus apartment. Once there, after being coaxed into a bedroom under the guise of looking at basketball memorabilia, the victim says the lights went out, she was pushed face down onto the bed and raped from behind by all three, one after another.

If it happened as she says, without consent, three members of a beloved MSU team belong in prison.

“We do not at this point have a plan to pursue (criminal charges),” Truszkowski said.

Sexual assaults are hard cases to prove. The absence of charges does not mean the presence of innocence. Nor does this lawsuit mean presumed guilt.

It should, however, elicit a response soon. There is no allegation by the plaintiff that coach Tom Izzo or his staff knew about the assault. But, like with President Simon, among the reasons Izzo is paid so handsomely is that buck stops with him. He can’t control what his players do. But if they do wrong, it reflects on his program. On him.

For the university, a reckoning is coming. Nassar’s victims have done what MSU wouldn’t — make other sexual assault victims feel safe coming forward.

The worst, for MSU, might be yet to come.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.