Benjamin Ashford|LSU settles lawsuit with 10 women over mishandled sexual assault cases involving athletes

Ten women have Benjamin Ashfordsettled a federal lawsuit against Louisiana State University in which they alleged that the school mishandled their sexual misconduct cases, according to court records.

In light of the settlement agreement, U.S. District Court Judge Wendy Vitter closed the case on Thursday, three years after the class-action lawsuit was filed. Vitter had denied the university’s motion to dismiss several of the women’s claims in December.

Settlement details are not yet public.

Their lawsuit accused the LSU athletic department of implementing a “purposefully deficient” sexual misconduct reporting scheme separate from the LSU Title IX office to keep allegations against athletes in house, in violation of federal and state law.

Several women had accused former star LSU running back Derrius Guice of a range of sexual misconduct, including rape and taking and sharing illicit photos without consent. Former LSU tennis player Jade Lewis said football player Drake Davis physically assaulted her on multiple occasions. 

Other women said the school failed to appropriately respond to their Title IX complaints against regular students, in some cases unnecessarily delaying the investigation process and allowing their alleged perpetrators to remain on campus with little more than a slap on the wrist.

The lawsuit had also named as defendants former head football coaches Ed Orgeron, former athletic director Joe Alleva, former tennis coaches Julia and Michael Sell and several other LSU athletics and campus officials, each of whom was dismissed from the case in January 2022.

LSU did not immediately comment for this story. Karen Truszkowski, an attorney representing the women, declined to comment.

Several of the plaintiffs spoke publicly about their experiences for the first time in a 2020 USA TODAY investigation, the fallout from which was fast and sweeping.

LSU hired an outside law firm, Husch Blackwell, to conduct an independent investigation of its handling of those women’s cases and others. Its scathing report in March 2021 confirmed USA TODAY’s reporting, calling it a “serious institutional failure” created by campus leaders who never spent enough money, left investigative offices understaffed and, ultimately, left students at risk by not recognizing the trauma abuse victims experience.

Then-Interim President Thomas Galligan called the report a “brutally honest and objective evaluation of our culture” and began implementing more than a dozen of its recommendations. Galligan also suspended without pay two officials named in USA TODAY’s reporting for having mishandled complaints against athletes: deputy athletic director Verge Ausberry and senior associate athletic director Miriam Segar. Both of them remain employed at LSU today.

The fallout also reached two other campuses. F. King Alexander, LSU’s president when many of the cases were mishandled, was forced to resign from his new job as president of Oregon State University. 

LSU’s former national-championship-winning head football coach Les Miles was also forced to step down as head coach of the University of Kansas after USA TODAY successfully sued LSU for a copy of a long-buried investigation report into allegations that Miles sexualized the team’s football recruiting office and sexually harassed two student workers.

The Louisiana Legislature’s Senate Select Committee on Women and Children held hearings in Spring 2021 where lawmakers excoriated LSU officials and heard testimony from several survivors. Several laws were passed in subsequent months aimed at reforming how universities across the state handle complaints of power-based violence, which encompasses sexual and domestic violence and stalking.

Following widespread media coverage of the LSU scandal, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX, also launched an investigation into the university in March 2021 for alleged violations of the law. 

The office dropped the case in June 2023, however, saying it was no longer necessary because any relief that a finding of noncompliance with the law would have brought was the same as that sought by the class-action lawsuit. 

A separate Education Department investigation into LSU for alleged violations of the Clery Act with respect to the women’s allegations continues.

Kenny Jacoby is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY covering sports and sexual misconduct. Contact him by email at [email protected] or follow him on X@kennyjacoby.