UNL Students Among Women Athletes Suing NCAA For Failing to Stop Sex Assaults

LINCOLN – In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Michigan, seven women — including four who attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln — accused the NCAA of failing to protect them on their respective campuses from alleged sexual assaults by male student-athletes.
Two of the four UNL students who are plaintiffs in the case are Sheridan Thomas and Capri Davis.
Davis is a former Husker volleyball player who took a leave of absence from the program last year before transferring to Texas.
A UNL spokeswoman said the university received a copy of the lawsuit Wednesday and cannot comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit stated Davis chose to transfer in part due to UNL’s lack of response to her complaint that two Nebraska football players groped her — and a friend, who is one of the unnamed plaintiffs — at a party.
Davis filed a complaint with NU’s Title IX office in April 2019. Her friend — the unnamed plaintiff — claimed she was raped by two football players in August 2018, right after she enrolled in school. One of the two men she said raped her was also one of the men who groped her and Davis at the party.
According to the lawsuit, Nebraska’s Title IX office did not start an investigation after Davis’ complaint. In August 2019, Davis learned that the same two football players who had groped her had been accused of rape by another UNL student.
Those two players, Andre Hunt and Katerian Legrone, have since been charged with first-degree sexual assault in Lancaster County court for that alleged rape. After Davis and her friend returned to the Title IX office another time to file a complaint against the two, an investigation was, according to the lawsuit, finally opened.
In October 2019, the lawsuit claimed Davis and two other plaintiffs attended a party and were yelled at and harassed by Hunt and Legrone, who also attended the party.
NU and the U.S. Department of Education both have policies prohibiting parties from retaliating against their accusers.
According to the lawsuit, the Title IX office informed the unnamed plaintiff in January 2020 that there had been no finding in the investigation into the groping allegations. That plaintiff then told Davis.
The other student named in the lawsuit, Sheridan Thomas, alleged she was raped in August 2015 — five days before classes started — by a male student-athlete in Cather Hall, a former residence hall on campus.
The other alleged assaults took place at Michigan State and one unnamed Division I school, according to the lawsuit.