U. faces lawsuit over alleged 1994 rape

A former student said University officials covered up her report of a rape by another student on campus. In a potentially explosive case, a former student who claims to have been raped on campus has sued the University and her alleged rapist in U.S. District Court, charging Penn with failing to report the November 1994 incident to state and federal authorities after she filed an anonymous report with University Police. The woman seeks $200,000 in compensatory damages from the defendants in the case, according to her attorney, Jack Feinberg, who added that she is also seeking an additional undisclosed sum in punitive damages. The case is currently in the discovery stage, during which attorneys exchange paperwork and plan strategy. Attorneys on both sides said the case is not likely to be resolved for at least a year. In addition to charges of severe physical and emotional injury, the suit claims that the University violated campus crime reporting laws by not disclosing the incident. The U.S. Department of Education and the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office have been investigating the University's crime reporting practices recently after hearing charges that Penn has consistently under-reported its crime statistics, using too narrow a definition of what constitutes on-campus crime. "I think the bigger piece of [the lawsuit] is that [University officials] don't like to report crime accurately," Feinberg said. In its answer to the plaintiff's complaint, the University denied all of the victim's charges and defended itself and the alleged rapist from any liability in the case. Penn Associate General Counsel Brenda Fraser said the University intends to fight all of the charges in the lawsuit, adding that "we will defend it vigorously." But the Office of the General Counsel is not representing the University in this case, leaving the defense to attorneys Neil Hamburg and Hannah Schwarzschild of the Philadelphia firm of Hamburg and Golden. Schwarzschild declined to comment yesterday on specific parts of the suit -- even after being informed that the plaintiff's attorney had spoken at length with The Daily Pennsylvanian. "Where a plaintiff's counsel wants to talk and give one side of the story, you're going to get something very skewed," she said. In the suit, the plaintiff -- who was an 18-year-old freshman at the time of the incident -- claims she and her roommate met the male student in Murphy's Tavern at 44th and Spruce streets on the evening of Nov. 17, 1994. After another male student walked the plaintiff's roommate back to her dormitory room in the Quadrangle, the student allegedly raped the plaintiff in his High Rise South room, according to the complaint. The following evening, the complaint states that the plaintiff contacted Director of Police Operations Maureen Rush, then serving as director of the University Police Victim Support and Special Services division. Rush took an anonymous report in the student's room but "offered no other assistance, aid or support," the lawsuit charges. And the complaint alleges that after Nov. 18, 1994, Rush never contacted the plaintiff, informed her of any available counseling or medical services or took any action against the alleged rapist. Rush refused to comment on the case yesterday. The plaintiff never filed criminal charges against the alleged rapist because "she was discouraged from doing that [by University Police]," Feinberg explained. "It was her understanding that things would happen," he said, adding that the plaintiff waited nearly two years to initiate the civil suit and dropped out of Penn because of physical and psychological distress caused by the alleged rape. In what could be the plaintiff's most damning allegation, the complaint states that the University "did enter into a conspiracy and did conspire to falsely report rape statistics" to the proper state and federal governmental agencies, as required by law. Although the University's response denies that the alleged rape actually occurred, an article from the Nov. 21, 1994 edition of The Daily Pennsylvanian quotes Rush as saying that University Police are "handling a confidential [sexual assault] report involving a student on campus." The article notes that the University Police crime log book lists a confidential report of a sexual assault that was taken in High Rise South. Schwarzschild said yesterday that she was not aware of the DP story, which is the only article written on the incident. In addition, the University's March 1996 report under the 1990 federal Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act states that no rapes occurred on campus in 1994, as do University Police records obtained recently by the DP -- which also list no rapes having occurred in November 1994 on or off campus. Feinberg maintained that neither the plaintiff nor the alleged rapist was inebriated at the time of the incident, despite the fact that the plaintiff's complaint charges the University with "failing to protect plaintiff from being served alcoholic beverages" at Murph's. "If [University officials] said that they don't know that their students are attending that bar, then they'd better get their heads out of the sand," he added. University spokesperson Ken Wildes denied the charge of misreporting, and said the University would have no further comment on the case because it and the "Division of Public Safety take sexual assault and acquaintance rape very, very seriously." The plaintiff had originally filed two lawsuits in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court in February. One named the University and the alleged rapist as defendants, while the other named only Rush. March 5, however, the University asked for the case to be moved to U.S. District Court, arguing that only a federal court is entitled to consider the plaintiff's charges that the University violated federal campus crime reporting laws. The request was granted, and the case against Rush was dropped in favor of the suit against the University and the alleged rapist. Feinberg said the request to move the case was "a unilateral decision by the University," but Schwarzschild said she did not feel comfortable commenting on the removal, describing it only as a "litigation strategy." Arthur Marion and Martin Trichon, attorneys for the male student named as the alleged rapist, were unavailable for comment yesterday. The student declined to comment on the case when contacted at home.