3 colleges ignored sexual assault accusations against same Louisiana student, suit says
A student was accused of sexual assault within the first few months of his first semester of college. The reports against him continued as he transferred three times between three Louisiana universities until he eventually graduated, a lawsuit states.
Now, a former Louisiana Tech University student is suing the institutions that she says ignored the allegations against him.
On May 25, Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against the University of Louisiana system, which controls and manages both the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Louisiana Tech University, for violations of her rights under Title IX and negligence, according to the lawsuit.
She also filed a complaint for negligence against Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College and the Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government.
The lawsuit states that, had the institutions communicated with one another about the reports on the student, as is required by law, it could have prevented him from raping Jane Doe and others.
“The work of the last two years to prevent power based violence on college campuses in Louisiana was informed by deeply troubling narratives. A pillar of these advancements ensures effective communication between institutions and local law enforcement,” Dr. Jim Henderson, president and CEO of the University of Louisiana system, said in a statement on May 26.
Louisiana State University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News and Lafayette City declined a request to comment from McClatchy News on May 26.
The lawsuit states that two months into his first year at LSU in 2014, a fellow student reported Victor Daniel Silva to Baton Rouge authorities for rape. Police notified LSU of the report the next day, the complaint says, but after an investigation, the university “sided with Silva.”
The complaint states that LSU then allowed Silva to transfer to UL Lafayette and never shared Silva’s reported sexual misconduct or allegations against him, which is required by law.
Act 172, which was signed into law in June 2015, requires institutions to communicate with one another regarding the transfer of students “against whom disciplinary action has been taken as a result of a code of conduct violation relating to sexually-oriented criminal offenses,” the lawsuit says.
In January 2015, Silva began attending UL Lafayette.
Two months later, in March, Silva returned to a bar near the LSU campus. That night, a LSU student says she was raped by him multiple times in her dorm room, the lawsuit says.
LSU police arrested Silva on charges of second-degree rape and booked him into jail in April, according to the lawsuit. After learning of the arrest and rape allegation against Silva, LSU deemed him a “frequent flier” and banned him from campus.
LSU told UL Lafeyette about his arrest that month but did not inform officials that a second college student had reported Silva for sexual assault, according to the complaint.
“In short, LSU withheld information from UL Lafayette that indicated Silva was a serial sexual predator,” the lawsuit states.
UL Lafayette “did not take any steps to seek or obtain additional information regarding Silva’s arrest or the reported rape that led to the arrest,” the complaint states.
Instead, the university placed him on disciplinary probation and ordered him to attend behavior management classes, believing “he had been accused of sexual assault just one time,” the lawsuit states.
During his next three years at UL Lafayette, from 2015 to 2018, Silva was reported by three other women to the Lafayette Police Department for sex crimes. The complaint states that none of the reports were shared with the university, which is another violation of Act 172.
Under the act, institutions and law enforcement agencies in vicinity of the campus are required to share information about sexual criminal offenses occurring against students, according to the lawsuit.
“In 2018, just weeks after Lafayette PD received the third report regarding Silva’s criminal sexual conduct, Silva transferred to Tech with a clean academic record that did not mention he had been on disciplinary probation as a result of his arrest for rape in Baton Rouge,” the complaint states.
Louisiana Tech is controlled by the same board of supervisors as UL Lafayette. The complaint states that the board of supervisors therefore knew that Silva had been arrested and booked on charges of second degree rape in Baton Rouge, according to the complaint.
Still, the lawsuit says, the board “took no steps to protect female Tech students from Silva or even provide them the information they needed to protect themselves.”
Shortly after his transfer, new allegations against Silva came to light.
Within weeks of his transfer to Tech, Silva invited Jane Doe to study with him at his apartment on Sept. 18, 2018, the complaint states. That night, the lawsuit states that Silva raped her while she was intoxicated.
When Doe heard other women saying they were sexually assaulted by Silva, she said she decided to report him.
“Ms. Doe ... determined that she would report him to Tech, in an attempt to stop his serial sexual assault of women and hold him responsible for raping her,” the lawsuit says.
On Dec. 14, 2018, Doe officially reported Silva to both the university and law enforcement, according to the complaint.
Three days after Doe reported the rape to the school, the board allowed Silva to transfer out of Tech back to UL Lafayette, the complaint shows.
The university “did not withhold Silva’s transcript and never investigated Ms. Doe’s complaint or otherwise held Silva responsible for the sixth report of his sexual misconduct against female students,” the complaint states.
Doe discovered the full scope of the case for her lawsuit years later, in May 2021, when she read an article published in USA Today titled “Six Women Reported a Louisiana College Student for Sexual Misconduct. No one connected the dots.”
In that article, Doe discovered how Silva escaped responsibility for the several reports of his sexual misconduct throughout his years in college, the lawsuit says.
“She also learned for the first time that Defendant Board of Supervisors had permitted Silva to transfer back to UL Lafayette after she reported him for rape, where he remained under the Board’s control and authority as a student, without investigation or any disciplinary action, until he graduated in 2019,” the complaint stated.
Doe also realized that the board “never investigated or disciplined Silva in connection with his reported rape of Ms. Doe,” according to the lawsuit.
In her lawsuit, Doe demands a trial by jury as well as financial damages.
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