BRICK – A former Stockton University student from Brick has filed suit in federal court seeking damages for psychological and emotional distress, depression, and damage to her reputation from a now 25-year-old fraternity member for an alleged sexual assault the man captured and posted to social media.
The woman, who is still under 21, filed the lawsuit July 6 in U.S. District Court in Camden, not only claims that the man drugged and raped her, but that the university mishandled the complaint from February 2017.
She reported the alleged sexual assault to police and university officials immediately after, but it wasn’t until April 2018 that university police filed charges against the man, according to NJ.com.
The man, who recorded the sexual encounter and posted videos to SnapChat, has not been charged with rape but with invasion of privacy by recording a sex act without consent.
The woman claims she met the man at an off-campus party Feb. 9, 2017. According to the NJ.com article, after a night of heavy drinking, the woman and two men went back to her dorm room. She awoke feeling sore and ordered the men to leave. A friend allegedly told the woman she had been sexually assaulted while incapacitated by alcohol.
Yet the woman texted her alleged attacker and invited him to her room on Valentine’s Day. While he offered her vodka, she refused and instead drank two to three glasses of wine.
“Plaintiff told the defendant that she ‘wanted to remember this time’ because it was Valentine’s Day. The defendant replied, ‘we’ll see,'” the NJ.com article said.
The woman believes her drink was spiked with a date-rape drug while she was in the bathroom. She awoke the next day naked and covered in vomit. She later discovered SnapChat videos of him having sex with her. She texted him and asked him to remove them. He removed two of the three videos.
She reported the incident to local and university authorities, and went to a local hospital for a rape kit. The report does not say whether she received confirmation that she had indeed been drugged.
She is also claiming that Stockton did not properly investigate the incident or protect her from sexual violence because a residential advisor never checked on her, despite having to know that loud music and underage drinking was occurring.
