EDITOR’S NOTE: Help is available: For help in the US, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or chat 24/7 on online.rainn.org .
Two women have alleged this month they were sexually assaulted at different fraternity homes near the University of Chicago campus, adding to a string of allegations roiling the nation’s universities as they face a reckoning over sexual assault in their communities.
A woman recently reported she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house near the University of Chicago campus and another filed a lawsuit this week claiming she was sexually assaulted at a different fraternity house in February.
A person of interest is now banned from campus after a 21-year-old woman said she was sexually assaulted at a nearby fraternity house on October 11, the university said last week. Chicago police are investigating.
On Monday, a 19-year-old college student, using the pseudonym Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit saying she was sexually assaulted by a fraternity member at an Alpha Delta Phi party in February.
“These allegations are very disturbing to the University community,” University of Chicago spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan told CNN in response to the lawsuit. He noted the school is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but it “is committed to addressing and preventing incidents of sexual assault.”
The university previously told CNN fraternities are not formally affiliated with the University of Chicago, but student members “are subject to University policies and disciplinary procedures.”
Members of the university’s Public Safety Advisory Council, separate from the administration, addressed sexual misconduct support and education in a meeting Wednesday, declining to address the specific incidents but stressing safeguards are in place on campus to protect students.
“Our number one priority here at UChicago is preventing people from becoming victims,” University of Chicago Chief of Police Kyle Bowman said.
“The first thing that we need to do is tell men not to commit sexual assault, to respect the people that they’re with. And in this community, we have a mutual understanding that this is an academic environment where people are learning, and so there is an expectation that is consistent with the code of conduct here,” he continued.
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The university also has an app students can use to request assistance from campus police if they don’t feel safe, the chief added.
According to the university, Wednesday’s meeting had already been scheduled before the sexual assault allegations became public, as part of a regular series of meetings on public safety.
Both allegations come as universities face heightened scrutiny after an alleged gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity house spurred a nationwide debate over how schools handle sexual assault claims .
And at the University of Arizona, a sorority member told campus police she was sexually assaulted by two men at a fraternity house in late August, according to search warrant records cited by The Associated Press .
In the alleged February incident near the University of Chicago, Doe attended a party at the Alpha Delta Phi house and accepted a shot of unidentified alcohol from a fraternity brother that quickly made her feel “unsteady and lightheaded,” her lawsuit states.
The fraternity brother then led Doe to a secluded bedroom on another floor, where he allegedly made “unwanted and nonconsensual sexual advances” after she “lost all physical and verbal ability to refuse” him, according to the lawsuit.
“Jane Doe was mentally and physically incapable of providing consent,” the suit alleges.
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Doe pleaded with the man to use a condom, but he refused, the complaint says. The fraternity brother then penetrated her “without her consent” and left her “alone and unconscious in the room,” the lawsuit says.
Doe’s friend was initially blocked by other fraternity brothers from going upstairs to check on her until a member who saw Doe unconscious told them to let the friend up, according to the lawsuit. The friend found Doe unconscious and helped her out of the house, the complaint states.
The next morning, Doe found bloodstains in her underwear, reported the incident to the Chicago Police Department and named the fraternity brother who allegedly sexually assaulted her, the lawsuit says.
Woman chases man she believes sexually assaulted her friend at a University of Chicago fraternity party
The suit names Alpha Delta Phi Inc. and the Chicago Society of Alpha Delta Phi as defendants. The University of Chicago is not named as a defendant. CNN obtained the lawsuit from The Chicago Maroon , the university’s student newspaper, which was first to report on it.
Doe does not attend the University of Chicago, her attorney Georgia Booth told CNN affiliate WLS .
The suit names the University of Chicago as a “respondent in discovery,” an Illinois procedure that lets Doe seek information from the school and ask to add it as a defendant if the evidence warrants.
Chicago police told CNN a 19-year-old woman said she was sexually assaulted around 1 a.m. February 8 inside a residence on the 5700 block of South University Avenue and later went to a hospital.
Police did not name the fraternity. But Doe told officers she was assaulted at the fraternity’s address on that same block, according to the lawsuit. The incident — now more than eight months old — remains under investigation.
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Alpha Delta Phi said it suspended the member involved after learning of the allegations.
“The conduct described is deeply troubling and inconsistent with our values,” the fraternity said in a statement. Alpha Delta Phi said it would “cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate” but could not discuss specifics because of the active lawsuit.
Doe’s suit claims the fraternity failed to abide by its own rules of conduct, which include providing sober monitors at events and protecting against sexual assault by its members.
The lawsuit seeks more than $50,000 on each of four counts, citing Doe’s “severe and permanent psychological and emotional distress” and other harms.
In the most recent incident at the University of Chicago, a confrontation caught on camera shows a woman chasing a man through the streets of the city whom she believed sexually assaulted her friend at a fraternity party.
The alleged incident was reported last weekend at a fraternity house and is under investigation by the university and the Chicago Police Department.
No suspects are in custody and police have not made any arrests, but the university said a person of interest has been identified. The man is not a University of Chicago student and has been banned from the campus, the university said .
Mia Lara, the woman in the confrontation video, told CNN her friend had previously rejected a man’s advances to go upstairs at the frat party that night.
She eventually discovered her friend was with the man in a bathroom while Lara said she saw the man’s friends “banging on the door,” “cheering,” and saying, “they want to get in there.”
Lara found her friend slumped on the bathroom floor, partially clothed, saying “get me out of here” and “I don’t want to be here,” Lara said, adding she had never seen her friend in that state before.
After helping her friend leave the fraternity house, Lara said her friends went to sit on the sidewalk and noticed the same group of men pointing and laughing at the woman who said she was assaulted.
“I point at the guy, and I’m like, ‘You’re the one that was in the bathroom with her.’ I was like, ‘What did you do to her?’” Lara said.
In a video that was widely viewed and shared online, Lara starts following a man while yelling at the camera, “He f**king assaulted my friend in the bathroom of a f**king frat party, you can record all the s**t you want.”
CNN has reached out to Chicago police and the University of Chicago for comment about the video.
CNN’s Cindy Von Quednow and Bill Kirkos contributed to this report.
