A new Title IX lawsuit was filed against Baylor University while another Title IX lawsuit was refiled to include former head football coach Art Briles (above) and former athletic director Ian McCaw.
The new lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Waco, Texas, while the amended lawsuit was refiled Wednesday, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald and other media outlets. They are two of four Title IX lawsuits filed against Baylor for its handling of sexual assault cases involving its football team.
Related: Baylor Title IX Coordinator Resigns, Speaks Out
In the new Title IX lawsuit, plaintiff Dolores Lozano, a former Baylor student, alleges former Baylor running back Devin Chafin threatened her and slapped, kicked and slammed her against the wall until she fell to the ground, then strangled her until she began to lose consciousness, the newspaper reported. The alleged incident took place in March 2014, followed by two more assaults in April 2014. The two began dating in 2012.
As ESPN reported, Lozano alleges she told several people at the school, including the Baylor running backs coach and a senior associate athletic director, about the assaults. Lozano’s concerns were ignored, and no one at Baylor conducted an investigation, she claims.
Baylor dismissed Chafin from the football team on June 1. He was named in an April 2014 Waco police report but was not charged, the Tribune reported.
Chafin now plays at Missouri Southern State, an NCAA Division II school. He did not respond to a request for an interview, though officials at the school indicated they were trying to reach him, ESPN reported.
Baylor declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Jasmin Hernandez, the plaintiff in the amended complaint, is a former Baylor student who was raped by former Baylor football player Tevin Elliott in April 2012, the Tribune-Herald reported. Elliott was convicted of rape in 2014 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Hernandez filed the original complaint in March. Alex Zalkin, Hernandez’s attorney, removed Briles and McCaw from the lawsuit in September because the two cannot be sued as individuals under Title IX claims, the Tribune-Herald reported.
“We are alleging that (Briles and McCaw) had a duty to control Tevin Elliott, to competently run their football program and athletic department and to essentially protect female students, including Jasmin, from known sexual predators,” Zalkin told the newspaper. “In dismissing them from the original complaint, we were getting rid of the duplicate claims against the school; and naming Briles and McCaw in their individual capacity and making them personally responsible for any liability that would flow from their official former positions.”
In May, as Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton was completing its nine-month independent investigation in Baylor’s handling of sexual assault reports at the school, Baylor fired Briles and president Ken Starr, and McCaw resigned.
Earlier this month, Patty Crawford resigned as Baylor’s Title IX coordinator, claiming Baylor “set me up to fail from the beginning” regarding the school’s handling of sexual assault cases.
Read the Tribune-Herald’s timeline of events involving the Baylor sexual assault controversy.
