Suit Says University Leaders Capitulated to Mob Pressure, Sacrificed Team to Protect its Image

The Duke Lawsuit web site has posted a Press Release & Case Summary of the civil lawsuit that is being filed against Duke University, the City of Durham, and numerous members of those organizations.

Case Summary

Press Release

In the Press Release lead attorney Chuck Cooper levied the claim that Duke University knew of convincing evidence of the player's innocent yet played "possum" and pretended to let the "process work" while throwing the team under the bus of a runaway Durham & Duke Faculty Mob.

The suit, filed today in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, said University officials remained silent even though they possessed convincing evidence of the players’ innocence and also “lent credibility to the rape allegations by capitulating to an angry mob’s demands to condemn and punish the innocent players and their blameless coach.”

University Leaders Stood Silent While Team Members Were Harassed

“For more then a year, the lacrosse players were caught up in a horrifying personal nightmare. They were harassed in class by teachers and their fellow students. They were the target of protest marches and threats; they were called rapists and racists; they were surrounded in their own homes by screaming protestors. They were victimized by a corrupt investigation that ignored or suppressed evidence that would have cleared them. And, all for a crime that never took place,”lead attorney Chuck Cooper said in announcing the lawsuit.

The suit says that Brodhead and other Duke officials actively blinded themselves to and suppressed exculpatory evidence; discredited exculpatory evidence that had been publicly disclosed; stood passively while faculty and student protestors waged a campaign of abuse and harassment against the lacrosse team members; issued statements and imposed discipline on the team that signaled the players’ guilt; and remained silent when an inexperienced nurse at its medical center falsely characterized a medical exam at Duke Hospital as indicating that a rape had taken place. Brodhead later conceded that Duke students and faculty “were quick to speak as if the charges were true.”

Cooper said the University turned its back on the players in a bid to protect its own image.

The civil lawsuit also points out the actions of DUMC employee, Tara Levicy, who while acting as a SANE-In-Training, carried out a very flawed & falsely concluding Sexual Exam Report(SAE). That report has been the subject of much speculation in the other two lawsuits. The question remains when did Levicy's seniors at DUMC know of her actions and did they do anything to alert officials? But one aspect not in contention is the report of the NC AG and one of his five reasons for saying there was not a sexual assault and the players were innocent.

No medical evidence confirmed her stories. The SANE based her opinion that the exam was consistent with what the accusing witness was reporting largely on the accusing witness’s demeanor and complaints of pain rather than on objective evidence. NC AG Summary

Because of that false SAE the entire Lacrosse Team came under suspicion and their lives were made hell with a campaign of abuse and harassment by Duke Faculty & Durham citizens against them. This while the Rogue Prosecutor Nifong and his team of Durham PD investigators persued a case which they knew was false from the DNA test results by using Levicy's Exam as a cover story in the Press & in Court.