Two former Louisiana State University fellows said Washington football team offensive midfielder Derrius Guice raped them a few months ago in 2016, while Guice was a first-year emerging star on the LSU football team.
An investigation by USA TODAY revealed that the women’s allegations were shared at the time with several others at the school, adding at least two coaches, an athletics manager and a nurse, but the school did not appear to have investigated.
As the LSU single-game racing record holder and number five on the Tigers’ career list, Guice was to be a first circular pick in the 2018 draft. But he fell at the end of the circular moment amid considerations about his adulthood and responsibility. Injuries affected his short career and Washington cut him off on August 7 after his arrest the same day in Virginia on domestic violence charges in some other case.
In a statement, Guice’s lawyer, Peter D. Greenspun, denied all the allegations and the timing of the story’s publication.
“At no point were allegations of physical or sexual assault against Derrius made for his years as a student-athlete at LSU,” Greenspun said in the statement. “Making such claims only after the fees opposed to Virginia have been filed call into question the credibility, nature, and timing of what is alleged years later.
“Such hypotheses and innuendos are not the basis for Derrius to be forced to comment,” Greenspun added. “But surely it must be clear. The accusations in this story are just that and have no basis in fact.”
USA TODAY began reporting on this express story on August 3, four days before Guice’s arrest, and in January first asked one of the women about the alleged rape. The same woman also detailed her complaints in June as a whistleblower in a trial in which she is listed as “Jane Doe”.
TheArray, a former LSU tennis player, spoke protractedly with a Washington investigator on August 6, a day before Guice’s arrest and the next release. The investigator interviewed the ones for three and a half hours, with breaks, in Zoom, and asked them detailed questions about the accusation of sexual assault, he said.
Washington head coach Ron Rivera told reporters at a video convention on August 10 that the resolution to cut Guice refused to say whether points other than domestic violence rates influenced the resolution.
“Whenever you have to free a very talented young footballer, it’s a difficult resolution,” Rivera said. “But this kind of circumstance, this kind of situation, we take these accusations very, very seriously, and we had to make a resolution in the future.
The Washington football team told USA TODAY on a Tuesday that it had no more comments than Rivera said on August 10, referring all questions to the NFL. Brian McCarthy, NFL vice president of communications, said the league was unaware of any charges of sexual assault or Title IX court cases that opposed Guice until before this month.
The two women told USA TODAY that Guice assaulted them in their own apartments after nights of excessive alcohol consumption. One woman said Guice showed up unpleasant at a party she was hosting, then entered her room in her sleep and raped her. The other woman, the tennis player, said Guice raped her when she was allowed to move house after first having met her in a bar.
“I was and passed out in my bed, ” said the first woman. “I never gave him his consent. I never sought to sleep with him. I don’t even forget the flashbacks I had. Infrequently I wonder, do you even know it was wrong?
USA TODAY’s policy is not to identify others who are attacking a sexual assault without their permission. The women asked for anonymity because they were concerned about retaliation. The first woman claimed that Guice had threatened and harassed her after telling others that she had not consented to having sex with him.
According to the women, six friends and members of the circle of relatives interviewed through USA TODAY, school officials at the time did not identify the women and provided dubious explanations as to why their alleged attacks would not be investigated. Women say no one from the university has interviewed them or any possible witnesses about the allegations.
The former tennis player said her alleged rape had been reported in the school’s Title IX office, but was never investigated. She requested a copy of the report on August 13 and agreed to share it with USA TODAY, but stated that LSU had not yet provided it. The other woman claimed that LSU had emailed her after a friend reported the alleged assault, informing the woman that she was running facilities and asking if she would like to file a formal complaint. He said he hadn’t recorded any.
None of the women reported the incidents to the police, which is not unusual among victims of sexual assault. The campus and the local police have no record of this.
The former tennis player’s attack is documented in an ongoing lawsuit opposed to the NCAA, in which she and several women allege that the school sports organization is guilty of her attacks through athletes because she failed to cope with the sexual violence of athletes in its member schools. . The main points of her report of assault at the trial, which hides her identity and Guice’s, are in line with those provided to USA TODAY this year, when a journalist first interviewed her.
The other woman shared a letter she wrote to Guice during her rehab, and the main points of the letter are the same as she and two friends told USA TODAY about the alleged assault.
USA TODAY Newshounds interviewed two other people who said the women had described them a few days after the alleged assaults, which had been reported a few weeks later and another 3 who said the women had told them months later. None of them witnessed the incidents. Two of the Americans reported reporting the data directly to LSU’s coaches.
Title IX federal policies in place when the reports were drafted required universities to “quickly investigate” allegations of sexual assault to find out what had happened and then take appropriate action on the situation. LSU’s Title IX policy stated, “Any supervisor, or any other guilty party who witnesses or receives a report or complaint, will have to notify the Campus Title IX Coordinator.” The Title IX coordinator is then required to conduct an initial review to determine whether it deserves a full investigation.
LSU answered express questions. Instead, it issued the following statement:
“LSU and LSU Athletics take all allegations of sexual assault with the utmost seriousness. Formal court cases are investigated very well and promptly and the rights and privacy of students are those required by the Family Privacy and Educational Rights Act. Whistleblowers are also strongly encouraged to report the crime to law enforcement and obtain data on care, recommendations and support for fitness. »
The university’s handling of incidents raises questions, said Alexandra Brodsky, who is investigating civil rights cases involving harassment and other bureaucracy of discrimination opposed to academics as a public justice lawyer.
“Legally, in court, the question is, “Was it a school intentionally oblivious to the wisdom of sexual assault?” This is hard for a plaintiff to find,” Brodsky said.
“But I think it can fall into the aspect of that line.”
The first woman, who did play sports, said she lived in the same apartment complex as many athletes, adding to Guice, as a rookie in 2015-16. At the beginning of the semester of time, he organized a party attended by Guice and several other football players.
“I remember, I thought, “Who invited him? “The woman told USA TODAY, saying that she did not like Guice for what she had noticed in the past about her attitude and behavior.
At one point, and uncomfortable with Guice’s presence, the woman said, went to her room, closed the door and passed out on her bed. Although her memory the next morning was blurry, she knew she had been assaulted and said she had “trauma there.” He also suspected that Guice was guilty because he had put his number on his phone.
Over the next few days, the woman said, she had more and more flashbacks from the assault, which clarified the memory. Other party footballers told her that Guice had talked about having sex with her. Annoyed, the woman told her friend from the LSU women’s diving team, but asked her to say something, she said.
But the diver, who spoke to USA TODAY, said she was so disappointed that the woman told her she still reported the incident to her diving coach. The coach then informed the tracking and box officials, who called the friend to ask her, she said. The friend said she did not answer the call of the official she had spoken to, but that she was a woman.
“They said they couldn’t do anything because (the victim) didn’t need to talk, and because it didn’t happen to me,” the diver said.
After the meeting, the woman said someone from LSU had emailed her, told her that the school was aware of the incident, and told her that she might be looking for a remedy at the university gym. The woman does not forget who sent the email or in which branch the user was. He said he no longer had access to the LSU email account to which the email was sent.
When a nurse at the gym asked if she planned to file a complaint against Guice, she replied no.
“I don’t need to be that woman everyone looks at and says, “Oh, she’s lying, ” said the woman. Besides, I’m a little afraid to move on because it’s so violent.
The nurse’s reaction reiterated that even if she filed a complaint with LSU, it would be nothing.
“Here it’s like a god,” recalls the wife of the nurse, an LSU employee. “They’d take it under the carpet.”
The woman’s boyfriend at the time, an LSU football rookie, not the party. But he said the woman later told him about the alleged attack and her verbal exchange with the nurse. His description matched that of the woman.
The ex-boyfriend put on his red blouse in the first year and said he had moved away from Guice because “he would probably have lost my (juron) opposite to him. But she said LSU football coach Ed Orgeron had raised the issue of her then friend and Guice about a year after the alleged assault, telling the athlete not to bother about it.
“(Orgeron) said, “Everyone’s friend sleeps with people,” the former player told USA TODAY.
The former player said he didn’t know how Orgeron knew what had happened, but believes the coach knew he wasn’t consensual.
“I lost all respect to him,” he added.
Orgeron responded to a request for comment.
The woman claimed that when she heard that Guice had told other players that she had had sex with her, she had made it clear to them that she had been consensual.
“I think when the players came back and told him that, that’s when he got so violent,” she said. “Because I knew what I’d done.”
During the final exams of the semester of her alleged assault, the woman discovered that someone had thrown a protein drink on the windshield of her car, she said. The cup that was empty had Guice’s call, he said.
On another occasion, the woman said she was in a friend’s apartment when Guice arrived. The friend told her to lock herself in her room, which she did, but Guice knocked on the door of the room until she opened it, she said.
“I opened the door and looked at it,” the woman recalls. ‘He started by saying I don’t know who he is, I don’t know who I’m betting with, and he went looking for his gun. I said, “Do what you have to do.”
“After that, I closed the door in his face and locked her.
The effect of the incident was devastating, the woman said.
“My life is completely out of control,” he says. “As my counselor says, (the survivors of the aggression) they either need nothing to do with the boys, or they withdraw to regain strength and lose control. That’s what I did. I was checking the exit to regain my strength.”
He drugged and arrested. He ended up in rehab. During her stay, the woman said, the counselors asked her to write a letter to the user she despised the most. He wrote to Guice, he said. USA TODAY reviewed a copy of the letter, which does not call Guice but is addressed to its alleged author.
“Everyone turns out to be congratulating you, but if they knew you had to take the credit for women as they faint to feel powerful, they’d see the piece of (swear) I see,” she wrote. “… I wonder what the media would say if they knew the real monster you are.”
Although he has now rebuilt his life, he says the alleged rape “is going to be anything that’s happened to me, it’ll be part of me.” When she saw that Guice had been arrested, she said that part of her was happy.
“I was like, wow, in spite of everything they gave it to him. Despite everything they beat it,” he said. I said, “It’s over.”
The former tennis player also lived on the same floor as Guice.
She first met him in June 2016 at a bar near the LSU campus, he said. She had already been drinking before her arrival, she said, and at the Guice bar she bought her several glasses of Patron. She “extremely” intoxicated, she said. His reminiscence of the night is blurry.
“I was veryArray, ” he said. “Too much to give consent in the first place.”
The woman’s friend, another LSU athlete at the time, told USA TODAY that she was at the bar that night. She also described the woman as drunk. Guice showed up to take them home and left the friend first, the friend said.
The woman came to her apartment, where she lived alone. She and Guice split up. Some time later, Guice texted him if he could come, he said. She said she texted him to let him come, but said nothing would happen.
The woman was unable to retrieve a copy of the text message because she has since received a new phone and has not saved the messages. He claimed that he had sought the message in Cloud Garage and old backups, but that he had not succeeded.
The next thing she remembered that night, Guice forced her to have oral and then vaginal sex, she said. When he woke up in the morning, he was gone, he said. She told some close friends that Guice had taken credit for the situation, did not explicitly describe it as rape at the time, she said.
One of the friends said he told you the next day.
“She was a little moved by that and didn’t know what to say about it, but she definitely knew something bad,” she said.
The woman testified that she had abused alcohol and prescription drugs before meeting with Guice. His alcohol consumption was higher after the incident, he said. She drank before practice and her teammates were so worried that they told Julia Sell, the lead coach of women’s tennis. Sell finally fired her from the team after testing positive for a drug she hadn’t been prescribed.
In April 2017, the woman enrolled in rehab, which LSU paid, her father said. In the first few weeks there, she told a counselor that Guice had raped her, she said. He also informed his circle of family and friends. A rehabilitation center worker later reported the alleged rape to LSU, she and her father said.
Later that month, the woman’s father met With Sell at the Southeastern Conference women’s tennis championships in Nashville and told her that an LSU football player had raped her daughter, she said. The father said Sell said, “I don’t have it.”
“I was stunned, ” said his father. “It’s nothing I’d say. It’s nothing that the maximum of human beings would say after receiving this kind of news, even if they don’t.”
Sell responded to a request for comment.
Neither LSU’s Title IX workplace nor sports branch officials contacted the woman or her father to open an investigation or put in place provisional measures for her, they said. The woman was transferred to another school after leaving rehab in August.
The woman said she may have returned to LSU and kept her scholarship. But she would have remained under Sell’s responsibility, she said, so she left.
“LSU is such a poisonous environment for me,” he says. “I have to get out.”
Two years later, the woman called LSU Title IX to find out if she had any evidence of her allegation of attack. The coordinator of call IX, Jennie Stewart, said yes, but the record did not call Guice, she said.
Stewart responded to a request for comment.
“I’m at peace with everything that’s happened, ” said the woman. “But I don’t like him walking freely and potentially doing that to other people. It makes me feel guilty.
Last June, the former tennis player joined seven other women in an NCAA lawsuit, seeking damages from the sexual assault they claim to have suffered at the hands of male athletes. The lawsuit was originally filed in Federal Court in April and resubmitted in May in a state court in Ingham County, Michigan.
According to the woman’s lawyer Karen Truszkowski, a lawyer for the Washington football team, contacted Truszkowski on August 4 to ask her to speak to her consumer about her accusations of opposition to Guice. The official arranged for the woman to meet with an outside investigator, Laura Kirschstein, on August 6 at Zoom, a three-and-a-half-hour call.
Kirschstein, a former sex crime prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, heads the sexual misconduct department of a personal law firm, T-M Protection Resources. Its exfiscales team provides consulting, education and research to schools, professional sports groups and other companies, according to the company’s website.
On August 7, a day after the call, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office arrested Guice on 3 counts of attack and assault and destruction of assets and strangulation as a result of three incidents of domestic violence in February, March and April. Guice turned around that night, spokesman Kraig Troxell said, then posted a $10,000 bond and was released.
Guice is scheduled to appear in Loudoun District Court on August 28 at 11:15 a.m.
Court documents show that all three incidents occurred at Guice’s home in Ashburn, Virginia. A woman, whose call is hidden, told police that Guice strangled her with her hands until she was knocked unconscious. The attack left visual bruises on his neck, according to the documents.
On two other occasions, the woman stated that Guice pushed her to the floor of her bedroom and outside her home, causing her injuries.
The Washington football team broke ties with Guice hours after his arrest. That night, he issued a saying that he had been aware of the allegations of domestic violence the previous day and released Guice “after contemplating the nature of those fees and after internal discussions.” They didn’t mention the alleged sexual assault.
Washington abandoned the investigation that interviewed former LSU tennis player Truszkowski, because Guice is no longer on the team’s list. But the NFL has charges of domestic violence, McCarthy said, and “similar misconduct before joining the NFL” can be perceived as an aggravating way in deciding how long a suspension will last if Guice proves to have violated the league’s non-public conduct policy.
Guice’s lawyer, Greenspun, had previously issued a review of the team for releasing the player “without any investigation into what happened or not.”
“Derrius will protect those fees in court, where a full review will be conducted, contrary to the movements of the local police and the Washington football team that assumed the worst, directly contradicting any sense of fairness and due process,” he said.
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