Daisy Tackett’s parents are taking a stand against Kansas University and their daughter’s 20-year-old rapist. After she was assaulted in a KU dormitory during her 2014 fall semester, Tackett’s parents lodged a lawsuit against the university.
A member of the elite rowing team, Daisy Tackett is 5-foot-10, 190 pounds, and a talented athlete. She was also the last person you’d expect to be raped.
According to The Daily Beast,
Tackett was attending a party one night at the university’s Jayhawker Towers. She had grown tired of the drinking and smoking and planned on leaving when a football player dissuaded her and asked if she would join him in his room to watch a movie.
She accepted.
Then as they were in his room the player allegedly raped her and forced her to perform oral sex, according to an interview she gave with The Dallas Morning News.
“I’m strong. I tried my best to get the kid off me,” Tackett told the paper.
She said the experience was traumatizing and at the same time inescapably real.
After telling a few of her friends abut the situation, she ultimately dropped it and tried forgetting about everything. Unfortunately her newfound panic attacks and stalker weren’t going to let her. Her rapist, a popular football player at the school, would frequently show up with his friends to wherever she was, yelling “that b*tch.” Shortly after, one of Tackett’s team members was raped by the same guy.
Ater Tackett came forward, her parents James and Amanda Tackett filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming administrators sold them “a false bill of goods when it led prospective students to believe that ‘KU’s residence halls are safe and secure.’”
“These representations are false,” the lawsuit bluntly states. “In truth, KU’s residence halls have for years been home to a known persistent and growing problem of instances of sexual assault.”
Tackett’s parents say the school may pledge to be a haven of safety but a disturbing number of assaults allegedly take place in the dorms.
The unprecedented lawsuit was filed in Douglas County, site of the school’s Lawrence, Kansas campus.
“The reality is that KU’s residence halls are unsafe, although KU has consistently and aggressively solicited and procured enrollments through false representations and assurances of safety,” the lawsuit says. If proven true, this would theoretically place the university in violation of the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. The state comes down especially tough on consumer cases.
KU insists that “the suggestion that our residence halls are unsafe or that we misrepresent campus safety in our student recruitment is baseless” and that the filed lawsuit “inaccurately portrays the environment at the University of Kansas and our ongoing efforts to ensure students are safe and aware of their surroundings.”
Do the parents have a point? It’s not like universities are going to start listing sexual assault statistics in their brochures. But should they have been more upfront about security?
Personally, I think this is hard to pin on administrators. Yes, rape is awful. And yes, there’s always a possibility when you’re alone even when it shouldn’t be. But who is to blame for that? Other than the the rapist?
You tell us.
[H/T: The Daily Beast]
