The parents of Lauren McCluskey — the University of Utah student who was killed by a man she had briefly dated, in 2018 — have settled lawsuits against the university in an agreement in which the institution acknowledges the tragedy as “preventable.”
The agreement was announced on Thursday, the second anniversary of McCluskey’s death. On October 22, 2018, she was shot to death on campus by Melvin Shawn Rowland, who later killed himself.
Jill and Matthew McCluskey previously filed two lawsuits alleging that the university could have done more to protect their daughter. In the weeks leading up to her killing, Lauren McCluskey repeatedly reported to the campus police that she was being harassed and extorted by Rowland. He threatened to release compromising photographs of McCluskey if she did not pay him $1,000. On the morning of her death, he attempted to lure her out of her dormitory by impersonating a deputy police chief by text, an incident McCluskey reported to the police.
But McCluskey’s concerns were not taken as seriously as they should have been. Police officers had missed the warning signs that McCluskey was experiencing escalating intimate-partner violence, The Chronicle previously reported. And one of the officers on McCluskey’s case, Miguel Deras, showed off the compromising photos of McCluskey to at least three of his male co-workers, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
In the settlement agreement, the university:
- Acknowledged that McCluskey’s murder was a “brutal, senseless, and preventable tragedy.”
- Agreed to pay the McCluskeys $10.5 million. The McCluskeys have said that the proceeds of the lawsuits, in which they originally sought $56 million, will go to the Lauren McCluskey Foundation, a charitable organization they founded to make college campuses safer for women, among other goals.
- Agreed to make a $3-million donation to the foundation.
- Agreed to construct an indoor track suitable for the track and field team, of which McCluskey was a member. If the university fails to raise the funds required to complete construction despite its best efforts, it agrees to make an additional $3-million donation to the Lauren McCluskey Foundation.
- Agreed to name its new Center for Violence Prevention the McCluskey Center for Violence Prevention.
Ruth V. Watkins, the university’s president, said at a news conference that it “acknowledges and deeply regrets that it did not handle Lauren’s case as it should have,” the Tribune reported. University employees “failed to fully understand and respond appropriately to Lauren’s situation.”
That’s a change from 2018, when, after an independent review into McCluskey’s case, Watkins asserted that there wasn’t any reason to believe McCluskey’s death could have been prevented.
Over the past two years, the university has established the violence-prevention center, created a chief-safety-officer position, and increased training for faculty, staff, and students. The university has also made “significant changes” in the “composition, culture, and training” of the campus police department, the agreement says.
Scott Schneider, a higher-education lawyer with the firm Husch Blackwell, called McCluskey’s case one of the most important Title IX cases of the last several years. Details stuck with him, he said, like the lack of campus-police training to recognize intimate-partner violence, sometimes called dating violence or relationship violence. The term encompasses psychological abuse, such as stalking, along with physical and sexual abuse.
Those situations are complicated, Schneider said, and campus employees who work in that space need to know how to spot warning signs.
He was struck by the size of the settlement, and the university’s admission that it had made mistakes. That doesn’t happen often, Schneider said. He applauded it.
