[Updated (4/16/2014, 7:43 p.m.) with response from Florida State University.]
An article in The New York Times asserts that Florida State University and the Tallahassee Police Department did not properly investigate a rape accusation against Jameis Winston, the Seminoles’ star quarterback.
A Florida State student who said she had been raped in 2012 identified Mr. Winston as her assailant. Last December the local prosecutor announced that he lacked sufficient evidence to charge Mr. Winston, who later led the Seminoles to the national championship and won the Heisman Trophy.
The Times raised questions about how the police and the university had responded to the allegations, stating that its review of the matter had found that there was “virtually no investigation at all” by either party.
The article said the university had spoken with the Times at first but recently stopped doing so. A Florida State spokeswoman told the newspaper that she could not discuss specific cases because of privacy laws, but she issued a statement saying that the institution’s “code-of-conduct process has worked well for the vast majority of sexual-assault cases” and has “provided victims with the emotional and procedural help they need.”
In an online response posted on Wednesday, Florida State expressed “deep disappointment” in the Times’s article and strongly objected “to the newspaper’s characterization of the university as being uncooperative in explaining its actions.” The university said it had provided the Times with a general statement and numerous written answers to questions over a period of weeks. “Most of the responses were left out of the story,” it said, “giving readers an incorrect impression of the university’s efforts on behalf of sexual-assault victims under Title IX.” The response includes the text of the general statement and a list of points that the university said it had emphasized but were either missing or played down in the Times’s article.
USA Today reported last month that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating the university for possible violations of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal gender-equity law. The inquiry stems from a complaint filed by Mr. Winston’s accuser.
