Former Haskell student allegedly raped on campus is suing the university and the U.S.

A former Haskell Indian Nations University student who said she was raped by two male students in a campus dormitory now is suing the university and its president, the United States and the U.S. secretary of interior.

The woman, referred to in the lawsuit as Jane Doe H., filed the suit Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Douglas County, saying Haskell violated its own policies and wrongly expelled her without due process just to get rid of her after she was traumatized by a rape on the Lawrence campus.

The suit names Haskell President Venida Chenault and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. Haskell is a fully federally funded, four-year college operated by the Bureau of Indian Education under the Department of the Interior for members of federally recognized Native American tribes.

Jane Doe H. said she was raped by two of the university’s football players who had been drinking, and “university employees knew that policies against the use of alcohol and curfew hours were not being enforced,” the lawsuit states.

According to the lawsuit, the sexual assaults caused Jane Doe H. extreme emotional distress, and she developed “a medical/psychological condition that interfered with her ability to complete her courses.”

The lawsuit says the university was aware of the trauma Jane Doe H. was going through after the sexual assaults. It also says that later, when Jane Doe H. became involved in an altercation with a male student that left bruises on her, the university pressured that male student to file “an unfounded” Title IX law suit against Jane Doe H.

Title IX is the federal law that protects against gender discrimination including sexual violence and harassment.

Subsequently, the university issued a no-contact order against Jane Doe H., and “on or about the afternoon of April 1, 2016, HINU administrators expelled” Jane Doe H. “and banned her from campus without conducting an investigation” or providing her any due process, the suit says.

The lawsuit says “HINU administrators were deliberately indifferent” to Jane Doe H.’s Title IX rights, and that the university was “intentionally circumventing her rights in order to kick her out of the university, and intentionally pressured John Doe to bring a baseless Title IX complaint against Plaintiff in order to get rid of her.”

Jane Doe H.’s lawyer in this Title IX lawsuit is Dan Curry, who also is the attorney representing two former University of Kansas rowers suing KU over alleged Title IX violations and saying the university failed to protect them after they were assaulted on campus, and saying in another lawsuit that KU falsely advertised that its campus dormitories were safe.

Curry said the Jane Doe H. suit is the second one filed against Haskell and the U.S. related to this case. Two weeks ago, Angelina Adams filed a lawsuit in Douglas County District Court in Lawrence saying she was demoted from her position as a Haskell university counselor for students after she questioned the way school administrators treated Jane Doe H. once she reported the rape.

The football players were later arrested on charges of rape and released on bond. They were expelled by Haskell. Their court cases ended in mistrials and are to be rescheduled.

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 6:51 PM with the headline "Former Haskell student allegedly raped on campus is suing the university and the U.S.."