3 sexual assaults reported at Vanderbilt in a week
NASHVILLE — Vanderbilt University police are investigating three sexual assaults that took place on campus during less than a one-week span.
The sexual assaults are three of six that have taken place at the university over the past 90 days, with the most recent attack occurring last week.
Vanderbilt University officials did not immediately respond to questions Monday about the assaults, including how many have taken place so far this year.
According to the department's daily crime log, the most recent attack took place about 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 2 at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital. The victim, police said, was a female patient at the hospital and reported the attack to campus police the following day.
The second sexual assault took place on Halloween inside a university residence hall. The crime log did not state which dorm, but did state a female student reported she was sexually assaulted by a male student after a party. That female student reported the attack on Nov. 2.
The third sexual assault took place on Oct. 29. It also involved a student victim and took place inside an unnamed residence hall, according to the university crime log.
Of the other three assaults that have taken place during the past three months, one occurred on Aug. 14 at 1211 Medical Center Drive and involved a university employee. The other two involved students — one taking place on campus Oct. 3 and the other taking place in a residence hall on Oct. 15. Additional details about those two attacks were not immediately available.
It was not immediately known if anyone has been arrested in connection to the sexual assaults or if police are seeking more than one suspect.
Under an agreement with Metro police, Vanderbilt is required to report all known sex assaults to the city's police department in a timely manner.
Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said Monday that the city's police department most recently received memos from Vanderbilt regarding the incidents that took place Oct. 29 and Oct. 31.
The information, he said, was provided to the Vanderbilt police by another campus authority but the names of those involved, the locations of the incidents and possible descriptions of the suspects were not reported to law enforcement.
"The info provided to Nashville PD was very limited so there is no information that we can act on in its present state," Aaron said.
The Nov. 3 assault was also reported to Metro, Aaron said, after a 14-year-old female patient told campus police she was sexually assaulted by a male teenage patient at the hospital. Metro police department's sex crime unit was notified and the reported incident remains under investigation by Metro police.
The reported assaults come as Vanderbilt and other universities face criticism for their response to reports of sexual assault. Four former football players at Vanderbilt University and and two at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville are facing charges of rape, and their separate criminal cases are pending.
In a case that has drawn national media attention to the university, the four Vanderbilt football players were accused of gang-raping an unconscious student in one player’s dorm in June 2013. All four players then left the team as the university faced scrutiny about what coaches and other authorities knew about the assault, including text messages between coaches and staff.
Two of them, Brandon Vandenburg and Cory Batey, went to trial and were found guilty of rape and sexual battery in January, but a judge declared a mistrial in June because of an issue with a juror’s impartiality. Their retrial is set for April 4. The two other men, Brandon E. Banks and Jaborian “Tip” McKenzie, are both playing football at other institutions while awaiting trial.
The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is investigating how three Tennessee schools responded to reports of sexual assault, including Vanderbilt. The other schools are UT Knoxville and UT Chattanooga. The federal agency has 175 cases of alleged sexual violence pending at 145 post-secondary institutions nationwide, according to the department.
At Vanderbilt, there were reported 23 sexual assaults during the 2014 calendar year, according to data submitted to the federal government. In 2012 and 2013, there were 13 and 17 reported sexual assaults, respectively.
Six sex assaults reported on campus within the past 90 days
• Nov. 2, 9 p.m., Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, patient victim, reported on Nov. 3.
• Oct. 31, residence hall, student victim, reported on Nov. 2.
• Oct. 29, residence hall, student victim, reported on Nov. 5.
• Oct. 15, residence hall, student victim, reported on Oct. 30.
• Oct. 3, on campus, student victim, reported Oct. 6.
• Aug. 14, 1211 Medical Center Drive, university employee victim, reported on Aug. 28.
Contributing: Anita Wadhwani, The Tennessean. Follow Natalie Neysa Alund and Adam Tamburin on Twitter: @nataliealund and @tamburintweets