Female Student Sues BU over Alleged Sexual Assault in Dorm

Photo By Olga Khvan

A female Boston University student filed a lawsuit against the school Thursday, claiming it failed to protect her from an alleged sexual assault in October 2015.

The student was a junior when she allegedly awoke to former MIT basketball player Samson Donick sexually assaulting her in her dorm room in Student Village 2, or StuVi2. Donick, who has since pleaded not guilty and left Massachusetts for California, allegedly asked her, “Baby, do you want some more?”

“At all relevant times, the Defendant created a hostile environment prior to the assault of Jane Doe by failing to lawfully enforce state and federal law in the response and redress of sex-based violence and assaults about which it knew or should have known,” the lawsuit reads.

The suit, filed in Suffolk County Superior Court, alleges negligence and a breach of contract for failing to provide the student with secure on-campus housing. Four non-BU affiliated men were signed into StuVi2 the night of the alleged incident, and BU Police say they have surveillance footage of Donick and another man in a stairwell, later retrieving their IDs from the sign-in desk.

“A group of men would be completely undetected and free to roam around the university dorm for an hour…and ending with the rape of one student,” Wendy Murphy, the student’s lawyer, told the Daily Free Press. “There was absolutely no intervention, prevention, security, nothing to stop them.”