A woman who sued the University of Louisiana System for failing to protect her from a student she and others accused of rape agreed to settle the lawsuit Aug. 1, days before a trial was set to begin.
The woman, who filed the federal lawsuit in the Middle District of Louisiana in May 2022 under the pseudonym Jane Doe, is one of eight women who said that they were sexually assaulted by Victor Daniel Silva.
The woman’s settlement comes more than four years after a USA TODAY investigation revealed systemic failures by university and law enforcement officials to connect the dots on Silva, who from 2014 to 2020 transferred from Louisiana State University to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then to Louisiana Tech University, then back to UL Lafayette – racking up sexual misconduct allegations at every stop.
A Louisiana law enacted in 2015 was supposed to help the state’s public universities root out sexual offenders on their campuses. Called Act 172, it required colleges and law enforcement agencies to communicate with each other about reports of sex crimes involving students. It also ordered colleges to notify other colleges when students disciplined or under investigation for sexual misconduct tried to transfer.
