The Michigan Attorney General's Office has launched an investigation into allegations that multiple now-former basketball players sexually assaulted a female student in 2015, her lawyer confirmed Thursday to the Free Press.
Bailey Kowalski also sued Michigan State University, alleging in 2018 that three players raped her in 2015 and that she was discouraged by counseling center staff from reporting what happened. MSU investigators have cleared the players, who have never been named.
Kowalski's lawyer, Karen Truzowski, confirmed that the attorney general's office is now involved. A spokeswoman for that office said she was unable to confirm the development.
A police report was filed last summer in Lansing Township. Lansing Township Chief John Joseph said Thursday the police department and Ingham County prosecutors met this week and decided they didn't have enough resources to investigate and turned it over to the state attorney general's office.
In August, a federal judge rejected MSU's request to dismiss Kowalski' s lawsuit, saying it was "plausible" Michigan State University buried sexual assault claims brought against athletes and allowed its athletic department to deal with those issues outside the normal university process.
In her lawsuit, Kowalski said she was at Harper's Bar in the early morning hours of April 12, 2015, when the Spartans' basketball team arrived. She said a player offered to buy her a drink and asked whether she would like to meet other team members.
Kowalski said she was invited to a party at a player's apartment. But she said there was no party when she got there, and she was forcefully thrown on a bed, held down and raped, according to the lawsuit. The suit does not name the players.
The lawsuit said that Kowalski felt disoriented even though she didn't have much to drink, making her suspect she had been drugged.
Kowalski didn't immediately report the alleged assault to police or campus officials. She said in her lawsuit that she visited the MSU Counseling Center about a week after the incident, and staff there discouraged her from making a report after she told them basketball players were involved.
Kowalski was known only as "Jane Doe" _ the name used in her lawsuit _ until she held a news conference in April in East Lansing. Then a senior, Kowalski said she didn't want to walk across the stage at graduation without speaking up about what happened to her. The Free Press generally does not identify sexual assault victims without their consent.
"If I didn't (speak out), I would be neglecting other victims and leaving them behind," Kowalski said. "Knowing I can be there for somebody right now, knowing there are women and men who exist as survivors, I look forward to being their support system if they do not have one.
"They do not have to be silenced; this isn't a burden they have to carry on their own."
In June, MSU investigators cleared the basketball players of all wrongdoing after Kowalski also filed a Title IX report with the school.
