A former student is suing Mount St. Mary’s University for $450,000, claiming she was repeatedly raped in 2022 by a member of the university’s rugby team whom officials knew had been previously accused of sexually assaulting at least one other female student.

The suit alleges that the university gave special treatment to members of the rugby team, one of two sports the university designates as “premier,” enabling rugby players to “commit sexual assaults and harass female students on campus without fear of punishment.”

“The failure to address rampant sexual abuse on campus amounted to deliberate indifference to sex discrimination,” alleges the suit, which was filed last week in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

The suit alleges that the university violated the student’s Title IX rights by failing to protect her from the rugby player. The suit accuses university officials of “failing to properly ... investigate all prior reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault,” failing to stop rugby team members from harassing female students, and failing to properly train staff and supervise dormitories.

A spokesperson for the private Catholic university declined to comment on the case citing the pending litigation. “We take these matters seriously,” Joshua Bonner, assistant vice president and chief marketing officer, said in an email.

The rugby player accused of rape and sexual assault denied the allegations in an email. “I want to state clearly that the allegations made against me in the lawsuit are completely false,” he wrote. “I did not commit the acts being claimed.”

No criminal charges have been filed against the rugby player.

The plaintiff declined to comment through her attorney, Michael Belsky, of the SBWD Law firm in Baltimore. The Banner does not publish the names of alleged victims of sexual assault unless they ask to be named.

“We are continuing to investigate this matter and would urge any student with information to contact us,” Belsky said.

Another former Mount St. Mary’s student said in a phone interview that the rugby player had sexually assaulted her at a party in October 2020, when they were both freshman.

The woman, whose account is also referenced in the lawsuit, said that she had gone to a party to try to convince an intoxicated friend to leave when the rugby player walked up behind her and began to touch her breasts and genital area.

The woman said she stabbed the man with a tool on a keychain that her mother had given her, then ran back to her dorm room. “I cried the whole night,” she said.

The woman said she did not immediately report the incident because she was afraid she would be not be believed. But at the urging of a friend, she informed campus police when she was a sophomore in the fall of 2021, she said.

The university issued a “mutual no-contact order,” which instructed both the woman and the man to avoid each other, but did not take further action against the male student, according to the woman and the suit.

Other members of the rugby team then began to harass the woman, vandalizing her car, throwing things at her window and standing outside her building yelling “slut” and “whore,” according the woman and the suit.

Meanwhile, several other female students contacted the woman and said they had also been assaulted by the same rugby player, according to the woman and the suit.

In the fall of 2022, the plaintiff arrived on Mount St. Mary’s campus as a transfer student and the rugby player quickly befriended her, according to the suit.

According to the suit, the woman mentioned to the rugby player that she was a virgin and planned to wait until marriage to have sex. The rugby player then began “pressuring” the woman to have sex with him, but she declined and said she wanted their relationship to remain platonic, according to the suit.

Weeks later, the woman was visiting the rugby player in his dorm room, when he asked his roommate to leave, then forcibly groped and raped her, according to the suit. The woman told the man that she did not consent and did not want this and he apologized and said he had been intoxicated, according to the suit.

About a month later, the woman and man were on their way to purchase food together, when he pushed her into the back seat of her car and forcibly sexually assaulted her and raped her, according to the suit.

Several months later, the woman asked the rugby player to get tested for sexually transmitted infections and they walked to a water tower to discuss the results, according to the suit. The man then groped her again, but she was able to flee, according to suit.

The rugby player later “violently” sexually and physically assaulted another female student, which was reported to local police, according to the suit. The rugby player was removed from campus and a Title IV investigation was opened, according to the suit.

The plaintiff left the university after the school year and moved out of state to avoid the university and the rugby player, according to the suit.

Mount St. Mary’s, which is located in Emmitsburg in the mountains of Frederick County, has between 2,000 and 2,500 students, according to the suit. A 2023 university report cited in the suit states that there were six rapes on campus in 2021 and five in 2022.

The suit alleges that a second member of the rugby team was also accused of rape around the same time.