Former Wisconsin wide receiver Quintez Cephus said in a lawsuit filed against the university on Tuesday that he was used as a scapegoat during a sexual assault investigation that resulted in his temporary expulsion.
Cephus is seeking unspecified damages in his lawsuit filed in federal court in Madison, accusing defendants of violating his rights to a fair trial, violating Title IX provisions and breach of contract.
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Cephus was banned from the Badgers soccer team in August 2018 and banned from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for violating the non-academic code of misconduct as part of a Title IX investigation following his arrest on allegations of sexual assault on the second and third degree.
After a jury acquitted Cephus, he was reinstated and led Wisconsin during the 2019 season when the Badgers went 10-4 and made it to the Rose Bowl. Cephus recently concluded his rookie season with the Detroit Lions, who took him into the fifth round of the 2020 draft.
University officials did not immediately respond to an email on Tuesday seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Cephus’s attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, said he has spoken to NFL agents and design analysts who believe Cephus would have been drafted earlier had he not been evicted.
“He wants to set a precedent so that schools are more careful and diligent in the way they handle these cases and not just pass judgment when they are sure they don’t have all the evidence,” Miltenberg said. .
The complaint says Wisconsin was “trying to push for tough prosecution against men to remedy the long-standing lack of complaints about sexual assault.” The complaint adds that Cephus’ status as a well-known soccer player made him “the perfect candidate for college to prove her investigative efforts and punish accused men in a high-profile manner.”
Defendants include Chancellor Rebecca Blank, campus Title IX coordinator Lauren Hasselbacher and the school board.
The criminal charges stemmed from an incident at Cephus’s Madison apartment in April 2018. Cephus had sexual acts with two 18-year-old Wisconsin students who later said they had been raped and too drunk to consent. Cephus said there was agreement about the sex.
Cephus’s lawyers said in the complaint that the school’s Title IX investigation was “a blatant miscarriage of justice.” That research concluded that Cephus “more likely than not” had sexually assaulted the women.
Cephus’s lawyers argue that the university should have delayed the investigation until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings because there was relevant evidence that would not be released until the criminal case was closed. They say this video contained evidence that disputed the women’s claims that they were drunk that night.
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They say the school acknowledged that it had tried unsuccessfully to obtain this evidence and went ahead with the disciplinary hearing anyway.
The complaint also says that the statements of two female students were consistently fooled and the investigation was biased by a lack of transparency.
The lawsuit comes five months after one of the female students involved in the case sued the university for its 2019 decision to reverse Cephus’s expulsion and allow him back on the football team.