Erica Kinsman, the former Florida State University student that accused one-time Seminoles quarterback and potential first-overall pick of the 2015 NFL Draft Jameis Winston of raping her in December 2012, filed a federal Title IX lawsuit Thursday in response to Florida State's motion to dismiss the case, according to a report from Rachel Axon of USA Today.
In the lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Kinsman rebuts the school's assertion that Monk Bonasorte, the senior associate athletic director, and head football coach Jimbo Fisher were not the appropriate school officials to respond to Kinsman's allegations.
The two men were alleged to have known about Kinsman's allegations in January 2013, nearly a month after she first went to the police.
The school contends that Bonasorte and Fisher were not responsible to act because they were not qualified to "remedy the situation," per Axon.
"In deliberate violation of their known duties to act on allegations of student-on-student sexual assault and notify the FSU administration, these senior Athletics Department officials chose to conceal the information they had received," Kinsman's response, filed by her attorneys, states.
"It would wholly circumvent the purposes of Title IX to find FSU protected from liability because its senior associate athletic director and head football coach deliberately concealed notice from FSU's administrators or other 'appropriate persons.'"
Kinsman originally filed suit against FSU's board of trustees in January, claiming the school's response to the chargers against Winston were met with "deliberate indifference."
In December 2013, a review by the state attorney resulted in Winston avoiding criminal charges. A subsequent school hearing held in December 2014 found that Winston had not violated the student code of conduct.
This month, an FSU administrator affirmed the decision after it was appealed.
