The report of an investigation released Thursday details startling accusations made by a Notre Dame student who is suing the school after his academic coach allegedly pressured him into having sex with her daughter -- who the student said threatened to kill him if he broke up with her.
The unnamed student, who is black, claimed in his lawsuit that the coach, who is white, made "demeaning" and "racially-charged comments about his sexual prowess and genitalia." Notre Dame fired the academic coach last month and hired an outside investigator to look into the allegations.
The results of that investigation, a six-page report prepared Sept. 9 and released by the student's law firm to The Huffington Post, reveal how the student claims he was introduced to the academic coach and her daughter, and describe the development of the trio's relationship.
According to the report, the student claimed the academic coach recommended he seek counseling and once told him and her daughter to "go upstairs immediately and have sex." The student told the investigator he filed a restraining order against the coach's daughter and that the daughter verbally threatened him, saying, "You know, if you break up with me, I'm going to kill you, right?"
The student also told the investigator that the academic coach inquired in detail about the sexual encounters between him and her daughter:
Before leaving for [redacted study abroad location], [Student] stayed with [Daughter] for a week. [Daughter] and [Student] had sex often and used various types of condoms. [Mother] knew they were having sex and afterward she would ask them how the condoms were and how the sex was.
In a statement to HuffPost on Friday, Notre Dame spokesman Paul Browne countered claims that the school had not responded to the student's initial allegations.
"Following a multimillion-dollar demand by the lawyer for money, plaintiff’s counsel made repeated, unsupported allegations that Notre Dame failed to act, when in fact the university acted immediately when it learned of a problem," Browne said. The student made his initial complaint to the school on Aug. 26, after which the school hired outside counsel to investigate. Notre Dame fired the academic coach on Oct. 5 after reviewing the investigation's findings, Browne added.
The academic coach released a statement Thursday characterizing the accusations as part of a bad breakup.
"There are two sides to every breakup and that this is being played out in the media is incredibly painful to us," the coach's spokesperson, Caitlin Rourk, said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press. "While we may not be a perfect family, we are a close-knit one and welcomed this young man into our lives at a time when he, himself said, he couldn't rely on anyone else."
Rourk says the document is merely a "he-said, she-said" account of a "brief summer romance."
"The newly released document is merely a listing of the allegations made by the plaintiff, which do not support the allegations he made in the original suit, and only serves to inflict more emotional pain on this family," Rourk added in a statement obtained by Fox 28, a local Indiana station.
Read the full six-page document below:
This story has been updated to include comment from Notre Dame.