Report: Orgeron added as a defendant in Title IX suit filed against LSU

An amended complaint filed Friday on a Title IX lawsuit originally filed against LSU in April by seven current and former LSU students listed new defendants such as a corporation called “O” The Rosy Finch Boyz LLC in which LSU head football coach Ed Orgeron is an officer.

The Advocate’s Andrea Gallo also reported adding three more women emerging to publicly criticize LSU’s handling of their complaints of rape and sexual harassment. Two involve former LSU football players Derrius Guice and Peter Parrish and another a professor.

One of the new names of an accuser coming forward publicly is Ashlyn Robertson. The LSU student hosted a 2016 party at her apartment that Guice attended without being invited, according to the lawsuit. Robertson said she was passed out on her bed when Guice entered her room and raped her. Later, her friends on the football team later told her that Guice bragged about having sex with her. 

Robertson later told her boyfriend, an LSU football recruit, about the sexual assault. Her boyfriend, who is not named in the court filings, visited Orgeron about it.

The lawsuit says “Orgeron responded by telling Robertson’s boyfriend to not be upset because ‘everybody’s girlfriend sleeps with other people,.”

USA Today reported last year Robertson’s story without naming her and included Orgeron’s alleged comments. Orgeron issued a statement denying that he knew about rape allegations against Guice and saying that the quote attributed to him was “not accurate.”

The updated lawsuit says Orgeron failed to report the rape allegation to LSU’s Title IX Office or any other entity.

Also, the updated lawsuit added details of another rape allegation involving a former high-profile LSU football player. 

Corinn Hovis, who enrolled at LSU in 2019, said she went to a Tigerland Bar in 2020 where she met “a highly recruited quarterback on LSU’s football team.” The lawsuit referred to him as “John Loe,” but says he transferred to another university on Aug. 6, 2020 — a profile that matches that of Peter Parrish.

Hovis alleges she was drunk when she left the bar with the player, and that he raped her while she was blacked out in an SUV. She attempted to file a report with LSU Police. But LSUPD referred the case to the Baton Rouge Police Department because it happened off campus, according to the suit, that also said BRPD officers refused to take a statement from her. LSUPD disagreed and took her to a hospital for a rape assessment, which found bruising on her cervix.

Hovis opted to pursue a Title IX investigation, and the football player was found responsible for sexual assault, according to the lawsuit. He was suspended from May 10, 2020 through May 31, 2021, and issued a no-contact directive that the lawsuit says he violated. But he then transferred to another university.

Parrish is now on the football roster at the University of Memphis. An unnamed LSU football player who matches Parrish’s description and was suspended from LSU on May 10, 2020, filed a Title IX complaint against LSU last year in federal court that said he was denied due process under LSU’s disciplinary process. The attorneys in that case did not return messages for Gallo’s story. 

The women are asking for statutory and punitive damages expected to exceed $5 million, attorney’s fees and court costs and a permanent injunction “requiring compliance with Title IX and recurring external audits of LSU’s Title IX compliance.”