BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (CN) – The parents of a former University of Alabama student sued the school and the Tuscaloosa, Alabama sheriff's department over their handling of the reported rape by their daughter, who later committed suicide.
In a federal complaint filed July 2, Michael and Cynthia Rondini say their daughter Megan, a pre-med student at the university, was raped during her junior year by defendant Terry Bunn Jr., who she met in a local bar.
The Rondini's say Megan either became drunk or was drugged because she has gaps in her memory about the evening, but at some point, she was taken by Bunn in his white Mercedes to his home.
They say Megan repeatedly asked Bunn to take her back to her friends, but he refused and once inside his house, he demanded that she get on his bed.
The complaint states that after forcibly performing oral sex on Megan, Bunn “placed his hands on her hips, held her down, and forced himself inside her vagina.” Bunn sexually attacked, abused and assaulted Megan for 30 minutes against her will before passing out on his bed.
At this time, the complaint states that Megan became “frantic” because she realized that Bunn had locked the bedroom door. Megan sent texts to several friends telling them of her “terrifying” situation and begging for help. Megan escaped by crawling through a window onto the roof and jumping to the ground, where she waited for a friend to pick her up.
According to the complaint, Megan called her parents in the early hours of the morning telling them about the attack. Megan’s mother immediately got in her car to drive from Texas to Tuscaloosa while her father contacted the Women and Gender Resource Center at the university to make sure an advocate would be available to assist his daughter when she arrived at the hospital. An advocate did meet Megan at the hospital, but “abandoned” her while she was still being questioned by police officers.
The complaint states that Megan did everything she was supposed to do in reporting the rape because rather than going home to eat, sleep or bathe, she went to the hospital for a rape kit and to give a urine sample. Both items were delivered to the Tuscaloosa Sheriff’s Department to be used during their investigation.
However, according to the complaint, these items were never sent for testing to the forensic lab despite the fact that Megan “exhibited multiple signs that she had been a victim of a drug facilitated sexual assault.”
The only evidence gathered from the investigation, says the complaint, was that Megan tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease that she got from Bunn.
The complaint claims the rape was never fully investigated because Bunn comes from a wealthy, influential Tuscaloosa family who were major financial supporters of the University.
The young woman's parents says defendant investigator Adam Jones, who interviewed Megan, focused on irrelevant questions unrelated to the sexual assault and he did not take any notes during the interview.
They say Jones treated Megan as a crime suspect when she told him that after she escaped from Bunn’s home, she took $3 from his car in case she needed to take a taxi and a pistol “for safety.”
