A federal lawsuit filed against the Virginia Military Institute board of visitors was settled out of court last week in a private mediation session in Roanoke’s federal district court.
The suit stemmed from a September 2021 incident in which a prospective student claimed that she was sexually assaulted by a cadet while visiting the institute during an overnight open house event.
In a brief order dated Nov. 19, which didn’t provide details of the agreement or mediation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kailani Memmer wrote that the matter had been resolved “upon mutually agreeable terms” by both parties.
The lawsuit was filed in September 2023 in the U.S. District Court in Lynchburg and included a statement of facts about the case and how the prospective student, referred to as Jane Doe in the suit, was “sexually assaulted and battered by her student cadet host while in her host’s barracks room” in the early morning hours of Sept. 18, 2021, while staying at the school as part of an open house weekend.
After leaving the institute, she told her parents about the incident and her father contacted the VMI Police to start an investigation. The suit alleged that the investigation, which Doe and her family were told in December 2021 had deemed Doe’s claims “unfounded,” did not follow all of the required steps pursuant to Title IX.
