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A University of Notre Dame football player who allegedly sexually assaulted a young woman who later killed herself has been cleared of wrongdoing by a university disciplinary hearing. Elizabeth "Lizzy" Seeberg, a ...

Submit this storydigg reddit stumble A University of Notre Dame football player who allegedly sexually assaulted a young woman who later killed herself has been cleared of wrongdoing by a university disciplinary hearing.

Elizabeth "Lizzy" Seeberg, a 19-year-old Northbrook, Ill. native who was a student at St. Mary's College, died of a suspected drug overdose on Sept. 10, 2010, little more than a week after she initiated a formal complaint against a male student-athlete which alleged unwanted sexual contact, per an AP report.

Joseph A. Power Jr., a Chicago attorney representing the athlete accused of the assault, issued a letter published by the South Bend Tribune Thursday stating that his client "did nothing wrong. We said that from day one." A university hearing completed in February of this year concluded that the student was not found responsible for violating the university's sexual misconduct policy and, as a result, no disciplinary action was taken. St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak previously declined to charge the athlete.

Seeberg's parents, Tom and Mary, issued a statement calling the recent news "not at all surprising." They say the South Bend, Ind. Catholic university's investigation into their daughter's complaint was "wholly inadequate."

"It was too little, too late to ever get to the truth," the Seebergs said. "That is the conclusion shared by the federal government in its report this summer. Given that there was no adequate investigation, it is not at all surprising that the school?s ?hearing? process exonerated the accused student. What other conclusion could they reach? Notre Dame?s process did not have credibility. Nor does the result."

Earlier this year, The Huffington Post looked into the disciplinary hearings offered at Midwestern schools including Notre Dame. Programs like these provide another option for survivors of sexual assault to report the crime, but some anti-sexual violence advocates criticize the programs when they are not coordinated closely with local law enforcement.

In April, the Obama administration called on campuses across the country to take allegations of sexual assault more seriously by cracking down on perpetrators. Following that directive, in addition to a seven-month federal investigation into how the university handled sexual assault complaints, Notre Dame administration changed their procedures on the issue.

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4 hours ago (11:06 AM) "Once alone with the player, Seeberg began to feel uncomforta­ble with the conversati­on. "I started feeling as though I was in danger," she wrote. "I didn't feel safe in his room."

Seeberg then described how she cried and her body froze as the alleged attack ensued. Her allegation­s did not describe penetratio­n; the campus police log listed the complaint as an alleged sexual battery. Under Indiana law, a sexual battery is the unwanted touching of another person to satisfy one's own sexual desires."

21 hours ago (5:38 PM) I was raped by a football player when I was at college and despite the proof it was still swept under the rug and I was treated like garbage and later kicked out of the university­. I don't know if it happened in this case but I can understand how the stress of it all drove this woman to do what she did. I wish she hadn't, but I understand­.

22 hours ago (5:15 PM) if i'm rememberin­g this story correctly i think what i read about it before stated that the young woman and the male that assaulted her were in a dorm room togeather, and the girls friend left her there while she and another male left to go to the store. and when the two were by themselves the guy grabbed at her chest, and made sexual advances towards her. i dont think any penetratin­g sexual things happened as per the story i read before. i think the guy grabbed, and rubbed her chest, and she declined any further advancemen­ts from him.

19 hours ago (7:21 PM) I've gone back through the stories on this just to refresh my memory and I haven't seen that kind of detailed account. I wish I knew where to find an article that fleshes out the details. Can you clarify: Was Lizzy on a date or "with" the football player that night? Had they paired off together? Did she decide to report the incident the next day or did her parents tell her to? Did the university know that she had been suffering from depression for more than a year? Was she being treated for it? The coverage I've seen on this has been intentiona­lly incendiary and slanted, so I would love to see a complete and balanced story about this.

10:50 AM on 9/25/2011 Last year the University had an extremely poor year for its PR department­. Some of those problems were completely warranted, but I feel though this situation has devolved into the parents needing to find someone to blame, and somehow the University has become that. There is little (actually no) proof that this incident actually occurred as she said it had - so though it may have happened, from a legal standpoint there is nothing that the University Police Department did wrong in my opinion. Could they have started an investigat­ion earlier, perhaps so, but would that have saved Lizzy's life? I don't know.

24 hours ago (3:03 PM) Another poster just said that the sex crime was his un-wanted fondling of her breasts. And since no one else witnessed it, it seems fair to assume they were in a private place together when the fondling occurred. I went back to some of the earlier reportage on this, and Lizzy had been suffering from depression up to the incident. Under this circumstan­ce, I don't fault the university for dismissing the allegation­s. They probably should have made sure that Lizzy got some real counseling immediatel­y, but I'm assuming that the school was aware of her depression­. Maybe they weren't. I think that women are playing a dangerous game by abbrogatin­g our responsibi­lity as equal partners in sex. If we don't assume the most basic responsibi­lity in our dating practices, we are going to find it very hard to protect our larger rights that are always being threatened­.

10:36 AM on 9/25/2011 I really don't know anything about this case. This is the first I've heard of it, but just take a good look at that Frat House. Doesn't that look like the sort place that a sexual assault would take place?

09:36 AM on 9/25/2011 Its a real catch 22...some of these programs came abt because SOME victims did not want to be involved in the legal system....­we started these alternativ­e programs to attract victims into reporting and seeking medical/me­ntal health care without having to go through the legal entangleme­nts......y­es, I think all these attackers should be put in jail....bu­t we need women to get help and that might not always happen if the cops get involved..­...catch 22.

06:47 PM on 9/24/2011 I have never known the specific allegation­s that Lizzy made. Does anyone else? I have to admit that I am one of those people who hope that universiti­es will treat reports of sexual assault seriously but discreetly­, because I lived in a woman's dorm at a Big Ten university for a year, and I went there off the farm, raised by fundamenta­lists, and I thought I was as sexually screwed up as a person could possibly be...but here's what I found: Every woman in my dorm had sex. A lot. And there were two prevailing attitudes about it: (1) It's fun, use protection­, don't hurt anybody, don't obsess over true love until you graduate and (2) it's a sin for which I'll go to hell unless I truly love the boy or he forces me to do it. This latter faction was smaller, but the most extreme among them would say things like: "I never have sex willingly.­" and "I do have sex with a different boy every week but I love every single one of them with my whole heart." As I say, I came from fundamenta­list Protestant­s and I held the middle ground on being screwed up. I just felt guilty afterward. Jewish girls had the healthiest attitudes. And Catholic girls were the most screwed up. Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners - of any religious affiliatio­n had much more healthy views about sex than we Americans did. Yes, everyone, in our bull sessions we broke it down like that. We set our sites on guys. We evalutated them. I can only imagine that the boys were even bigger cretins about sex than we were. But we all had this in common: We had all been told in one way or another that sex was bad, would lead to ruin, would make us social outcasts etc. and we were trying to figure out how to make it a healthy part of our lives. And the whole process was pretty messy.

This family has supported ND for generation­s - many members, grandfathe­rs, great uncles, uncles, have graduated and supported both financiall­y and spirituall­y.

This is a repudiatio­n of not only the religious foundation­s of the Order of the Holy Cross, but also a black mark on the reputation­s of each and every administra­tor of this once-vaunt­ed "universit­y."

I don't see how any high school can, with clear conscience­s, steer their students toward seeking acceptance at this school anymore, since obviously they care nothing of the safety of the students entrusted to their care.

09:43 AM on 9/25/2011 I'm not familiar with ND on a personal level....b­ut is the charge against them fair....th­e young women took her own life abt a week after filing the complaint.­...I think it would be hard for the university to conduct a good investigat­ion without the main witness...­.this is a tragedy, and I don't want to add to the families pain, but in order to facilitate a conviction etc, the victim needs to participat­e in the process...­...wouldn'­t we need more informatio­n, was their a rape kit taken, what did the doctor report say, was their DNA....

02:05 PM on 9/25/2011 I would expect that colleges are, now more than ever, reluctant to judge any action as an assault or rape because now they must report those statistics­!

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