We discovered proof that Syracuse University had taken steps to stop the attack from being covered in the media when ProPublica recently conducted an investigation into the rape crisis that gripped the school in the 1980s. According to a school director, the university responded by portraying itself as a changed organization currently and” committed to supporting the students who come forth and being there for them at every step of the process.”
But the school’s subsequent steps in a lawsuit filed by a former student who was attacked on campus during that period appear at odds with that commitment. Lawyers for Syracuse University intervened after the Rome Police Department agreed to give the victim old records and demanded that the victim be denied access to many of them. The school argued in court documents that the summons sent to the police department was “overbroad” and suffered from “fatal regional excess,” which made it “unreasonably burdensome and irrelevant.”
New York state court Judge Joseph Lamendola ruled in the school’s favour in February, drastically limiting the records the victim may get to make her case that the school may have beefed up security in response to escalating crime in the area.
Her lawyers filed an appeal against that decision in June, sending the problem to a state appellate court.
It reminds me of the 1980s, when SU criticized media policy of sexual abuse. It’s that all over again”, said Andrew Stengel, a former Manhattan attorney representing the victim. He claimed that by pretending that sexual abuse wasn’t a problem on college and in the surrounding area, the academy had “retraumatized” his client.
In legitimate files, Stengel and his client, who is known as Jane Doe, are suing the university in violation of the Adult Survivors Act, a New York act that gave victims of long-ago sexual assaults the right to file legal claims against alleged perpetrators and careless organizations.
Sarah Scalese, Syracuse University’s vice president of communications, said in an emailed statement that” we do not comment on active prosecution”. In response to ProPublica’s earlier article, Scalese claimed that the university “has a strong structure in place to help those affected by sexual and relationship violence,” including” personal coaching, advocacy, and investigation and resolution services to students.”
On February 27, 1987, Doe was attacked by a man who had a knife inside a bathroom on the third floor of the university’s music building. Her assailant had entered the building through an unlocked door, according to her lawsuit, which contends that the university administration offered her “zero support” after the assault. According to the complaint, the music program director told her,” Men get raped, too,” and advised her to “get back on the horse.” ( The director has passed away. )
Hers was one episode in a brutal saga of sexual violence that unfolded in and around the Syracuse campus throughout the decade. The epidemic of assaults eventually sparked student protests, attracted national attention, and led to the passage of federal legislation that now requires universities to release their crime statistics.
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More than a dozen women, many of whom were students, reported being raped or attacked by strangers in a half-square-mile area close to the campus over the course of four years, according to ProPublica’s earlier investigation, which was rooted in the wrongful conviction of Anthony Broadwater for the rape of Alice Sebold, an author who wrote a bestseller memoir about being attacked on the final night of her freshman year at Syracuse University in 1981. Thornden Park, which runs alongside the campus, had its third such attack in about seven months, according to Bold’s.
Some of the police reports from this time period were marked” NO PRESS”, which, according to the testimony of a former Syracuse detective, meant that the university had used its influence in the police department to “put their foot down and said no press for any kind of rape, robbery, burglary that’s anywhere in the area of Syracuse University”.
Stengel requested information from the police department last year regarding all police calls and reports relating to a wide range of crimes from 1982 to 1987 in the area that includes the university, Thornden Park, various businesses, and a mix of student and nonstudent housing.
Doe’s case’s emails show that a lawyer for the Syracuse Police Department suggested Stengel concentrate his search on that ZIP code, according to emails sent as an exhibit. The two of them agreed on the terms in August 2025, and the police department began gathering the records shortly thereafter.
The university then filed a request to “partially quash” the subpoena a month later. University attorneys argued that the request had standing even though Stengel’s subpoena did not go to the central and western New York state, based on case law that only applies to central and western New York. The university asserted that the subpoena would create unnecessary work for the police department, unearth irrelevant documents and waste the time of everyone involved.
The police department then reversed its earlier position and joined the motion, estimated in a February brief that it would take 845 hours and$ 50,000 in staff time to deliver the documents Stengel had requested and the initial lawyer for the police department had approved. ( A spokesperson claimed that” the City of Syracuse does not comment on ongoing litigation. )
At a hearing, John Powers, an attorney hired by the university, seemed to play to Lamendola’s previous role as a lawyer for the city of Syracuse, reminding the judge that the city is “inundated with] Freedom of Information Law ] responses and subpoenas, and it’s incredibly burdensome on the city, I think, as you know in your experience as well”.
Powers claimed that the records were too old to be digitized, adding that Powers now represents the city in other matters just like the judge once did. City employees, he claimed, would have to find them” the old way, Judge, the way we used to do it, crawling around in the dusty storeroom… trying to find out what ZIP code’s involved, looking at the crime.” A lot of boxes, a lot of files. Very expensive and burdensome for the city. Powers cited the litigation, but he declined to comment.
Lamendola was persuaded. No of the rapes that occurred in Thornden Park or the nearby student apartments will be made public, as per his ruling. The police will only be required to release reports of crimes that occurred on the campus itself, and not those that the judge deemed unimportant. He also directed Syracuse University, the defendant in the case, to assist the Police Department in identifying cases that occurred on its campus.
In late June, Doe’s team filed a 37-page appellate brief that contends that the court’s decision to restrict the disclosure to university buildings is “hard to justify” given that the campus is connected to the city. The brief, which was written by appellate attorney Michael Steinberg, also criticizes the decision to allow university employees to serve as “gatekeepers” and allows them to independently decide which files fall under the judge’s guidelines and which don’t. That, the appeal contends, presents a conflict of interest that would “give the defendant the power to control the evidence it will have to contest at trial”.
The university has until Sept. 23 to respond to the request.
Additionally, legal filings reveal that university attorneys have sought to lessen its liability by naming Michael McKinney, a former suspect in the case, to reduce its liability.
At the time of Doe’s rape, McKinney was on parole after attacking a woman in a downtown parking lot. Two witnesses reported seeing a man who matched his description leave the Syracuse music building the night of the attack, according to police reports. Later, Doe removed him from a photo display.
Days later, police went to his home. His wife allegedly told investigators that he had a Miller beer hat that looked exactly like the suspect’s hat at the time of the crime. He had abruptly left for another state, according to her. Police put the case in the “inactive file”, a common occurrence for rape cases in Syracuse at the time.
Months later, McKinney showed up in New York City. He had already been investigated for the violent robbery of another Syracuse woman by that time. According to a newspaper article from December 1987, he was eventually found guilty of that robbery and given an unusually lengthy sentence of 20 years to life, with the judge noting his repeated crimes against women. McKinney was never charged in the Jane Doe case.
According to records, McKinney served 30 years in prison for the robbery charge from 1987. Then, in March 2025, he was arrested for the rape of a 46-year-old woman earlier that year. In June 2026, a grand jury found him indicted. He entered a not-guilty plea.
While McKinney was in jail, Syracuse University lawyers filed a civil complaint against him, arguing that if the university is held liable in Doe’s case, McKinney should” contribute to any award in an amount equal to his equitable share” because of “his own culpable conduct”. The university attorneys have requested that the judge declare McKinney in default because he did not respond to the lawsuit. This may have an impact on a jury’s verdict regarding the financial responsibility the university owes Doe.
Reached by phone, Donald Kelly, McKinney’s court-appointed lawyer in the new rape case, said,” It’s concerning that the university would serve a third-party complaint upon a prisoner to try to avoid liability”, noting that McKinney has “empty pockets”.
Kelly continued,” Either the university was negligent or it wasn’t, and McKinney was never charged in the 1987 rape of Doe.” Kelly declined to schedule an interview with his client.
Jonathan Cardi, a Wake Forest University law professor who specializes in civil litigation and has researched negligence claims for rape, said it was not especially unusual for a defendant to try to quash subpoenas of third parties or to shift liability to others.
He claimed that these are” these are litigation strategies.” However, the university is ultimately the client, and frequently times, a client’s business interests or morals dictate what their attorneys can and can’t do. If a university is trying to turn over a new leaf, they can tell their attorney that even though this might be the best litigation practice, this is not who we want to be”.
ProPublica first published Syracuse University’s attempt to stop a campus rape victim from obtaining police records.
