Hazing-National Fraternity Sexual Assault & Hazing Criminal Charges — Louisiana’s 1-Year Clock, PTSD Damages, and the Fraternity Shell Game
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. — or 4 a.m., or the next afternoon, or a week later when the shock has started to settle into something harder and colder — we want you to know one thing before anything else: what happened to you was not your fault, and what happens next is not something you have to face alone. We are Attorney911. We are a trial firm that takes hazing and sexual assault cases, and we are writing this page to one person: the survivor, or the parent, who just found out that a fraternity member was arrested for raping a woman inside a fraternity house, and is trying to understand what rights exist, what evidence matters, and how fast the clock is already running. The answer to all three is: more than you think, more than you realize, and faster than anyone has told you. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court, and right now he is lead counsel in an active hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity — a case we filed because the same pattern keeps repeating: an institution that knew, a culture that enabled, and a survivor who was told to stay quiet. That case is not your case. But the fight is the same fight, and the knowledge we have built litigating it is knowledge we can put to work for you. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week — a live person, not an answering service, because the moment a survivor decides to reach out is never a convenient moment and should never meet a recording.
The Answer Core — Your Questions, Answered Directly
Can I sue the fraternity for what its member did?
Yes. The arrested individual is one defendant. The fraternity chapter, the national fraternity organization, and potentially the university are separate defendants, each with their own duty and their own insurance. The fraternity will say “one bad actor” and try to wall itself off. Our job is to prove the house, the culture, and the institution created the conditions that made this assault foreseeable — and that they failed to act on warnings they already had.
How long do I have to file?
Louisiana has one of the shortest deadlines in the United States. The general rule for a personal-injury lawsuit in Louisiana is one year from the date of the injury — not two years, not three, not the decade some federal statutes allow. One year. There are narrow exceptions and specific extensions for certain categories of sexual assault, particularly involving minors, but the safe assumption — the one that protects your rights — is that the clock is already running and it is running fast. If the assault happened at a fraternity house connected to LSU, the prescriptive period is governed by Louisiana law, and that law does not forgive delay. This is why the first call matters more than any other step.
Does the criminal case have to finish first?
No. The criminal arrest and the civil lawsuit are separate proceedings with different purposes, different standards of proof, and different timelines. The criminal case determines whether the state sends someone to prison. The civil case determines whether the institution that allowed the assault pays for what it did. You do not have to wait for a verdict, a guilty plea, or even a prosecution to file a civil claim — and in Louisiana, waiting for the criminal case to resolve could burn through your one-year window entirely.
What is the case worth?
The harm from a sexual assault inside a fraternity house is not a single number. It is a lifetime arithmetic: the medical and therapeutic costs, the lost semester or lost year of education, the PTSD treatment, the earning capacity that the trauma erodes, and the human cost — the nights you cannot sleep, the places you cannot go, the person you were before this and the person you are now. Federal researchers at the CDC put the lifetime cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor, and that figure only counts what you can put on an invoice — the therapy, the doctor visits, the work the survivor can no longer do. It does not begin to count the nightmares, the relationships that strained, the front door the survivor cannot walk through alone. In the most serious institutional cases, where a fraternity or university knew of prior incidents and did nothing, the recovery can be far higher — including punitive damages designed to punish the institution for treating the danger as a cost of doing business. Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the starting point is understanding that this harm is real, it is measurable, and the law allows a jury to put a number on it.
Louisiana’s 1-Year Clock — The Shortest Deadline in America
Louisiana does not give you the time most states do. In Texas, you have two years. In most of the country, you have two or three. In Louisiana, the prescriptive period for a delictual action — the civil claim for personal injury — runs for one year from the date of the injury. That is the general rule, and it is one of the most unforgiving deadlines in American tort law.
Delictual actions prescribe by one year from the day of the accident or the date of the injury or damage.
This is not a technicality. It is the difference between a case and no case. A survivor who waits to “feel better first,” or who waits for the criminal case to resolve, or who waits for the university to finish its internal investigation, can run out the clock without ever knowing it started. In Louisiana, prescription begins to run from the moment the injury is sustained — and for a sexual assault, that moment is the assault itself. There are specific statutory extensions for certain categories of sexual offense, particularly those involving minors, and the precise prescriptive period that applies to any individual case depends on the specific facts, the age of the survivor, and the specific statutory provisions invoked. But the rule that governs the vast majority of adult survivors is the one-year general prescriptive period, and that rule is a wall that does not move.
This creates a paradox that the fraternity and its insurers are counting on: the evidence that proves your case disappears in weeks, but the deadline to file runs a full year. They know that if they stall long enough, the video will be erased, the witnesses will graduate and scatter, and the fraternity’s own internal records will quietly cycle out of their retention system. They are betting that time is their lawyer. Our job is to make sure it is yours instead.
The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you. The preservation letter goes out that day. The evidence demand goes out that day. The fraternity’s obligation to hold its records kicks in that day. Everything after that is building the case. Everything before that is time the other side is using to make the proof disappear.
The Fraternity Shell Game — Who Actually Pays
A fraternity is not one entity. It is a deliberately layered structure designed so that when something goes wrong, each layer can point at the next and say “not us.” Understanding this structure is the first step in building a case that actually reaches the money — because naming the wrong defendant, or naming only the obvious one, is how a strong claim quietly turns into a hollow judgment against an empty LLC.
The local chapter. The Delta Chi chapter at LSU is likely organized as a separate entity — an unincorporated association, a local LLC, or a chapter-level corporation. This entity may hold few assets. It may carry minimal insurance. It is the front door, but it is rarely where the real money lives.
The national fraternity. Delta Chi’s national organization — the entity that charted the LSU chapter, wrote the bylaws, imposed the risk-management policies, collected dues, and authorized the chapter to use the Delta Chi name — sits one layer up. The national has its own insurance, its own deep pockets, and its own legal duty to ensure its chapters are not creating foreseeable danger. The national will argue it does not control day-to-day operations at the local chapter. That argument is the fight — and it is a fight we know how to run because we are running it right now in active hazing litigation that involves the same structural questions.
The house corporation. The fraternity house itself — the physical building where the assault occurred — is often owned by a separate house corporation, an alumni association, or a real-estate holding entity. This entity is the premises defendant. It is the party that owed the duty to maintain safe conditions in the house, to provide adequate security, to control access, and to act on any prior incidents at the property. If the house had broken locks, no security, a history of complaints, or a known pattern of dangerous behavior that was ignored, the house corporation bears a premises-liability duty that is separate from the fraternity’s own duty.
The university. LSU, as a public university receiving federal funding, is subject to Title IX — the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, and that federal regulators and courts have interpreted to include a duty to respond to known sexual violence. If the university knew — from prior reports, from its own Clery Act crime statistics, from complaints about this specific fraternity or this specific house — that there was a risk and was deliberately indifferent to it, the university itself can be a defendant. The university will argue sovereign immunity and procedural barriers. Those arguments are real, but they are not absolute, and Title IX creates a federal cause of action that can survive them.
The arrested individual. The person who committed the assault is a defendant. He may carry no meaningful insurance and have no assets worth pursuing. But his conduct is the foundation of every other defendant’s liability — and his arrest, if it results in a conviction, can trigger additional statutory rights for crime victims under Louisiana law. The criminal case and the civil case are separate, but they feed each other: the arrest report, the evidence collected by police, and any conviction are powerful tools in the civil action.
The Evidence Clock — What Exists and How Fast It Dies
Every piece of evidence that proves a fraternity sexual assault case exists on a timer. Some of those timers are short enough that waiting a single month can erase the case’s foundation. This is not a warning designed to create artificial urgency — it is a description of how surveillance systems, retention policies, and university record-keeping actually work, and why the preservation letter we send the day you call is the most important document in the file.
Surveillance video from the fraternity house and surrounding area. Fraternity houses and their neighboring properties frequently have exterior cameras — doorbell cameras, parking-lot cameras, security systems. But these systems are designed for routine monitoring, not for evidence preservation. They overwrite on rolling loops, commonly within 30 to 60 days. The footage that shows who entered the house, when, and in what condition — the survivor and the accused — is the single most decisive piece of objective evidence in the case, and it can be gone before the survivor has even decided whether to call a lawyer. The preservation letter demands that the fraternity, the house corporation, and any neighboring property holder freeze that footage immediately. Once the letter is on file, destroying the footage becomes spoliation — and a court can instruct the jury to assume the lost video was as damaging as the plaintiff says it was.
The rape kit and forensic exam. If the survivor went to a hospital or a crisis center after the assault, a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) may have performed a forensic examination — the “rape kit.” This is the single most powerful piece of physical evidence in the case, and it exists only if it was collected. In Louisiana, the retention period for sexual assault evidence kits varies depending on whether the survivor has reported to law enforcement and other factors. The kit itself, the SANE nurse’s notes, the toxicology screen (which can detect drugs or alcohol involuntarily administered), and the photographed injuries are contemporaneous, objective evidence that predates any “litigation motive” accusation the defense will later raise. These records can be lost on routine hospital retention cycles. They must be demanded and preserved early.
Fraternity internal records. The chapter keeps records: membership rolls, disciplinary files, incident reports, risk-management reports submitted to the national organization, and — critically — any prior complaints about the accused member or about the house’s culture. The national fraternity may also maintain a file on this chapter, including any previous incidents, warnings, or sanctions. These records prove notice — that the fraternity knew or should have known about the danger. They are held by the defendant, and they have a way of becoming “unavailable” when the defendant controls the retention schedule. A litigation hold letter puts the fraternity on notice that destroying these records will have legal consequences.
Text messages, group chats, and social media. Fraternity members communicate through group texts, Snapchat, Instagram, GroupMe threads, and other platforms. These communications can contain admissions, witness accounts, discussions of the assault, evidence of a cover-up, or a pattern of behavior that predates this incident. Messages on platforms like Snapchat are designed to disappear. Group chats get deleted. The survivor’s own phone — containing the texts from the night in question, the messages to friends afterward, the first outcry — is the single most important evidence repository the survivor controls. Back it up. Do not delete anything. Do not post about the incident on social media. Every message and every screenshot is evidence, and the defense will mine the survivor’s own posts for anything that can be twisted into a consent narrative or a credibility attack.
Witness statements. The people who were at the fraternity house that night — members, pledges, guests, other women — are witnesses. They are also college students who graduate, transfer, scatter, and forget. Memory degrades fast, and the fraternity’s social pressure to “stay loyal” can silence witnesses before a lawyer ever reaches them. Identifying and documenting what witnesses saw, as close to the event as possible, is work that cannot be reconstructed months later.
The Medicine — What Rape Does to the Body and Brain
The defense in a sexual assault case fights the injury as hard as it fights the liability. The argument is always the same: the survivor “looks fine,” the medical records show “no physical injury,” the psychological harm is “subjective” and “unverifiable.” The medical science demolishes every one of these arguments, and the evidence is in the peer-reviewed literature that the defense cannot cross-examine away.
Rape is the single most PTSD-causing event measured
In the largest epidemiological study of its kind — the National Comorbidity Survey — rape carried the highest conditional probability of producing post-traumatic stress disorder of any traumatic event researchers measured, for both men and women. Not combat. Not car crashes. Not natural disasters. Rape. The defense will argue the psychological harm is speculative. The science says it is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine. When a property owner or a fraternity ignores a known danger and a person is assaulted, the lifelong harm that follows is not a surprise — it is the statistically most likely result.
“She didn’t fight back” is a symptom, not a defense
One of the cruelest myths about sexual assault is that a “real” victim fights back, screams, runs. The science says the opposite: most survivors freeze. In a peer-reviewed study of 298 women at a Stockholm rape crisis center, 70 percent reported significant tonic immobility — an involuntary, brainstem-mediated paralysis where the body locks, the muscles go rigid, and the voice will not come. Forty-eight percent reported extreme tonic immobility. This is not consent. It is not a choice. It is a survival reflex, like a flinch, and it is a recognized physiological response to overwhelming threat. The survivors who froze were not consenting — they were the ones the trauma hit hardest, going on to develop PTSD at far higher rates. When the defense implies “she didn’t resist, so she must have wanted it,” the medical literature answers: involuntary paralysis is the body’s documented response to sexual assault, and it predicts worse outcomes, not less culpability.
The diagnosis is a checklist, not an opinion
PTSD is not a label a lawyer picks. It is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate criteria under the DSM-5, and a survivor has to meet every one: the traumatic event, the intrusive memories and nightmares, the avoidance of triggers, the negative changes in mood and cognition, the hyperarousal and sleep disruption, symptoms lasting more than one month, functional impairment, and the exclusion of other causes. The diagnosis is built from structured clinical instruments — the CAPS-5 and the PCL-5 — that produce objective, reproducible scores. This injury is real, it is measurable, and it is documented by tools the defense’s own experts cannot dismiss as opinion.
Delayed disclosure is the norm, not the exception
The defense will argue that a “real” victim reports immediately. The research says the opposite: delayed disclosure is the standard pattern for sexual assault, not the exception. The freeze response, the dissociation, the shame, the social pressure from a fraternity community that closes ranks — all of these push reporting later, not sooner. The DSM-5 itself recognizes a “delayed expression” specifier: full PTSD criteria can first appear six months or more after the event. A survivor who did not go to the police the same night is not less credible. She is statistically typical.
The lifetime cost
Federal public-health researchers at the CDC put the estimated lifetime cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that number, drawn from a rigorous 2017 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, only counts what you can put on an invoice: the therapy, the doctor visits, the work the survivor can no longer do. It does not count the nightmares, the marriage that strained, the campus she had to leave, the classes she failed, the degree she never finished, the person she was before and the person she is now. In a case where the institution knew of the danger and did nothing — where the fraternity had prior incidents, where the university had been warned, where the house was a known hazard — the law allows a jury to go beyond the invoice and put a number on the human cost. That number, in serious institutional cases, can be far higher.
The Money — Insurance, Coverage, and What a Case Is Worth
The insurance tower and the assault-exclusion fight
Fraternities carry insurance — but the insurance is layered, contested, and designed to fight the very claims that matter most. The typical structure runs from the local chapter’s policy up through the national fraternity’s master policy and into excess layers. The first battle is identifying which policies exist. The second battle — and the one the insurance industry fights hardest — is the assault-and-battery exclusion.
Many general-liability policies carried by fraternities and their house corporations contain exclusions for assault, battery, or intentional acts. The insurer’s first move is to say “this was a sexual assault, which is excluded, so we owe nothing.” That argument is not the end of the case — it is the beginning of a coverage fight. There are multiple paths around an assault exclusion, depending on how the claim is pleaded and the law of the jurisdiction: negligent supervision is not the same as an intentional tort; premises liability for failing to provide security is not the same as the assault itself; and the national fraternity’s own coverage may be structured differently than the local chapter’s. Understanding which policy applies, in what order, and on what theory is half the value of the case.
What a case can be worth
Every case turns on its own facts, and no lawyer can promise a specific result. But the components of value in a fraternity sexual assault case include: past and future medical and therapeutic care, including years of PTSD treatment; lost earning capacity, including the educational disruption and the career trajectory the survivor was on before the assault; pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life; and, where the defendant’s conduct was egregious — where the fraternity knew of prior incidents and did nothing, where the university was on notice and was deliberately indifferent, where the house had a documented pattern of danger — punitive damages designed to punish the institution and deter others.
The hazing lawsuit we are currently litigating seeks more than $10 million, and it seeks that amount because the harm in these cases is not a bruise that heals — it is a life rerouted. The value of a case is built from the medical records, the life-care plan, the economic loss, and the institutional conduct that made the harm foreseeable and preventable. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the framework — the categories of damage, the evidence that supports each, and the jury’s power to assign a number — is real.
The Playbook — How Fraternities and Their Insurers Fight
The defense in a fraternity sexual assault case runs a predictable set of plays. Each one is designed to shift blame, minimize harm, and protect the institution’s money. Knowing them in advance is the best defense against them — because every play has a counter, and the counter is usually in the medical literature, the fraternity’s own records, or the law itself.
Play 1: “One bad actor — this is not a fraternity problem.” The fraternity will say the arrested member acted alone, that the organization cannot be responsible for the criminal conduct of an individual, and that the lawsuit is an attempt to reach deep pockets that have nothing to do with what happened. The counter: the fraternity created the environment, controlled access to the house, set the culture, and — in many cases — had prior warnings about this member or this house. The question is not whether the fraternity told him to assault someone. The question is whether the fraternity knew, or should have known, that its house was dangerous, and whether it took reasonable steps to protect the people who walked through its door. That is an institutional failure, not an individual one.
Play 2: “She consented — or, she was drinking, so how can anyone know what happened?” The defense will mine the survivor’s social media, her toxicology, her text messages, and her behavior before and after the assault for anything that can be framed as consent, as voluntary intoxication that undermines reliability, or as a “relationship” that the survivor is now reframing. The counter: tonic immobility is a documented physiological response, not consent. Intoxication does not equal consent — in fact, under Louisiana law, a person who is incapacitated by alcohol or drugs cannot legally consent. Delayed disclosure is the norm, not a sign of fabrication. And the survivor’s behavior after the assault — the dissociation, the seemingly “normal” conduct — is itself a documented trauma response, not evidence that “nothing happened.”
Play 3: “The surveillance footage is gone — we don’t have it.” The fraternity will claim the cameras weren’t working, the system overwrote the footage, or the video was never retained. If this happens after a preservation letter was on file, the destruction is spoliation — and a court can impose sanctions, including an adverse-inference instruction telling the jury to assume the lost footage would have helped the plaintiff. The counter is sending the preservation letter fast enough that the fraternity cannot credibly claim the footage was gone before it had a duty to preserve it.
Play 4: “The university is immune — you cannot sue a public institution.” LSU will argue governmental immunity, procedural barriers under the Louisiana Tort Claims Act, and the difficulty of suing a public entity. These arguments are real, but they are not absolute. Title IX creates a federal cause of action for deliberate indifference to known sexual violence that can survive certain immunity defenses. The Louisiana Tort Claims Act has specific notice requirements and deadlines that must be met — and those deadlines can be shorter than the one-year prescriptive period. If the university is a defendant, the notice requirements are their own clock, and missing them kills the claim even if the one-year SOL has not expired. This is why identifying the university as a potential defendant early, and understanding the specific procedural requirements for suing a public entity in Louisiana, is critical.
Play 5: The quick settlement offer. A fraternity’s insurer may extend a settlement offer early — before the full extent of the harm is known, before the PTSD has been diagnosed, before the life-care plan is built, and before the institutional conduct has been fully investigated. The offer will sound like a lot of money. It will come with a release. It will be designed to close the case before the survivor understands what it is actually worth. The counter: never accept an early offer without a lawyer who can value the claim. A settlement that seems generous in the first month can be a fraction of what the case is worth once the medical records, the economic loss, and the institutional pattern are documented.
The Proof Story — How a Case Like This Is Built
Here is how a fraternity sexual assault case is actually built, from the day you call to the day a number is on the table:
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to the local chapter, the national fraternity, the house corporation, and the university if applicable. It demands that surveillance footage, membership records, disciplinary files, incident reports, prior-complaint records, house security logs, and all communications related to the incident be frozen. The survivor’s own evidence is secured: the phone is backed up, the text messages are preserved, the hospital records are requested, the SANE exam is located if one was performed. The criminal case is monitored — the arrest report, the police investigation, and any evidence collected by law enforcement is tracked because it is also evidence in the civil case.
Weeks two through eight. The records come in — or the defendant claims they are “unavailable.” The gaps tell their own story. A fraternity that cannot produce its own incident reports, or that claims its cameras were “not working” the night of the assault, is building the spoliation argument for the plaintiff. The medical records are assembled: the ER visit, the SANE exam, the first therapy intake, the CAPS-5 or PCL-5 score sheet. The closer these records are to the date of the assault, the more powerful they are — because they pre-date any “litigation motive” the defense will raise.
Months two through six. The corporate structure is mapped — the local chapter entity, the national organization, the house corporation, the university’s role. Insurance policies are identified. The prior-incident history is built: were there earlier reports at this house? Did the national fraternity have warnings? Did the university’s Clery Act statistics show a pattern? Each prior incident is a brick in the foreseeability wall — proof that this assault was not a surprise but a predictable result of conditions the institution tolerated.
Months six through twelve. Experts are retained: a treating psychiatrist or psychologist who can diagnose PTSD under the DSM-5 criteria and testify to the injury’s permanence; a forensic economist who can project the lifetime cost of care and the lost earning capacity; where the institution’s conduct was egregious, a punitive-damages expert who can frame the institutional failures. Depositions are taken — of the fraternity’s officers, of the house manager, of the university’s Title IX coordinator, of the witnesses who were present that night.
The number. The demand is built from all of it — the medical cost stream, the economic loss, the human harm, and the institutional conduct that made it foreseeable. The adjuster’s first offer is a fraction of it. That is by design. The case is either resolved through negotiation at a number that reflects the full harm, or it is tried in front of a jury — twelve people from the community where the fraternity sits, hearing what the institution knew, what it ignored, and what happened to the survivor as a result.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do Now
Medical first. If the assault happened within the last few days and the survivor has not been examined, go to an emergency room or a rape crisis center that has a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. The SANE exam collects physical evidence, documents injuries, and runs a toxicology screen. This is the single most important step for both the survivor’s health and the case. The exam can be done even if the survivor has not decided whether to report to police. In Louisiana, the cost of the forensic exam is covered by the state regardless of whether the survivor reports to law enforcement. If the survivor has already been examined, make sure the records are requested and preserved — hospitals do not hold records forever, and the SANE exam is the strongest piece of evidence the survivor will ever have.
Do not delete anything. The survivor’s phone, the text messages, the social media DMs, the photos from that night, the group chats — all of it is evidence. The defense will look for deleted messages and frame them as consciousness of guilt. Back the phone up. Screenshot the conversations. Do not post about the assault on any platform. The survivor’s own social media will be mined by the defense for anything that can be twisted into a narrative.
Do not sign anything. If the fraternity, the university, or anyone associated with the defense contacts the survivor with a document — a release, a statement, a “settlement,” an “accommodation agreement” — do not sign it. Do not give a recorded statement to the fraternity’s insurance company, the university’s risk-management office, or any investigator who is not a law-enforcement officer working the criminal case. Anything the survivor says to the other side will be used to undermine the claim. The survivor has the right to decline every one of these requests.
Document what you remember. As soon as the survivor is able, write down everything: the timeline of the night, who was present, what was said, what the house looked like, where the assault happened, what happened before and after. Memory degrades. A contemporaneous written account — dated, in the survivor’s own words — is admissible evidence that the defense cannot dismiss as a later reconstruction.
Call a lawyer. Not a generalist. Not the first name on a billboard. A trial firm that knows hazing litigation, sexual assault trauma, and the specific procedural landscape of Louisiana — the one-year deadline, the public-entity notice requirements, the Title IX framework, the fraternity shell game. The call is free. The consultation is free. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. In a case where the evidence dies in weeks and the deadline runs in one year, the day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Title IX and the University’s Duty
LSU, like every public university that receives federal funding, is bound by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 — the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in any education program receiving federal financial assistance. Sexual assault is a form of sex discrimination under Title IX. A university that knows about sexual violence in a program it sponsors or a fraternity it recognizes, and that is deliberately indifferent to that knowledge, can be held liable under federal law.
The Clery Act adds another layer: universities are required to report campus crime statistics, maintain security policies, and issue timely warnings about threats to the campus community. The Stop Campus Hazing Act, signed into law in December 2024, added hazing incidents to the categories universities must report in their annual security reports — a recognition by Congress that hazing is a foreseeable, documented danger on campuses, not a surprise.
What this means in practice: if LSU had prior reports of sexual assault or dangerous conditions at the Delta Chi house — from the Clery Act statistics, from Title IX complaints, from police calls to the house, from student conduct violations — the university’s knowledge becomes the foundation of a deliberate-indifference claim. The university will argue immunity and procedural barriers. Those are real defenses, but Title IX is a federal cause of action that creates its own path, and the Louisiana Tort Claims Act has specific notice requirements that must be navigated carefully. The notice requirements for suing a public entity in Louisiana can have deadlines shorter than the one-year prescriptive period — which means the university’s procedural defenses create their own clock, and that clock can expire before the general deadline does.
Frequently Asked Questions
If the fraternity member was arrested, does that mean the civil case is automatic?
No. The criminal arrest and the civil case are separate. The arrest is evidence — it shows probable cause existed, and it may produce police reports, forensic evidence, and witness statements that strengthen the civil claim — but it does not automatically establish civil liability. The civil case must be built independently: the duty, the breach, the causation, and the damages must all be proven. A conviction in the criminal case is powerful evidence, but it is not a guarantee of a civil recovery, and the civil case does not have to wait for the criminal case to conclude. In Louisiana, waiting for the criminal case could consume the entire one-year prescriptive period.
Can I sue the national fraternity organization, or just the local chapter?
Both. The national fraternity organization can be a defendant on multiple theories: it chartered the local chapter and authorized it to operate under the national name, it set the risk-management policies the chapter was required to follow, it collected dues and had supervisory authority, and it may have had prior notice of dangerous conditions at this chapter. The national will argue it does not control day-to-day operations. The counter is that the national’s own policies, training requirements, and oversight structure created duties it failed to fulfill — and that the revenue it collected from the chapter gave it a financial stake in keeping the chapter open, even when warning signs were present.
What if I was drinking when the assault happened?
Intoxication does not equal consent. Under Louisiana law, a person who is incapacitated by alcohol or drugs cannot legally consent to sexual activity. The fact that the survivor was drinking does not bar the claim, does not reduce its value, and does not give the assailant a defense. The defense will try to use intoxication to undermine the survivor’s credibility — but the medical literature documents that alcohol-induced memory gaps, dissociation, and fragmented recall are all normal trauma responses, not signs of fabrication. The toxicology screen from the SANE exam, if one was performed, can also detect whether the survivor was given drugs without her knowledge.
How long does a fraternity sexual assault case take?
A case that settles can resolve in months. A case that goes to trial can take a year or longer — which, in Louisiana, creates tension with the one-year prescriptive period. The prescriptive period governs when the lawsuit must be filed, not how long the case takes to resolve. Filing the lawsuit within the one-year window preserves the claim; the case then proceeds through discovery, depositions, expert reports, and either settlement negotiations or trial preparation on a timeline that extends well beyond the filing date. The key is filing within the window — and in Louisiana, that window is one of the tightest in the country.
Will I have to face the person who assaulted me in court?
In a civil case, the arrested individual is a defendant, but the primary defendants are the institutions — the fraternity, the national organization, the house corporation, and potentially the university. Many cases resolve through settlement without a trial. If the case does go to trial, the survivor may be required to testify, but the rules of civil procedure and protective orders can limit the scope and manner of questioning, and the survivor does not have to be in the same room as the assailant for every proceeding. The decision of whether to testify, and how, is one that should be made with a lawyer who has handled these cases and understands the emotional and strategic dimensions.
What if the assault happened weeks or months ago — is it too late?
It may not be. Louisiana’s one-year prescriptive period runs from the date of the injury, and if the assault happened weeks or months ago, you are likely still within the window. There are also specific statutory extensions for certain categories of sexual offense, particularly those involving minors, that can extend the deadline. The only way to know for certain whether your claim is still alive is to have a lawyer evaluate the specific facts, the date of the assault, and the applicable prescriptive period. Do not assume it is too late — and do not assume you have plenty of time. Call and find out.
Does it matter that the fraternity is a Greek organization at LSU specifically?
Yes. The university’s relationship to the fraternity — whether it officially recognized the chapter, whether the fraternity house was on university property or university-affiliated housing, whether the university had conduct-code jurisdiction over the fraternity, and whether the university had prior notice of problems at this house — all affect the legal theories available and the defendants who can be reached. LSU’s status as a public university adds the Title IX framework and the Louisiana Tort Claims Act’s procedural requirements. The specific relationship between the university and the fraternity is a factual question that has to be investigated early.
What does it cost to hire Attorney911 for a hazing sexual assault case?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33 percent before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. If we do not recover money for you, you do not owe us a fee. The consultation is free. The call is free. We answer 24 hours a day because the moment a survivor decides to reach out is the moment someone should be there. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español — Lupe Peña conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter, and our staff is bilingual.
The Firm — Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — a reporter who learned how to find the story, ask the question, and chase the paper trail — and he brings that instinct to every case. He is the managing partner of the firm, admitted to practice in Texas and federal court, and he is lead counsel in an active hazing lawsuit seeking more than $10 million against a university and a fraternity — a case built on the same institutional pattern this page describes: an organization that knew, a culture that enabled, and a survivor who was failed by every system that was supposed to protect her. Ralph does not take cases to settle them cheaply. He takes them to build them fully, to find every defendant, to put the institution’s choices in front of a jury, and to fight until the evidence is frozen, the record is complete, and the number reflects the full measure of the harm.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, before the real injuries are diagnosed. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered to get the survivor to say “I’m feeling okay.” He knows how the claim is fed into valuation software that discounts pain it cannot see, and how the quick check arrives with a release printed on the back before the medical results do. Now he sits on your side of the table — and he brings the insider’s knowledge of how the other side prices a claim, how it builds its defenses, and where its pressure points are. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations without an interpreter.
For Louisiana cases, our firm works with local counsel and appears pro hac vice where required. We do not claim an office in Louisiana. We do not claim a Louisiana bar admission. What we bring is a national hazing and sexual assault litigation practice — the specific experience of suing fraternities and universities for the institutional failures that create the conditions for assault, and the trial readiness to take that fight to a jury. The hazing practice we have built is not a sideline — it is a focused area of our firm, and the case we are currently litigating is one of the most detailed hazing lawsuits filed in recent years.
If you are the survivor of a sexual assault at a fraternity house — or the parent of one — the call is free, the consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we win. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hablamos Español. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice, and contacting the firm is free and confidential.