Tyler Kingkade reports:
The University of Oregon illegally pried through the medical records of a female student who was expected to file a sexual assault-related lawsuit against the school, a staff therapist claims.
Jennifer Morlok, a senior staff therapist at UO’s counseling center, alleges in a letter to university administrators and a Justice Department attorney that the school violated the privacy of a student who reported being gang-raped by three university basketball players in March 2014. The student, using the pseudonym Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit in January 2015 against the university and the head basketball coach for recruiting one of the alleged assailants, Brandon Austin, while he was being investigated for rape at another college.
According to Morlok’s letter, obtained by The Huffington Post, university employees engaged in “potentially illegal and unethical behavior” by going through Doe’s medical records without her consent.
Read more on Huffington Post, who subsequently updated their report to include a statement from the university acknowledging access to the records, but claiming that nothing they did was illegal.