Alleged serial rapist had brief stint at Tech
At least six women at three Louisiana universities reported Victor Daniel Silva for alleged sexual offenses, including rape, during his college career. He repeatedly transferred institutions in order to evade investigations, as first reported by USA Today in May.
Though the bulk of the allegations come from his time at Louisiana State University and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Silva was also enrolled at Louisiana Tech University here in Ruston for about three months in 2018.
During that time, a Tech student filed complaints with the university and the Ruston Police Department claiming Silva had raped her just weeks after he came to town, according to police reports obtained via public records requests.
Before Tech could launch a student conduct investigation, Silva transferred out, heading back to ULL and out of Tech’s jurisdiction.
At least, Tech officials say they believed at the time that the case was outside the university’s jurisdiction.
A Louisiana law passed in 2015 requires higher education institutions to prevent students from transferring if they’re under investigation for a sexual offense, but Tech officials believed they had no legal power to do that in Silva’s case since he left campus so quickly after the initial complaint that an investigation hadn’t even started.
Legislators who crafted that law said this “loophole” wasn’t their intent, and Tech has since updated its investigation procedures and plans to expand its Title IX office to better handle these kinds of complaints.
Meanwhile, the Ruston Police Department and Third Judicial District Attorney John Belton’s office both reviewed the rape allegation against Silva and decided there wasn’t enough evidence for an arrest.
Silva graduated from ULL in 2020 after facing only one brief arrest several years prior.
The alleged rape
Victor Daniel Silva enrolled at Louisiana Tech in the fall quarter of 2018 following his first stint at ULL, during which he was reported to the Lafayette Police Department for at least three separate sex crimes, USA Today reports.
ULL did not inform Louisiana Tech of any allegations, and Silva arrived with a clean record on paper.
According to reports from the Louisiana Tech and Ruston police departments, a female student at Tech claimed that Silva raped her at his off-campus apartment in the early morning hours of Sept. 19, 2018.
Her account given to both police departments details a night of hard drinking, followed by Silva attempting to have intercourse with the woman while she was unconscious, eventually succeeding after waking her up and brushing off her multiple attempts at resistance.
The alleged victim claimed she eventually gave in to seek the quickest resolution to the traumatic experience.
“While I may have eventually gone along with it to get it over with quicker, I am certain that I resisted initially and continued to resist up until and even while he had intercourse with me,” her account to Tech police reads.
Sexual consent cannot legally be given while under the influence of alcohol.
RPD’s write-up of the alleged victim’s complaint files it under Louisiana Revised Statute 14:43, which governs third degree rape.
That statute says intercourse is not consensual “when the victim is incapable of resisting or of understanding the nature of the act by reason of a stupor or abnormal condition of mind produced by an intoxicating agent or any cause and the offender knew or should have known of the victim’s incapacity.”
Tech’s process
On Dec. 11, 2018, the Tech student Silva allegedly raped claimed to have seen a group chat post about Silva’s history of sexual assault at LSU and recognized him.
This prompted her to file a complaint about the September incident on Dec. 14, 2018, with Tech’s Title IX Coordinator Carrie Flournoy.
According to Tech officials, Flournoy asked Tech Police to attend the meeting with the complainant. Since the incident took place off campus, the university police escorted her to the RPD to file her report.
“At that time we did not know what (Silva’s enrollment) status was,” Tech Associate Vice President for Student Advancement Dickie Crawford said.
That was a Friday. The next Monday, Tech’s Director of Student Conduct Adam Collins was informed of the allegation against Silva and took the first step toward launching a student conduct investigation: he emailed both Silva and the complainant.
Silva informed Collins he was no longer a student at Tech — he had just transferred back to ULL.
Act 172 of the 2015 regular session of the Louisiana Legislature, signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal, required the state Board of Regents to draft a policy mandating that “institutions withhold transcripts of students seeking a transfer with pending disciplinary action relative to sexually-oriented criminal offenses, until such investigation and adjudication is complete.”
Tech attorney Justin Kavalir said Tech’s interpretation of the law led them to believe the Silva case didn’t fall under this requirement, since he left before any action could be taken.
“During this time, we were not under the impression that we had the ability to hold individuals who are no longer students accountable under our disciplinary process,” Kavalir said.
“So whenever this complaint came to us, and it became time to move ahead with that, this individual was already no longer a student here. So it was our belief that we were not able to proceed with the student disciplinary process and that we had no ability to hold his transcript.”
Legislators said this situation did not match the intent of their 2015 bill.
“This is sickening and tragic bc (sic) it could have been prevented if laws/policies… were followed,” Helena Moreno, one of the law’s sponsors, wrote on Twitter.
“Instead… an accused serial rapist was allowed to transfer from university to university.”
Message received, Tech officials said.
“At this point, as soon as an allegation is made, we will immediately notify the registrar of the university to put a hold on the transcript of the alleged perpetrator, and we will start the investigation,” Crawford said. “We will work with Louisiana Tech Police or the RPD if the jurisdiction is in their area.”
At the time, though, Tech believed a local law enforcement investigation was the best and only avenue for Silva’s alleged victim to pursue the case.
No arrest made
According to documents, RPD officer Hannah Laborde interviewed Silva’s alleged victim on Dec. 14, 2018.
The report gives a long summary of the complainant’s account. Silva’s phone number, the number of his roommate at the time who was in the apartment during the incident, text messages between the two men and the alleged victim, and other evidence were filed in the RPD’s evidence tracker.
“After their investigation, the Ruston Police Department did not determine an arrest was warranted at that time,” First Assistant District Attorney Laurie James said. “Our office consulted with the investigator and, after consultation and review of the evidence, agreed that no arrest was warranted at that time.”
James said the District Attorney’s office never received any documents on the Silva case and had none to add to what was obtained from the Ruston and Tech PD.
Going forward
“The scary part is we’re just now learning about this one story,” J.P. Morrell, one of the legislators behind Act 172, wrote on Twitter. “How many Victor Silva’s do we not know about?”
The function of a university’s Title IX office, previously mainly associated in the public eye with athletics, has come under scrutiny in recent days after a wave of sexual misconduct controversies have come to light at the flagship LSU.
The Title IX office governs investigations into on-campus sexual misconduct and, under more recent laws, is now the first stop for any and all university-related sexual offense complaints.
To date, Tech has fulfilled its Title IX obligations without a full-time coordinator in place. The current coordinator, Flournoy, tackles those duties along with being President Les Guice’s executive assistant.
That will change this year, as the university is in the process of hiring a full-time Title IX coordinator to focus on training, education of staff and students, and keeping the university up to date with all state and federal laws concerning sexual misconduct reporting.
“We are aware of and following all current requirements,” Crawford said.
While that change didn’t come about specifically in response to the Silva case, officials agreed it will certainly help if and when similar situations happen in the future.
