Court Approves Plea Deal With No Jail Time in Baylor Rape Case

A former fraternity president at Baylor University who was accused of raping a female student in 2016 will avoid jail time and will not have to register as a sex offender, under a plea deal approved Monday in Waco, Texas.

The agreement, which has roiled Waco and drawn howls of outrage nationally, calls for the accused man, Jacob Anderson, 23, to serve three years of probation, pay a $400 fine and attend counseling; his plea may never show up on his record.

Anderson pleaded no contest to felony unlawful restraint in return for the dismissal of four counts of sexual assault, which in Texas would be punishable by two to 20 years in prison.

The plea deal, approved by Judge Ralph Strother on Monday, was disclosed in October, and prompted an online petition signed by more than 90,000 people urging its rejection.

The victim was a 19-year-old sophomore at Baylor in 2016, when she said that Anderson sexually assaulted her at a fraternity party and then left her, one of her lawyers said, “to die face down in her own vomit.”

According to The Lariat, the Baylor campus newspaper, the woman took the stand Monday and told the judge she was “devastated” by his decision to accept the plea deal instead of sending the case to trial.

“He stole things from me, and I will never be the same,” the woman said of Anderson, describing being taken to a secluded area, choked, and raped repeatedly. She has also filed a lawsuit against Anderson and his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta.

In a victim impact statement she submitted to the court, she said she feared that Anderson could attack again.

“What will they tell the next victim when she questions why she did not know Jacob Anderson was a sex offender?” the woman wrote in her statement, according to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “How does she think the girls in his current college classes feel, knowing they could have been his next victim? I am writing this letter to hold the D.A. accountable to do their job and seek justice. To hold Jacob Anderson accountable for his crimes. He raped me. He almost killed me.”

After the plea deal was approved, one of the prosecutors handling the case, Hilary LaBorde, issued a statement defending it, saying the case was not as simple as it appeared, and that if it had gone to trial, there was a real possibility that Anderson would have been acquitted.

“Conflicting evidence and statements exist in this case, making the original allegation difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” LaBorde’s statement said, according to The Star-Telegram. “As a prosecutor, my goal is no more victims. I believe that is best accomplished when there is a consequence rather than an acquittal. This offender is now on felony probation and will receive sex offender treatment, a result which was not guaranteed, nor likely, had we gone to trial.”

“Given the claims made publicly, I understand why people are upset,” LaBorde wrote. “However, all of the facts must be considered, and there are many facts that the public does not have.”

By pleading no contest instead of pleading guilty, Anderson did not have to explicitly admit to the facts behind even the lesser charge of unlawful restraint. Jim Dunnam, a lawyer representing the woman in her lawsuit, said he did not believe that would hurt her civil claims against Anderson and the fraternity.

Because the adjudication of Anderson’s case was deferred, his plea will never show up on his record if he successfully completes probation.

Strother did not return a call seeking comment. On Monday, he noted how much interest the case had generated and criticized information about it circulating on social media, saying most of it was “not fully informed, misinformed or totally uninformed,” according to The Waco Tribune-Herald.

The newspaper said Anderson was expelled from Baylor after a university investigation, but that he is expected to graduate soon from the University of Texas at Dallas, and that he works for a real estate development company there.

The case has already drawn comparisons to the 2016 sentence given to Brock Turner, a former Stanford University swimmer, for sexually assaulting an unconscious women one year before. Turner was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation, spurring a national outcry from critics who called the punishment too light.

Strother has been accused of approving lenient sentences for men in two other recent sexual assault cases. One was a probation sentence last year for a man who pleaded guilty to a 2013 sexual assault of a Baylor student. The other was a felony probation sentence imposed this year for the sexual assault of a former Baylor student in 2014 that includes 30 days of jail time to be served on weekends.