By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
Two plaintiffs suing the University of Kentucky over the behavior of former head swimming & diving coach Lars Jorgensen have agreed to drop four of the claims against the school.
Briggs Alexander and “Jane Doe,” the latter of whom filed a motion this week to proceed anonymously that appears to be unchallenged by the defendants, are suing Kentucky, Jorgensen, and athletics director Mitch Barnhart alleging that the department was complicit in allowing ex-head coach Jorgensen “to foster a toxic, sexually hostile environment within the swim program and to prey on, sexually harass, and commit horrific sexual assaults and violent rapes against young female coaches and collegiate athletes who were reliant on him.”
The 53-year-old Jorgensen resigned last summer amid an investigation after a decade in Lexington, receiving a $75,000 settlement and foregoing the rest of the $402,500 left on his contract through the 2024-25 season. He appeared in SafeSport’s disciplinary database in November for unspecified allegations of misconduct.
The four charges that attorneys for the plaintiffs and the university agreed to drop are one count of failure to train and supervise, one count of negligence, and two counts of vicarious liability for battery. That order has not yet been signed by the judge.
If accepted by the court, two charges would remain against Kentucky: one count of sex harassment in violation of Title IX and one count of sex discrimination in violation of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act.
The university had previously argued that the four counts should be dismissed because the University of Kentucky has sovereign immunity as a state institution that shields it from lawsuits.
The dismissals does not impact the cases against Jorgensen or Barnhart. Charges against Gary Conelly, the former head swim coach at Kentucky who hired Jorgensen, were dropped in October.
Alleged Assaults
The first alleged assault dates back to December of 2013, at a team Christmas party that Jorgensen hosted at his house. A former swim team staffer told The Athletic that Jorgensen forced her into his bedroom and raped her. He is accused of continuing to abuse the staffer over the next two years and telling her that nobody would believe her if she told anyone. She ultimately left in 2016 for a job at a “less prominent program.”
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Briggs Alexander, a former team captain and an assistant coach with the Wildcats. The complaint claims that Jorgensen “groomed” Alexander during her time on the women’s team from 2014-18.
“Jorgensen isolated Alexander, sought to gain her trust, strove to control every facet of her life, and repeatedly made sexualized comments in an attempt to desensitize sexual topics,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
In December of 2019, after the team’s annual Christmas party at Jorgensen’s house, Alexander alleges that Jorgensen forced her into his bedroom, pinned her down by the wrists, and raped her. She also described three more sexual assaults while working as a volunteer assistant coach (2019-20) and assistant coach (2020-22) and a fourth that allegedly occurred in April of 2023, almost a year after resigning in May of 2022.
Alexander now identifies as male, but the lawsuit uses gender pronouns that align with his transition timeline so readers can understand “who I was in the moment when I was being abused.”
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Plaintiffs Drop Four Claims in Lawsuit Against Univ. of Kentucky over Former Coach’s Behavior