CBS This Morning
Megan Rondini's parents, Cindy and Michael Rondini (pictured), have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit.
The parents of Megan Rondini, a former University of Alabama (UA) student who killed herself after an alleged rape, have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against her alleged attacker, university officials, and individuals in the Tuscaloosa sheriff's department.Michael and Cindy Rondini also believe their daughter's alleged attacker, Terry Bunn Jr., escaped prosecution because he's the member of prominent and wealthy family in Tuscaloosa.
"His family is very well connected," Michael Rondini said on CBS This Morning.
Rondini met Bunn in the summer of 2015 as she set to enter her junior year at UA. The suit claims she was drugged, raped, and locked in a room with Bunn after the assault.
Rondini found a gun in the bedroom which she took for her safety and grabbed $3 in case she needed to take a cab home, before jumping from a second-story window in the room to escape, according to the suit. She spoke with officers a few hours after the alleged incident and was read her Miranda Rights. She "was treated as a crime suspect," the lawsuit said.
Bunn met for an interview with investigators the following day. During the interview he told them, "I appreciate y'all's professionalism. And I appreciate the way y'all have handled this."
"If it was me on the other side, I'd want to do the same thing for me," the investigator responded to Bunn.
Back at UA a month later, Rondini met with Women and Gender Resource Center counselor Kathy Echols and told her about the alleged assault.
Echols told Rondini at the end of the conversations that the two could no longer meet because she knew Bunn and his family personally and it would be a conflict of interest. Rondini felt "betrayed and disheartened" that she had revealed the details of her alleged assault to a close friend of Bunn's, according to the suit.
Rondini eventually transferred transferred from UA to Southern Methodist University in Texas. In February of 2016 she killed herself.
The federal lawsuit filed accuses the defendants of causing Rondini "extreme depression, anxiety, PTSD, fear, panic attacks ... all of which directly led to Megan's loss of life."
"The allegations against my client as set forth in this baseless lawsuit are simply false. No sexual assault occurred," Bunn's lawyer told CBS.
Business Insider has reached out to the University of Alabama for comment.