Expelled Baylor frat president avoids jail time with plea deal

Dec. 12 (UPI) — A former fraternity president at Baylor University — who was accused of raping a woman — has avoided jail after pleading no contest to a charge of unlawful restraint.

As a result of the plea, Jacob Anderson must serve three years of probation, pay a $400 fine and attend counseling, Judge Ralph Strother of McLennan County’s 19th District Court ruled Monday. He does not, however, have to register as a sex offender.

The female accuser said she was raped by Anderson at a party in 2016 after drinking spiked punch. She said Anderson led her behind a tent and assaulted her repeatedly while gagging and choking her.

“He stole my body, virginity and power over my body,” the woman, who was 19 at the time, said. “Everyone knows Jacob Anderson violently raped me repeatedly and almost killed me. The evidence is overwhelming.

“Now I not only have to live with his rape and the repercussions of the rape, I have to live with the knowledge that the McLennan County justice system is severely broken.”

Anderson was the president of Baylor’s Phi Delta Theta fraternity. A grand jury indicted him on four counts of sexual assault and he was expelled from Baylor. The woman is no longer a student there.

McLennan County Asst. District Attorney Hilary LaBorde said the ruling was the best possible outcome, given the facts of the case.

“Conflicting evidence and statements exist in this case making the original allegation difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” LaBorde said.

Anderson, a Garland, Texas, native, has since enrolled at the University of Texas at Dallas, where students started an online petition at MoveOn.org to have him removed from the campus. He’s scheduled to graduate next week with a finance degree and works for a Dallas real estate development company.

“The students at UT Dallas have a right to protection from predators like Anderson,” UTD senior Kelsey Castro, who started the petition, told the Waco Tribune. “He submitted a plea of no contest and was sentenced to deferred probation, and will not be made to register as a sex offender.

“That being the case, the school has a responsibility to remove him from this new potential hunting ground. If he wasn’t good enough for Baylor, why should he be trusted to be good enough for UTD?”