Police are investigating an assault and attempted sexual assault at a fraternity house at Wesleyan University.
Middletown police said the assault allegedly occurred at 184 High Street in Middletown early Sunday morning and the victim was able to fend off the attacker and flee.
The victim was treated at Middlesex Hospital for injuries received during the attack and reported the attack at 3 a.m.
The house, 184 High Street, is the Beta Theta Pi House, according to the City of Middletown Department of Planning, Conservation and Development Web site and the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity Web site.
The Wesleyan Argus reports that David Meyer, the public safety director at Wesleyan, said non-Beta brothers were among the people at the party on Saturday night and that the fraternity is cooperating with the investigation.
"The members of Beta Theta Pi share the campus' outrage at the allegation of an attempted sexual assault at our chapter house early Sunday morning. We are cooperating with the University and the Middletown Police Department as they seek to identify the alleged attacker, and will continue to help the authorities in every way if and when he is found and arrested," Elliot Albert, president of the fraternity, wrote in a statement.
The Special Investigative Services Unit is investigating, police said and detectives are pursuing several leads.
Courthouse News Service reports that a former Wesleyan University student who reported being sexually assaulted at a Beta Theta Pi house filed a lawsuit against the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity, the Mu Epsilon chapter. the landlord and manager of the Beta House, and Wesleyan University.
"Beta House has a long-documented history of dangerous misconduct, student injuries and numerous sexual assaults of women, resulting in Beta and Mu Epsilon losing recognition from Wesleyan as a student organization and gaining the reputation in the Wesleyan community as the 'Rape Factory'," Courhouse News Service reports, citing the complaint.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Middletown Police Department at 860-344-3200.
The full statement from Beta is posted below:
"The members of Beta Theta Pi share the campus' outrage at the allegation of an attempted sexual assault at our chapter house early Sunday morning. We are cooperating with the University and the Middletown Police Department as they seek to identify the alleged attacker, and will continue to help the authorities in every way if and when he is found and arrested. Events such as this compromise the sense of safety and security that we as members of a campus community deserve, and we have zero tolerance for such actions. Unfortunately, sexual assault at Wesleyan remains a problem, and we share the belief that sexual assault, like any kind of assault, is problematic and utterly unacceptable. That our house became the location of this unfortunate and intolerable crime is a powerful reminder to the entire Wesleyan community that we collectively need to do a better job at raising awareness and prevention of these type of events. Beta Theta Pi plans to strengthen our partnership with Wesleyan’s Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) and Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and we will continue to plan programs for our members such as last semester's WESpeak-WEStand Bystander Intervention program, which aimed to create a campus that is actively engaged in the prevention of sexual assault. We all need to do our part in creating the safer community we deserve. Our thoughts, prayers, and solidarity are with the survivor."
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