The University of Chicago announced Wednesday morning that it has identified a person of interest in a sexual assault at a fraternity house this past weekend.
The person of interest was identified through witness statements and video evidence, all of which has been shared with the Chicago Police Department, the university said.
The university said the person of interest is not a student or affiliated with the university but has been banned from campus. A source with knowledge of the investigation told CBS News Chicago that the university has banned multiple people associated with the incident from the university. Those people, the source said, were also not students.
UChicago issued an alert earlier this week, saying at 1:50 a.m. Sunday, a woman who was not affiliated with the university was sexually assaulted during a party at the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity house at 5625 S. University Ave., across the street from the west side of UChicago's Main Quad in Hyde Park.
Chicago police said the woman was 21 years old. She did not know her attacker, the university said. They said when someone intervened, the unidentified suspect ran off.
Surveillance video in the area picked up someone matching the description running from the frat house, UChicago said.
A University of Chicago police officer on patrol was flagged down to respond, and UCPD arranged for the woman to be transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Students described to CBS News Chicago described what it's like along Fraternity Row during "rush season," the time of year when fraternities and sororities are actively recruiting new members. They told us at UChicago, that means frequent parties and other larger events.
Video has surfaced online showing a woman, who identified herself as a friend of the 21-year-old victim, chasing down a man she claimed to be her friend's attacker.
Later, the friend commented that the 21-year-old woman was "drugged and taken away from us against her will…practically incapacitated, being held to the ground with a man over her, kissing her and taking her clothes off."
CBS News Chicago is still trying to independently verify who was recorded and if those people were definitively involved.
"Sexual violence, in my opinion, on college campus is not a series of isolated incidents," said Jillian Furey, a clinical services supervisor for Resilience, a standalone rape crisis center in Chicago. "It is a pervasive public health crisis."
"We're gonna see survivors having to relive their trauma, potentially face their perpetrator in court, be questioned and disbelieved, know that they're facing a 4% chance of a conviction rate," Furey added. "Why would someone want to retraumatize themselves again?"
The National AEPi organization has told this chapter to pause all events and programs while they cooperate with the investigation.
No charges have yet been filed against the person of interest.
