A few months later, however, a Passaic County grand jury refused to indict and all charges were dismissed against all five defendants: Noah Williams of Camden, Garrett Collick of Paterson, Darius Singleton of Jersey City, Termaine Scott of Vineland and Jahmel Latimer of Hoboken.
Neither Waldron nor Marybeth Zeman, a spokeswoman for the university, could be reached for comment Tuesday.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state Superior Court in Paterson, an attorney for Collick and Williams said the accuser initiated consensual sex with the five defendants on Nov. 25, 2014, at the Overlook South dorm building. All of them were on good terms afterward, but the accuser went to the campus police later that day and reported the incident as a sexual assault, said Michael Epstein, the attorney.
“Without conducting any investigation and based on the accuser’s report alone,” campus police arrested the men within the next few days and charged them with numerous offenses, including aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit sexual assault and criminal restraint.
“The officers who did the reported investigation were untrained, did not know how to conduct a sexual assault investigation,” Epstein said Tuesday.
Had they conducted a proper investigation, they would have found out that the accuser had called Collick 33 times that day with hopes of luring him into intercourse, Epstein said in the lawsuit.
“Interviews with other students would have revealed that the accuser was very sexually active at William Paterson, had many sexual partners, engaged in sexual activities with more than one partner on multiple occasions, had to change dormitory rooms because her roommate was uncomfortable with the level of the accuser’s sexual activity,” Epstein said in the lawsuit. Epstein also said the accuser had previous relations with Collick and Williams.
Ron Ricci, an attorney representing Singleton and Latimer, said he has filed a similar lawsuit in Superior Court in Jersey City against Waldron and the accuser. He said he will file an amended complaint within the next few weeks to include the campus police officers who were involved in the investigation.
That lawsuit accuses Waldron of defamation and libel and includes allegations of false arrest, false imprisonment and violation of civil rights, Ricci said.
Epstein said in his lawsuit that Collick and Williams — who were both 18 at the time — were extremely scared when they spent nine days at the Passaic County Jail after their arrest, and that they slept in shifts to protect each other. Their families were forced to spend money to post their bails, which were set at $25,000 each, he said.
Despite lack of evidence to pursue the criminal charges, both were expelled from the school for allegedly violating a student code of conduct, Epstein said. Collick and Williams secured admission to the school through a special loan for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, he said. Reenrolling will be difficult for them because those funds will not be available again, Epstein said.
“They can’t pay for school so they can’t reapply,” he said.
Because of the highly publicized arrest, Collick and Williams suffered irreparable damage to their reputations, and their “names and photographs will forever be synonymously linked to rape, sexual assault and kidnapping,” Epstein said in the lawsuit.
He said Collick is now working as a busboy, and that he was not aware of the status of Williams.
Williams’ mother, Nancy Williams, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. The defendants include the university, Waldron, the campus police department, University Police Detective Sgt. Ellen DeSimone, and Robert Fulleman, director of Public Safety and University Police.
Collick, Williams, Singleton and Latimer are seeking unspecified amounts in compensatory and punitive damages. Scott has not filed suit in the case.