LSU Found Football Player Responsible for Rape, Then Cut His Suspension to Probation So He Could Stay on the Team

Since LSU student Kendall Danielle Francis first posted about her alleged October 2025 rape on TikTok on Sept. 14, 2026, the case has gone from a social media allegation to an open criminal investigation and a state lawmaker's push to rewrite how Louisiana universities handle sexual assault reports.

Francis, who was 18 and a freshman at the time, says she was raped around 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2025, after visiting an LSU football player at his on-campus dorm, according to The Tiger Rag. LSU's football team was in Nashville that weekend for a road game at Vanderbilt, and it's unclear whether the player traveled with the team or was injured and stayed behind.

LSU's Office of Civil Rights & Title IX did not receive a police report on the incident until Dec. 9, 2025, and Francis didn't file a formal Title IX complaint until January 2026, according to internal documents obtained by The Advocate and cited by LSU's student newspaper, the Reveille. The Title IX panel ultimately found the player responsible for forcible rape, based on a determination that Francis had not consented.

The panel initially suspended the player for two semesters. He appealed, arguing he should have had an adviser earlier in the process and noting that his family had paid Francis $1,000, according to The Advocate's reporting. An administrative review judge upheld the forcible-rape finding but reduced the punishment to four semesters of probation, citing the absence of "malice" or "force" and calling the incident "an error in judgment," per the internal documents reviewed by the Reveille. That meant the player could stay on campus and remain eligible to play football.

Francis says she learned about the reduced punishment by email while sitting in class at the start of the current semester, according to NBC News. She told WAFB she didn't realize the Title IX process and a criminal investigation were separate tracks. "I was under the impression that because they found him responsible still, that LSU would do their part or that criminal charges were supposed to be pursued and that never happened," she said.

Francis also says she was contacted after the incident by the player's mother, who asked her not to press charges that could hurt her son's football career, according to the Reveille. Francis confirmed in her Sept. 14 TikTok video that she was offered $1,000 in exchange for not filing a criminal complaint. Because the case is now under investigation, she declined to say whether she accepted that money, according to her interview with WAFB.

After going public, Francis said she tried to report the assault to Baton Rouge police, who directed her to LSU police since the alleged incident happened on campus. A clip she posted shows an LSU officer telling her the department has "made plenty of arrests that are not prosecuted and dismissed in court," adding, "That doesn't mean he's not going to be arrested, but it means that he could be arrested and then it's just" before shrugging.

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore announced Sept. 22, 2026, that his office opened a criminal investigation and requested "all reports, interviews, evidence, and other relevant records" from LSU, LSU police, Baton Rouge police, and the parish coroner's office, which handles sexual assault evidence collection. Francis has now filed a criminal complaint against the player, though his name hasn't been made public and no charges have been filed as of this writing.

LSU President William F. Tate IV has defended the school's handling of the case. "Let me assure everyone that this incident has been handled professionally and that LSU has strictly followed our policies, procedures and best practices, including the Title IX process," Tate said in a statement, adding that the university is cooperating with the criminal investigation now that a complaint has been filed.

State Rep. Vanessa Caston LaFleur is now calling for lawmakers to review how Louisiana universities handle the handoff between Title IX findings and criminal prosecution. Notably, LaFleur isn't accusing LSU of breaking any rules. "I want to be clear. LSU followed the law here. They followed the procedures here," she told WAFB. "This is not about whether or not LSU did what they were supposed to do. The question here is, where do we pick up where victims then know what their next steps are." She floated the idea of automatically triggering a criminal or civil review whenever a university finds a student responsible for sexual misconduct, while acknowledging that raises privacy concerns and that not every victim wants a criminal case pursued.

Francis's case is surfacing amid separate, unrelated scrutiny of Cornell University's handling of a 2024 fraternity gang-rape allegation, which has drawn its own grand jury proceedings and a New York Attorney General review. NBC News linked the two stories as part of a broader national conversation about campus sexual assault response, though the LSU and Cornell cases involve different schools, different timelines, and different legal postures.

The open questions sit with Moore's office: whether the evidence supports criminal charges, and if so, when a grand jury might hear the case. LSU has not released the player's name, and it remains unconfirmed whether he is on the 2026 roster.