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In a lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court last month, former student and convicted voyeur Kris Estrada accused American University of improperly closing a Title IX complaint he filed against a former administrator, who was also sued for privacy invasion.
Estrada, then 19, alleged that former Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education Brad Knight began contacting him on the gay dating app Grindr beginning in June 2024, then pressured the student to perform oral sex in a Mary Graydon Student Center bathroom on July 3, 2024.
The legal complaint says that Knight recorded the sexual encounter on his phone without asking for permission and that Estrada did not consent to recording. It claimed Knight’s Grindr profile said he was married and 15 years older than Estrada, who was a freshman at the time.
The two civil counts against the University are breach of contract for allegedly failing to follow its own policies and “Title IX deliberate indifference,” which is a legal term that means a school’s response to a Title IX complaint was unreasonable under the circumstances. Estrada also accused Knight of invasion of privacy for recording the sexual act without consent.
Estrada demands a jury trial and asks the court to reopen the Title IX investigation, plus monetary relief decided by the jury. The U.S. District Court for D.C. assigned Senior Judge Amy Berman Jackson to the case.
Estrada’s attorney, Parker Bowman of Binnall Law Group, shared unredacted copies of some of Estrada’s emails with the Office of Equity and Title IX and screenshots of the Grindr chats with a user he said is Knight. The Eagle asked Bowman to share the documents to verify claims in the complaint and agreed not to publish them because they contain private information about alleged sexual misconduct.
A month after the encounter with Knight, Estrada was reported missing by friends and then arrested days later for voyeurism. Prosecutors said in court last summer that the student had been secretly recording peers on at least 50 separate days over the span of a year before his arrest. Police estimated his crimes could include as many as 100 different victims, but only five could be identified.
Estrada pleaded guilty in November 2024 to five counts of voyeurism. While his attorneys asked for reduced sentencing, Estrada’s social worker Kyle T. Collins told the court that his crimes were a trauma response to a past sexual assault.
For years, students have accused the Office of Equity and Title IX of mishandling cases and ghosting students who file sexual misconduct complaints. Estrada’s court filing claims he was a victim of “the pattern the University has established of turning a blind eye to faculty sexual misconduct.”
He accused the University of treating him harsher than it treated Knight, acknowledging that Estrada committed some of the same conduct that Knight did.
“Unlike its harsh treatment of Mr. Estrada, the University swept the allegations against [Assistant] Dean Knight under the rug,” the complaint reads.
Knight left the University on Dec. 4, 2025, the legal complaint says, but it notes that the AU Law Review, his LinkedIn profile and his Substack account show he is a JD candidate at AU’s Washington College of Law.
Knight did not return calls and emails seeking a response, but the complaint says he denied meeting Estrada, claiming he was impersonated and not on campus the day of the incident. He had not filed a response by publication, but asked the court for more time to find a lawyer.
The University declined to comment on the lawsuit, but on March 19 it filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that it followed the law in investigating and dismissing the Title IX complaint and that it went further than the minimum legal requirement by opening a separate investigation under its Discrimination and Non-Title IX Sexual Misconduct Policy.
“While [Estrada] may not be happy with the outcome of the investigation, and is surely not happy that he has been dismissed from the University for unrelated reasons, his unhappiness does not support a cognizable cause of action under any theory,” the University’s lawyers wrote in the motion.
The University argues in its motion that Estrada’s claim does not meet the standard of “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment” that courts have required when considering whether a university was deliberately indifferent to Title IX.
The University provided the first two pages of the Title IX investigator’s report and a list of evidence collected, arguing that those documents show the University conducted a sufficient investigation as required by the law.
Many of the investigation’s exhibits were included in documents Bowman shared with The Eagle, but the list also includes records listed as Tinder and Instagram impersonations of Knight and his husband, respectively, and a screen recording provided by Knight to the Office of Title IX of his Grindr profile.
The Title IX investigation
The complaint details an almost yearlong process with the Title IX office.
After the encounter in July 2024, Estrada said he never heard from Knight again. A faculty advisor reported the incident to the Office of Equity and Title IX on Jan. 7, 2025, the complaint said.
After an intake meeting with investigator Lauren Stocks-Smith, Estrada said he waited almost three months until then-interim Title IX Coordinator Laura Buchs sent a formal notice of investigation to Knight.
Estrada claims that another investigator, Marissa Abraham, told him last April that she did not think his alleged interactions with Knight violated University policies and that he submitted a written statement and sat for an interview with the investigator. Estrada said he waited another two months to hear from the Title IX office, and in July 2025, was told his case would be handled by Buchs.
Buchs dismissed the case nine days later, the complaint says. Title IX provides a number of reasons educational institutions may dismiss complaints, but Estrada’s lawsuit accuses the University of pre-judging the case.
The complaint quoted Buchs’ dismissal, saying her office “conducted an assessment of the potential ‘power dynamic’ … and there was no evidence showing [Knight] would have such authority in the future. [The office] also found no evidence of coercion.” The dismissal letter was not filed with the court, so the quotes from the dismissal were selected by Estrada’s attorneys.
According to the complaint and a copy reviewed by The Eagle, the dismissal said the evidence Estrada provided was not sufficient enough to investigate under Title IX. Estrada’s complaint alleges that the investigators did not follow proper procedures in dismissing the complaint and did not conduct a thorough enough investigation.
Estrada appealed the denial on Aug. 1, 2025. On Sept. 3, 2025, Amy Krumenacker, the manager of employee relations & compliance, upheld Buchs’ dismissal. The lawsuit alleges the University denied Estrada access to written materials in the case, which he said violated AU’s Title IX Sexual Harassment Policy.
Estrada tried to file a complaint with Deputy Provost and Dean of Faculty Monica Jackson, citing a violation of the Faculty Manual, but Jackson denied the complaint because the University did not consider Knight a faculty member.
The lawsuit says that on Oct. 21, 2025, the University found Knight not responsible under the Discrimination and Non-Title IX Sexual Misconduct Policy — which has since been replaced. According to a letter from interim Title IX Coordinator Kristi Harris to Knight and Estrada, the University found credibility issues with both parties.
This article was edited by Payton Anderson and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Avery Grossman, Arin Burrell, Paige Caron, Ryan Sieve and Nicole Kariuki. Fact-checking done by Luca Palma Poth and Andrew Kummeth.
