Scott Thomas, who attended Northwestern from 2018 to 2019 before being expelled, pleaded guilty to aggravated battery of a fellow NU student and has been sentenced in state court to two years’ standard probation and 80 hours of community service.
Thomas, a Weinberg freshman at the time of the incident, was arrested in March 2019 and expelled from NU after allegedly sexually assaulting a fellow student outside the Jacobs Center. He initially pleaded not guilty to 64 charges, including aggravated criminal sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Now 26 years old, Thomas entered a guilty plea to aggravated battery April 9.
The case has dragged on since 2019. In the six years since the start of the case, Thomas returned to his New Jersey residence and moved to dismiss the indictment in 2022. During that time, the prosecutors and defense filed dozens of motions of continuance, repeatedly pushing the case back, until Thomas eventually declined a jury trial in April.
In a 2022 motion to dismiss the indictment, Thomas’s attorneys argued that a police officer misled the grand jury in his testimony. Specifically, the defense alleged that some of the relations were consensual, that Thomas and the victim were similarly inebriated and that aspects of the officer’s testimony were not supported by video evidence. A judge rejected the motion to dismiss in 2023.
As a result of the April aggravated battery plea, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges. Thomas will be required to continue therapy and avoid contact with the victim. He will also be required to complete another sex offender evaluation in six months, according to a spokesperson for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. Thomas will not be required to register as a sex offender.
Thomas’s attorneys declined The Daily’s request for comment. The State’s Attorney’s Office spokesperson confirmed details of the case to The Daily but did not respond to a request for comment on behalf of the prosecution.
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