When ProPublica recently investigated a rape crisis that surged through Syracuse University in the 1980s, we found evidence that the school had taken steps to suppress news coverage of the assaults. The university responded by portraying itself as a changed institution today, “committed to supporting the students who come forward and being there for them at every step of the process,” as a school spokesperson put it.

But the university’s recent actions in a lawsuit filed by a former student who was attacked on campus during that period appear at odds with that commitment. After the Syracuse Police Department agreed to provide old records to the victim, lawyers for Syracuse University intervened, seeking to block the victim’s access to many of the records. The school argued in legal papers that the subpoena sent to the police department was “overbroad” and suffered “from fatal geographic overreach” that rendered “it unreasonably burdensome and irrelevant.”

New York state court Judge Joseph Lamendola ruled in the university’s favor in February, dramatically limiting the records the victim could obtain to make her case that the school should have beefed up security in response to escalating crime in the area.

In June, her attorneys appealed that decision, sending the matter to a state appellate court.

“It smacks of the 1980s when SU quashed media coverage of sexual assault. It’s that all over again,” said Andrew Stengel, a former Manhattan prosecutor representing the victim. He accused the university of “retraumatizing” his client “by pretending sexual assault wasn’t a problem on campus and in the surrounding area.”

Stengel and his client, referred to as Jane Doe in legal filings, are suing the university under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that opened a one-year exemption from the statute of limitations for survivors of long-ago sexual assaults to pursue legal claims against alleged abusers and negligent institutions.

Sarah Scalese, Syracuse University’s vice president of communications, said in an emailed statement that “we do not comment on active litigation.” In response to ProPublica’s earlier story, Scalese said the university “has a robust structure in place to support those affected by sexual and relationship violence,” including “confidential counseling, advocacy and investigation and resolution services to students.”

Doe was attacked by a man with a knife inside a bathroom on the third floor of the university’s music building at about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27, 1987. Her assailant had entered the building through an unlocked door, according........

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