Football and the Baylor University Sexual Assault Scandal

[jerrym]

It's ironic that the special prosecutor, Ken Starr, who spent six years investigating Bill Clinton sexual and business activities and was so fixated on it that many felt it was part of a Republican witchhunt, has now been fired as president of Baylor because he failed to act on a growing list of sex scandals at his university involving the football team. However, this is the danger of making sports celebrity a focus of university life, especially when the head coach takes the team from 11 consecutive losing seasons to champions.

Baylor University dumped Ken Starr as its president Thursday after unveiling the results of an independent investigation that showed a “fundamental failure” to respond adequately to student sex assault allegations, including some involving players for the Texas school’s rising football program.
Starr, whose investigation led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s over the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, will become the school’s chancellor, the Board of Regents said in a statement. He will continue to teach at the university’s law school. CNN contacted Starr for comment, but he has not responded.
The board also suspended football coach Art Briles and said it intends to fire him. Director of Athletics Ian McCaw is expected to oversee changes in the football and other sports programs, but was put on probation. Other unidentified members of the school administration and the athletic department were dismissed. The board said it would not identify them.
“We were horrified by the extent of these acts of sexual violence on our campus,” said Richard Willis, chair of the Baylor Board of Regents. “This investigation revealed the University’s mishandling of reports in what should have been a supportive, responsive and caring environment for students. The depth to which these acts occurred shocked and outraged us.” ...
How we got here
Two Baylor football players have been convicted of sexual assault, and victims who spoke to CNN said the school failed to take their allegations seriously. In one case involving a player, former Baylor student Jasmin Hernandez is suing the school over how it handled her sex assault case. She says it failed to properly investigate her allegation that football player Tevin Elliott raped her in 2012. Elliott was convicted and is serving a 20-year sentence. Hernandez said the lack of response from school officials left her felling “just being completed ignored and sort of pushed under the rug.” Hernandez’s grades suffered, and she eventually lost her scholarship. She told CNN that she received no academic guidance nor any health services. When she went to make an appointment with a school psychiatrist, Hernandez said, she was told there were no availabilities for the rest of the year.
Her attorney, Irwin Zalkin, said school officials knew what was happening and tried to keep it quiet. “Absolutely, there was a cover-up,” he said. “The reality is it tends to be all about the money.” ...
Another high-profile case involved that of Sam Ukwuachu, a football player who transferred to Baylor from Boise State University after being dismissed for undisclosed reasons that Texas Monthly said involved a “previous incident of violence involving a female student.” Last year, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a Baylor student.
The investigation
The report for Baylor, conducted by the Pepper Hamilton law firm, found the school’s “student conduct processes were wholly inadequate to consistently provide a prompt and equitable response” and “failed to consistently support complainants.” “Actions by University administrators directly discouraged some complainants from reporting or participating in student conduct processes and in one instance constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault,” the report found, according to the university’s statement.
The school also found problems inside the athletic department, “including a failure to identify and respond to a pattern of sexual violence by a football player and to a report of dating violence.” “There are significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor’s football program as it relates to accountability for all forms of student athlete misconduct,” the university quoted the findings as saying.
Baylor’s football team is one of the top programs in the nation. In 2008, Briles had inherited a team coming off its 11th consecutive losing season. Five years later, the Bears were 11-2 and Big 12 conference champions. In 2014 they barely missed making the College Football Playoff. Last year, the Bears went 10-3 with a bowl win, and the offense was top-ranked in scoring and yards per game.

http://whnt.com/2016/05/27/baylor-fi...sault-scandal/

[jerrym]

CBC reports more details on the scandal including the investigative report's conclusion that in at lest one case administrators engaged in retaliatory actions against a woman complaining about sexual assault.

Baylor also fired football coach Art Briles and placed athletic director Ian McCaw on probation after an external investigation found the actions of football staff and athletics leadership "in some instances, posed a risk to campus safety and the integrity of the university."
The report didn't identify specific cases, but two football players have been convicted of sexual assault since 2014. In the past year, there have been multiple reports of other alleged assaults and women who said the school did nothing to help. ...
The review by Philadelphia-based law firm Pepper Hamilton found that under Starr, school administrators discouraged students from reporting or participating in student conduct reviews of sexual assault complaints and even contributed to or accommodated a "hostile" environment against the alleged victims. ...

In one case, the actions of administrators "constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault," the report said.
University leadership was also slow to enact federally-required student conduct processes, and administrators failed to identify and eliminate the hostile environment toward victims, the report found.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/baylor-university-sex-assault-scandal-1.3602698

[jerrym]

A summary of the outside report can be found here.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...ault/84979090/

[jerrym]

Two players currently at the Calgary Stampeders TC, who played at Baylor, give a different perspective on the scandal.

As Lache Seastrunk was running around the McMahon Stadium turf for the first time in Red & White, the former Baylor Bears star was all smiles. ...
But then he was hit with the news that his former coach, Art Briles, who had inherited the worst program in the Big 12 in 2008 and turned it into a college football powerhouse, had reportedly been fired in the wake of a sexual assault scandal involving a number of Baylor football players. “That really hurts, man,” Seastrunk said, still shaking his head as he stood in his No. 25 Stampeders jersey with helmet still in hand. “That really hurts. That was the only person that ever brought me under his wing and helped me understand the game better and helped me be a better player.”
Seastrunk, 24, didn’t need to be told why. He knew the story, and had no problem defending the 60-year-old coach, one that lured him from the University of Oregon to Baylor and helped the 5-foot-9, 200-pound tailback to back-to-back 1,000-yard rushing seasons in 2012 and 2013, before Seastrunk moved on to the NFL. “You can’t control what other people do,” Seastrunk said. “He’s a coach. You can criticize and say he knew this and knew that, but ultimately, you don’t know. “He’s a hell of a coach. He taught me everything I know. They’re my guys, I don’t care what nobody says. I know my opinion don’t matter, but you’ve got to get the facts first before you can move forward and think you can fire somebody for something. That’s always going to be my guy. Art Briles is always going to be a father figure to me.”
“You can’t control what other kids do,” Seastrunk maintained. “You’re just a coach. You can’t put a gun to anybody’s head and say, ‘Don’t do this.’ ” ...
Briles spent eight seasons at Baylor, running up a 65-37 record — the program hadn’t enjoyed a winning season in more than a decade until Briles arrived — via its outside-the-box spread offence. “They went from not winning to back-to-back conference championships, which I was part of one. You tell me?” Seastrunk said when asked how Briles ran the program. “He’s always going to be the man in my eyes, and I guarantee he’s going to get a job somewhere else. As quick as they let him go. Probably not even tomorrow. By 8 or 9 o’clock somebody is going to be negotiating with him and someone is going to take him, and he’s going to turn that program into a winner.”

With the firing, Baylor made it clear there are things much more important than winning football games. Because Briles was awfully good at that.
Stampeders veteran free-safety Josh Bell, also a Baylor product (2003-07), never played for Briles, but struck up a relationship with the coach during the Dallas resident’s regular visits back to campus. “He’s a great man,” Bell said. “I never played football for Art one day, but because I’ve been able to communicate with him, have conversations with him, develop a relationship with him, he treats me like any of his old players. “We’re hanging Art Briles for the faults of young men,” Bell added. “Those young men need to be accountable for their actions, especially when it comes to rape and domestic violence and things of that nature.”
The way it ended at Baylor won’t change Seastrunk’s opinion of him one bit. “It was more than just a coach and player, it was a personal relationship because he knew how hard I worked, he knew where I came from and he understood what it took for me to get to that point,” Seastrunk said. “I’ll always have so much respect for him, and I hope he hears that. Coach, you are the man. You’ve helped me grow from a boy into a man. Thank you.”

http://www.montrealgazette.com/sport...554/story.html

[jerrym]

By clicking on the arrows accompanying the pictures in the following url, you can easily follow the timeline of the Baylor University scandal. A very revealing story of indifference to sexual assault is evident by administrators and coaches over time.

http://www.chron.com/sports/college/...#photo-8062983