By Kalyn Story | Staff Writer
Baylor released information on Friday about how former head football coach Art Briles and former athletic director Ian McCaw mishandled reports of an alleged 2012 gang rape of a student-athlete by five football players.
Baylor said the student-athlete told her head coach in 2013 that she had been sexually assaulted by five Baylor football players in 2012. Baylor says her coach took this information to Briles, McCaw and to the sports administrator for the female student-athlete’s team. Baylor says none of those people took the allegation to Baylor’s Judicial Affairs or to anyone else outside of the athletics department. Title IX rules would have required any staff member with knowledge of the allegation to report to Baylor’s Judicial Affairs office.
“The internal system of discipline operated by the coach was not in line with the university’s mission and obligations,” Ron Murff, the chairman of the Board of Regents, said Friday evening. “To Art’s credit, he took responsibility for this in discussions with the board of regents and in a national media interview.”
Baylor’s Office of General Counsel is reviewing past sexual assault cases to determine if they were handled properly.
“As usual, everything Baylor is saying is false,” the Dallas Morning News quoted Briles’ lawyer Ernest Cannon as saying. “They’re up to the same underhanded and dirty tricks.”
Baylor said that when the Title IX office learned of the rape allegations in early 2015, McCaw denied he knew about them but later acknowledged that the female athlete’s coach told him of the allegation in 2013.
“The athletic director explained that he did not take any action, including reporting the alleged sexual assault to Judicial Affairs, because he thought the victim did not want to report the incident,” Baylor said in a statement.
The Lariat reached out to Baylor for comment, but Baylor had not responded at the time of publication.
