More details have surfaced regarding the sexual assault scandal that has rocked Baylor, and it’s only getting worse.
Baylor regents told The Wall Street Journal that 17 women reported sexual or domestic assaults involving 19 football players, including four alleged gang rapes, since 2011.
One regent called the details in Pepper Hamilton’s report “horrifying and painful.”
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“There was a cultural issue there that was putting winning football games above everything else, including our values,” said J. Cary Gray, a member of the Baylor board of regents. “We did not have a caring community when it came to these women who reported that they were assaulted. And that is not OK.”
Two former Baylor football players have been convicted of sexual assault in the past four years and the university is facing Tittle IX lawsuits from several former students that accuse it of not taking their sexual assault claims seriously enough.
One of the four gang rapes reported involved a female student-athlete. The victim went to her coach and said she was afraid to go to the police. That coach then went to now-fired football coach Art Briles, who reportedly said he hoped the victim talked to law enforcement. However, Briles allegedly never alerted the school’s judicial-affairs office or the Title IX office.
Baylor said football players were involved in 10.4 percent of Title IX-reported incidents in the four-year period ending in 2014-15.
“Football is just a fraction, but it is a bad fraction,” Gray said.