By Sarah Mervosh
The Dallas Morning News
Ex-Baylor football coach Art Briles and other former athletic officials tried to keep misconduct by football players under the radar, a new court filing alleged Thursday, a day after the disgraced coach abruptly dropped his libel suit against school officials.
The filing, which came in response to a lawsuit by a former assistant athletic director, includes damning texts between Briles and other athletics officials as they dealt with multiple allegations against football players between 2011 and 2015.
When a female student-athlete reported that a football player had brandished a gun at her, the response said, Briles texted an assistant coach: “what a fool — she reporting to authorities.”
In another case, where a masseuse asked the team to discipline a player who reportedly exposed himself and asked for favors during a massage, the paperwork said Briles’ first response was, “What kind of discipline … She a stripper?”
The filing also laid out the athletic department’s response to allegations of gang rape by football players, including when a student-athlete told her coach that five football players had raped her at an off-campus party. Then-Athletics Director Ian McCaw took a list of names to Briles, who said, “Those are some bad dudes. Why was she around those guys?” He also suggested the woman tell the police, according to the filing.
Defense lawyers accuse Briles of creating an atmosphere that allowed wrongdoing by players — from underage drinking to sexual assault — to go unnoticed. “The football program was a black hole into which reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault, domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared,” the court filing said.
The paperwork was filed on behalf of several Baylor officials, including school regents and the interim university president, who were sued for libel by former assistant athletic director for football operations Colin Shillinglaw this week.
The narrative offered the most detailed account yet of how Baylor officials responded to the sexual assault scandal that has rocked the school.
Baylor officials were reluctant to catalog their response to the scandal for fear of violating the privacy of survivors, their attorney said. But he said an onslaught of lawsuits and public pressure from major university donors compelled them to release more information.
“They were shocked and hurt and stunned as regents of the university,” attorney Rusty Hardin of Houston said of the sexual assault scandal. “But they were also fathers whose daughters may be Baylor students … They have been driven by point one, by the first moment, to make sure they did what was right.”
Briles’ attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.
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