Baylor University sexual assault scandal


The Baylor University sexual assault scandal was the result of numerous allegations of and convictions for sexual and non-sexual assaults committed by students, mostly Baylor Bears football players, at Baylor University between the years 2011 and 2016. In 2016, Baylor's football team came under fire when it was revealed university officials had failed to take action regarding the alleged rapes and other assaults. The scandal led to the ouster of head football coach Art Briles, the demotion and eventual resignation of Baylor University President Ken Starr, the resignation of Athletic Director Ian McCaw, and the firing of two others connected with the football program. It also led to the resignation of the Title IX Coordinator, Patty Crawford. Plaintiff attorney Jim Dunnam stated the University implemented a ″concerted strategy to get the public to believe this is entirely and only a football-related problem"
Tevin Elliot, a Baylor linebacker in 2012, was sentenced on January 23, 2014, to 20 years in prison and fined US $10,000 for each of his two sexual assaults committed against a Baylor student in 2012. Sam Ukwuachu, a football defensive end of Baylor, was indicted on June 25, 2014, on two counts of sexual assault against a female Baylor student-athlete and was found guilty of sexual assault by a Texas court on August 21, 2015. That conviction was later overturned, granting Ukwuachu a new trial, but was reinstated in 2018 and again reversed in July 2019. Jacob Anderson, 20-year-old Phi Delta Theta president, was charged with sexual assault on March 3, 2016, following a fraternity party. Anderson pleaded no contest to a charge of unlawful restraint as part of a deal which included mandatory counseling, a $400 fine, and three years of probation. Shawn Oakman, a former Baylor All-American defensive end, was arrested on April 13, 2016, on charges of sexual assault against a female student. In February 2019, Oakman was found not guilty of the charges against him.

Background

In September 2015, following the conviction of former players Sam Ukwuachu and Tevin Elliot of sexual assault, in addition, with allegations against other players, the school commissioned law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP to conduct an independent external investigation regarding the university's handling of sexual violence. Also, The woman said she was raped twice at a party. In April 2016, former player Shawn Oakman was arrested on sexual assault charges as well. Head coach Art Briles was terminated on May 26, 2016 following the presentation of Pepper Hamilton's report. University President Ken Starr and Athletic Director Ian McCaw also resigned. Jim Grobe, a former Wake Forest head coach and former chairman of the AFCA Ethics Committee was hired on an interim basis.
Following the threat of a lawsuit by Briles for wrongful termination, Baylor provided an out-of-court settlement. Briles and Baylor are co-defendants in a lawsuit filed by a woman allegedly sexually assaulted by a football player. After Briles's departure, many players announced it would best for them to transfer including Jarrett Stidham. Seven members of the 2016 recruiting class requested to be released from their National Letter of Intent, and six of the then-seven commits in the 2017 recruiting class decommitted.

Incidents and trials

Tevin Elliot

was signed from Mount Pleasant High School in 2009 and joined the Baylor football team as a redshirt. At one point in 2011, Elliot was suspended for academic misconduct, but Starr lifted the suspension. Before being indicted on two separate counts of sexual assault, Elliot had allegedly assaulted three other women who kept it a secret and charges were never filed. Tevin Elliot assaulted a former Baylor student twice in the same night at a party that occurred April 15, 2012. According to testimony given during the trial, she was the fifth person to be assaulted by Elliot. During the trial, two of the other students assaulted by Elliot detailed their sexual assaults that took place on October 31, 2009, the previous three sexual charges against Elliot were never filed.
Prosecutors Hilary LaBorde and Robert Moody revealed to jurors that five women reported having been sexually assaulted by Elliot; the fifth woman was not scheduled to testify. On January 16, 2014, the jury indicted Elliot on two separate counts of sexual assault, allegedly involving two 18-year-old women on the same night in April 2012. A week later, on January 23, 2014, Elliot was found guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison with a fine of $10,000 for each of his two sexual assaults. The jury had found him guilty in less than an hour that day and deliberated his punishment for two hours. Sexual assault charges for the first three victims were never filed and the victims were never interviewed. The third victim did press charges and Elliot was indicted on three counts of sexual assault, but only two counts were part of his trial. After his arrest, Elliot was suspended from Baylor's football program and the university on the claim of violating student and team policies. He later finished his degree at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

Sam Ukwuachu

In 2013, Sam Ukwuachu transferred to Baylor after requesting to be released from Boise State, to be closer to home. Citing his depression and erratic behavior, the Boise State football program dismissed Ukwuachu.
It is widely rumored that Ukwuachu was dismissed from the Boise State football team due to domestic violence or sexual assault events, claims reported by Texas Monthly, both of which are denied by Boise State.
On the night of October 19, 2013, Baylor was celebrating its Homecoming Weekend. The Bears football team had just beaten Iowa State, 71–7. Ukwuachu, who was ineligible to play the 2013 season because of NCAA rules regarding transfer students, was celebrating with the rest of the team nonetheless, as was an 18-year-old, Jane Doe, who went to a party at Waco's downtown convention center, where many of her fellow students were celebrating. Ukwuachu and Doe were friendly, and shortly before two in the morning, Ukwuachu texted Doe, who replied to his message by saying that she would call him. During her testimony, Doe said that she had called him moments later and agreed to go with him to get something to eat or to go to another party—but after he picked her up that night, he turned the wrong way out of her apartment complex and drove her to his apartment instead. Doe described Ukwuachu as extremely agitated, getting angry with his dog and with a friend on the phone, who was in from out of town. After she resisted his initial advances, Doe testified, he began to grab her. "He was using all of his strength to pull up my dress and do stuff to me", she said. "He had me on my stomach on the bed, and he was on top of me." Doe testified that he pulled her dress up, pulled her underwear to the side, and forced her legs open with his toes, her head pressed between his bed and his desk, then forced himself inside of her. Doe was a virgin at the time. Texts between Ukwuachu and Doe from earlier in the week, before the encounter, were also revealed to the jury during trial. In those messages, Doe is unambiguous that she is not interested in a physical or romantic relationship with Ukwuachu; he sent her messages like “we have unfinished business", in reference to a previous encounter, which she characterized as Ukwuachu trying to put "moves" on her. She replied "I don’t think we need finish any business" and "let's just chill." The night at his apartment, she testified, “I was screaming stop and no.” According to her testimony, after he finished, he told her "This isn’t rape", asked her if she was going to call the police, and left her to find a ride. Two of Doe's friends arrived in the middle of the night to pick her up, at which point she told them that Ukwuachu had raped her. The next day, Doe went to the hospital and was subject to a sexual assault nurse examination, which found vaginal injuries including redness, bleeding, and friction injuries.
The police decided not to make an arrest, but prosecutors brought the case before a grand jury. On June 25, 2014, the grand jury brought an indictment against Ukwuachu for two counts of sexual assault. The true bill of indictment does not provide any details about what happened and gave zero notice to the media. On August 7, two days after the case was exposed to the public, a judge granted a gag order on everyone involved in the case that prohibited the release of information to the media. The trial began with the jury selection in Texas on August 17, 2015. There are no publicly available details or accounts of how the night in question unfolded. There is no timeline of how the police handled it, or how the university responded, or any discussion of Baylor's investigation.
Ukwuachu was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 180 days in jail, 10 years' felony probation, 400 hours of community service, and had to register as a sex offender. In March 2017, Waco's 10th Court of Appeals overturned Ukwuachu's conviction and ordered a new trial based on evidence they felt shouldn't have been suppressed. This evidence indicated the victim sent text messages indicating she wanted to have sex with Ukwuachu. In a unanimous decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reinstated the conviction. They ruled that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it did not allow into evidence text messages the woman sent to her friend while the woman and Ukwuachu were traveling to his apartment on the night of the reported assault and found the evidence "harmless".
On July 11, 2019, the 10th Court of Appeals reversed and remanded Sam Ukwuachu’s 2015 sexual assault conviction after stating that prosecutors used false testimony and violated the persons due process rights. In the legal findings it was stated that there is a “reasonable likelihood that the false impression affected the judgment of the jury.”

Shawn Oakman

In February 2012, Shawn Oakman was dismissed from the Penn State Nittany Lions football team for a violation of team rules for stealing a sandwich and, while demanding the return of his identification card, for grabbing the wrist of the clerk who took it. In 2013, Oakman had been previously accused of assaulting an ex-girlfriend but no charges were pressed, which led to Oakman not being disciplined by Baylor. It is unclear if Baylor knew of the incident.
A woman reported an assault that happened early Sunday morning of April 3, 2016, according to a Waco police affidavit. The woman told police she met Oakman at a nightclub and walked with him to his apartment, where she said Oakman forcibly removed her clothing and sexually assaulted her. The Associated Press generally does not identify alleged sexual assault victims. The woman told police she was able to leave the apartment after she was assaulted. The affidavit says the woman was "treated for her injuries" at a medical center, where a sexual assault examination was performed. Oakman was freed on $25,000 bond after his arrest.
On July 20, 2016, Oakman was indicted by a grand jury on charges of second-degree felony sexual assault. Police arrested Oakman in April after a Baylor graduate student accused him of sexually assaulting her in his apartment and was later freed on a $25,000 bond after his arrest. Oakman, once considered a potential second- or third-round pick in the 2016 NFL draft, went undrafted after his arrest. The trial was initially slated for December 2018. However, it didn't begin until February 26 of the following year.
On February 28, 2019, Oakman was found not guilty of sexual assault.

Aftermath

In May 2016, Baylor terminated the contract of longtime head football coach Art Briles over the scandal. Then, Baylor University President Ken Starr resigned due to the scandal.
The Title IX Coordinator Patty Crawford resigned after alleging that Baylor University did not allow her to do her job properly. She claimed that the more she pushed to help the victims, the more resistance she felt from the board of advisors. She insisted that the board was full of “a group of seniors that made sure that they were protecting the brand... instead of our students”, contradicting earlier statements that she had made in an August interview. In that interview, Crawford had said that the university had an “excellent board that listens and is very supportive”, that she had a “good partnership” with the athletics department and an "excellent board that listens and is very supportive, specifically the committee that I report to. One step at a time, we’re building it."
Crawford also mentioned that she decided to resign because she did not want to be a part of the problem, rather, part of the solution to seeking justice for Jane Doe. It is also reported that upon her exit Crawford demanded 1 million dollars as well as book and movie rights from Baylor University, demands viewed by Baylor's Counsel as "troubling".
In a 2017 lawsuit, victims suing the university alleged that from 2011 to 2014 at least 31 football players committed at least 52 rapes. In March 2017, the Texas Ranger Division confirmed that it is investigating the university. On March 7, 2017, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman refused to dismiss a lawsuit by victims against the university.
As early as 2014, KWTX-TV claimed, "the football team may have only played a very minor role in any documented sexual assaults on Baylor students." In a 2016 story, the television station stated, "a closer review of reveals years of failures by University officials to fully adopt federal laws and guidelines governing student safety″.

Timeline

2012