The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lions missed coach’s arrest, indictment
Charges in 1996 sexual assault case were dropped.
Joe Banner ran two coaching searches as president of the Philadelphia Eagles, and two more as CEO of the Cleveland Browns.
And while most people can’t fathom how the Detroit Lions failed to uncover Matt Patricia’s 1996 arrest during their monthlong coaching search, Banner had an entirely different response when he stumbled across the news Thursday morning on Twitter.
“My reaction when I saw it was, ‘Oh my God, this could have happened to me,’ ” Banner said. “This could have happened to almost anybody.”
Patricia has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in the 22-year-old case, saying Thursday, “I was innocent then and I am innocent now.” He and a friend were charged with one count of aggravated sexual assault during a spring break trip to South Padre Island, Texas. The two were indicted by a grand jury in August 1996, and the case was dismissed in January 1997 when the accuser declined to testify.
While the facts of the case remain unclear — Patricia wouldn’t provide details of the night in question on Thursday, and attempts by the Free Press to reach the woman involved have been unsuccessful — the Lions have found themselves in a minefield made more dangerous by a vetting process apparently hamstrung by state law.
The Lions said in a statement that Patricia “was the subject of a standard pre-employment background check which did not disclose” his arrest, and Banner and other current and former league executives who’ve been involved in similar searches in the past said those checks are rarely, if ever, handled by the executives who make the actual hiring decisions.
“In our instances, we’re kind of depending on the depth to which the security guy went to feel comfortable that there was nothing that we needed to know,” Banner said. “And if either it was really hidden or he wasn’t super thorough, I could see how this could happen.”
The Lions use an employment background screening company that conducts background checks on all hires, and that firm produced a report on Patricia during the hiring process that did not include any reference to his Texas arrest. It’s unclear what, if any, information the firm uncovered about the case while vetting Patricia, but when the Lions went back to examine why they only recently learned about the incident, they discovered that Massachusetts employment law prevents the screening company from providing, or them from using as part of their employment decision, information about an arrest, indictment or conviction more than seven years old.
Because Patricia was a resident of Massachusetts at the time of his hiring, the Lions were subject to those laws as well as other local and federal regulations.
“(We) always (do) the right thing in our employment practices, including background checks, interview questions, employment practices at all levels, whether it’s a player, coach or executive,” Lions President Rod Wood said Friday. “I understand why people might be frustrated that we didn’t know this and maybe didn’t do the wrong thing to learn about it. But I’d rather be on the side of always doing the right thing and if there’s an arrow to be taken for doing the right thing, I’ll take it 100 times over doing the wrong thing.”
Wood said the Lions have received information from background checks that led them to rescind other job offers as recently as the last few weeks.
“So it’s not as if we receive something that we don’t like, we ignore it,” Wood said. “We act on it.”
NFL teams can use the league’s security arm to perform background checks on coaching and other hires, though a sampling of former team executives shows that’s rarely the case. Banner said his teams would rely on in-house security personnel to vet a small group of candidates once their coaching searches were underway.
The Lions, meanwhile, have employed a mix of local law enforcement officials, in-house personnel and outside firms to run background checks on everyone from head coaches to general managers to draft prospects and even summer interns.
Patricia, in his news conference Thursday, stressed that “there was never any situation in the Lions interview where I did not disclose the truth.” But neither he nor the Lions would reveal what questions were asked in his two January interviews.
The Lions, though they left enough wiggle room in their statement to change course should more facts come to light, gave Patricia a strong show of support Thursday when general manager Bob Quinn, Wood and owner Martha Firestone Ford attended his brief news conference.
“Based upon everything we have learned, we believe and have accepted Coach Patricia’s explanation and we will continue to support him,” the statement read. “We will continue to work with our players and the NFL to further awareness of and protections for those individuals who are the victims of sexual assault or violence.”