COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Woman in Tumpkin case sues CU coach, athletic director, chancellor and president.
Fine claims assault, battery and civil conspiracy; the school denies the allegations.
The woman whose accusation that a University of Colorado football coach extensively abused her led to an investigation of officials’ failure to report the allegation on Wednesday sued CU president Bruce Benson, head coach Mike MacIntyre and two others campus leaders.
Pamela Fine, in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, is alleging assault, battery, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress against former assistant coach Joe Tumpkin.
Fine also is claiming negligence and civil conspiracy against Benson, MacIntyre, athletic director Rick George and Chancellor Phil DiStefano.
“This is no longer about protecting the man who abused me and the powerful men who decided not to do what they were morally, contractually and legally required to do,” Fine said in a statement provided by her attorney.
“I am no longer protecting the men who silence victims in the name of winning football games.”
CU denies the allegations made in the lawsuit.
“The claims in the lawsuit are not well-founded factually or legally, and we will defend our employees aggressively,” CU spokesman Ken McConnellogue said.
An outside investigation that produced a lengthy report found that Fine told to MacIntyre on Dec. 9 that she had been violently abused for the past two years by his subordinate, Tumpkin.
MacIntyre informed George about the allegations, and George then informed the chancellor.
The lawsuit alleges that around Dec. 12 or 13, MacIntyre gave Tumpkin the contact information for Jon Banashek, “a university booster and an attorney who routinely represents university student-athletes in legal matters.”
According to the lawsuit, Banashek, in addition to engaging with Tumpkin as legal counsel, phoned Fine directly, offered her money and asked her to let him know if she decided to report Tumpkin’s abuse to police.
Fine left a voicemail for MacIntyre on Dec. 15 saying she was taking the allegations to the police and applying for a restraining order.
MacIntyre and George still chose Tumpkin to call defensive plays in the Buffs’ appearance at the Alamo Bowl in late December.
Tumpkin was suspended Jan. 6 and asked to resign Jan. 27. On Feb. 1, he was arrested and charged with five felony counts of second-degree assault. That case is pending.
“Tumpkin’s severance included two months’ pay and additional sal-
ary for coaching in the university’s Alamo Bowl game,” according to the lawsuit.
DiStefano said he chose not to report the domestic abuse allegations to CU’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance because he didn’t believe he had to, based on university policy.
“That ‘excuse’ is either preposterous or a blatant lie, because DiStefano, who has more than 40 years of experience at the university, supervised the university’s 2014 audit of Title IX compliance; supervised the creation of new policies for following the federal gender-equity law; hired a new head for the OIEC; and, as the chancellor of the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision, has sufficient knowledge and experience to take a leading role in working to develop a ‘uniform policy’ for dealing with recruits and transfers with a history of sexual violence,” Fine’s attorney wrote in the lawsuit.
Benson and CU’s Board of Regents decided to punish the three senior administration officials with a 10day suspension for DiStefano and $100,000 fines to be paid to a domestic-violence organization by George and MacIntyre.
Benson initially told the Daily Camera his personal relationships with the three CU officials helped determine their punishments, but he walked that claim back the next day.
“Initially, our client had no intention of pursuing a lawsuit against these people,” Fine’s lawyer, Peter Ginsberg, said in a statement. “Only when it became clear to her that the university had no intention of taking the matter seriously and that the criminal justice system had become mired in inactivity for inexplicable reasons, she realized she had to rely on herself to right the wrong she has endured and to do her best to make sure no one else would endure such abuse again.”
The criminal case against Tumpkin stalled in June as attorneys argued over how much access Tumpkin’s defense team should have to Fine’s cellphone records. A hearing was canceled, and proceedings could be held up for months as the matter goes to the Colorado Supreme Court.
In the lawsuit, Ginsberg also recounts CU’s history with sexual-based harassment and assault, in the athletic department and outside. The lawsuit mentions five examples of “mishandling and cover-up incidents involving sexual assaults” within the athletic department.
The high-profile 2001 sexual-assault case involving victims Lisa Simpson and Anne Gilmore, in which CU settled for $2.85 million, was mentioned, with the observation that DiStefano was CU provost during this time.
The lawsuit also references a case in which former CU assistant football coach Vance Joseph, now head coach of the Denver Broncos, was accused of sexually assaulting two female trainers in 2003. The allegations were investigated by the state task force looking into the recruiting scandal that rocked CU in the early 2000s.
In January, Joseph denied the sexual assault allegations made against him more than a decade ago.
The lawsuit lists 10 other examples of “sex-based harassment and assault” outside of the athletic department, including the 2013 Title IX grievance CU student Sarah Gilchriese filed against CU for its handling of her alleged sexual assault, which sparked a federal investigation.
The lawsuit provided these examples as a “disturbing history” that “plagued” the university.
Fine is seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages.