More sexual assault allegations against athletes surface

Baylor officials, including coaches, knew of several incidents of sexual assault, domestic violence and other acts of violence involving the school’s football players, and the Waco police tried to hide one report, ESPN reported Wednesday.

Documents obtained by ESPN’s investigative program “Outside the Lines” detail previously unreported allegations involving football players dating back to 2011. Most players did not miss any playing time for disciplinary reasons, the report said.

The school has been under scrutiny for how it has handled cases of sexual assaults involving athletes. Baylor hired the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton last fall to review the school’s past treatment of sexual assault claims. The review has not yet been completed, but Baylor’s board of regents was given a preliminary update on the findings Friday.

A 2011 incident involving three football players and an off-campus assault was pulled from the Waco police computer system, “so that only persons who had a reason to inquire about the report would be able to access it,” according to documents obtained by ESPN.

The police report from the incident was locked in a Waco Police Department office after an officer had discussed it with Baylor police, ESPN reported. Waco police noted in the report that a Baylor officer had provided some information about the football players and their phone numbers and had contacted them to say the school was aware of the incident and that “there were supposed to be some administrative level meetings taking place concerning it, given that it was a university-approved function.”

Waco police spokesman Patrick Swanton told ESPN that detectives can pull certain cases from public view for privacy concerns.

“Was this done specifically because this was a Baylor case and because it involved Baylor football players? I can’t tell you that,” he said, adding that Waco police do not have a policy to contact Baylor officials when they suspect a student of involvement in a crime; he said there are times when it is appropriate, but doing so does not yield special treatment.

“If you break the law and we have probable cause to arrest you, it doesn’t matter if you’re a football player,” Swanton said. “We’re not going to give you leeway.”

The ESPN report also brought into question how the Waco police handled another case. A sexual assault allegation against former Baylor All-American safety Ahmad Dixon has remained in Waco police’s open-case status for four years, which, under Texas open records laws, effectively shields the case’s details from public view. The player and the alleged victim deny any assault took place.

In one of the recently discovered cases, an alleged victim who was a Baylor student told “Outside the Lines” that she notified football team chaplain Wes Yeary about what she had reported to Waco police in April 2014: that her boyfriend, a Bears football player, had physically assaulted her on two occasions. The woman said Baylor football coach Art Briles and university president Ken Starr were also told of her allegations. The woman told “Outside the Lines” that neither Briles nor the university disciplined her ex-boyfriend.

The woman said she didn’t press criminal charges because she was about to graduate and didn’t think the school would punish him.

“I’d seen other girls go through it, and nothing ever happened to the football players,” she said. “It’s mind-boggling to see it continue to happen. I can’t understand why. I think as long as they’re catching footballs and scoring touchdowns, the school won’t do anything.”