The crisis enveloping Baylor after its admission of mishandling reports of sexual violence continued to grow Tuesday with new allegations of indifference by athletic department officials and interference by university leadership.
In a 60 Minutes Sports on Showtime story that aired Tuesday night, former Title IX coordinator Patty Crawford explained in more detail the problems she faced from university administrators, particularly her boss, senior vice president and CFO Reagan Ramsower.
And a former Baylor coach detailed the response she got from the athletic department when she relayed women’s reports of sexual assault.
“There were a lot of people like me at the university that did not want these things happening and were fighting for it,” Crawford told Armen Keteyian, “but they didn’t have the power or the authority and they were not heard. This is institutional. What drives culture? It’s the top.”
A 13-page Baylor “findings of fact” summary compiled from an investigation by Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton and released in May found the school failed to comply with Title IX in addressing reports of sexual assault, faulting the culture of the school broadly and the football program specifically neglecting to help victims and for discouraging some from reporting their assaults.
As a result, football coach Art Briles was fired. President Ken Starr was demoted and athletic director Ian McCaw was put on probation. Both resigned.
Crawford resigned in early October, saying on CBS This Morning that Baylor officials undermined her efforts to investigate sexual assault complaints and that Baylor was more concerned with its brand than protecting students.
She was hired in November 2014 to help Baylor make progress under Title IX, but she told 60 Minutes Sports that it took nine months just to get an adequate policy in place.
Crawford was not the only one to claim interference by administrators.
LaPrise Williams, a former Baylor acrobatics and tumbling coach, told the program that 30 women came forward to her with their stories of assault in 2013 after she shared her own story of being sexually molested in her youth.
She said she reported the women’s accounts to the athletic department but was told they were not her problem.
Dolores Lozano, who filed a Title IX lawsuit against Baylor last month, told Williams that she was being abused by her boyfriend, who was a football player. Another woman reported a rape by a Baylor football player, of which she had a copy of a video of it.
Rather than report to police, that woman went to the counseling center, Williams said. There she was asked about what she was wearing and if she was drinking.
“And she was really made to feel like she had done something wrong,” Williams told 60 Minutes Sports.
Williams believes supporting victims of sexual assault contributed to her being pushed out in 2014.
The program obtained a copy of an affidavit from Jim Barnes, the winningest volleyball coach in the school’s history. In it, Barnes reported that one of his player was sexually assaulted by Baylor football players and stated he informed McCaw.
Barnes was fired after two losing seasons. Baylor told 60 Minutes Sports that it did not retaliate against coaches for reporting alleged assaults.
Crawford detailed her own troubles getting information and changing the culture at Baylor.
She told Keteyian that she had a hard time getting access to reports from Baylor and Waco police.
Ramsower said he had no knowledge of any criminal complaints or allegations of sexual assault although he is responsible for overseeing the police department.
Ramsower said the chief of police is no longer employed at Baylor.
Crawford recalled a September 2015 emergency meeting in which she was asked to detail alleged assaults by athletes. That meeting came after football player Sam Ukwuachu was convicted in August 2015 of assaulting a Baylor soccer player two years earlier.
Crawford told 60 Minutes Sports that Ramsower undermined what she said in the meeting, asserting that the women alleging the assaults had mental illness and there were no facts to support the allegations. Ramsower denied saying that.
Crawford also told 60 Minutes Sports that in July she wrote a 16-page memo to Ramsower, in part warning that Baylor was moving in a “non-compliant trajectory” regarding Title IX.
According to Crawford, Ramsower came to her office the next day to yell at her and tell her not to put anything in writing to him again.
Ramsower said he did not say that.
Questioned by Keteyian as to whether Ramsower should be held responsible, interim president David Garland said, “We have made enormous strides in this area primarily through the leadership of Dr. Ramsower.”
Garland previously told USA TODAY Sports that he found Crawford’s assertions “unfair and also untrue.”
A crisis communications firm with expertise in Title IX hired by Baylor provided 60 Minutes Sports with “a small selection of emails, memos and texts” in which Crawford praised superiors and did not express dissatisfaction with her job.
Crawford told the program that she was trying to work within the system.
Asked about Baylor’s questions about her emotional state, Crawford said, “I think it’s really sad that the only way Baylor can try to discredit what I’ve said is to discredit my mental health. I think it’s sad, like, I’m not surprised – because what I’ve said is the truth. And it’s hard to discredit the truth.”
Though the program focused on assaults by football players, Crawford made clear the problem extended beyond that.
Asked how many reports of sexual assault or violence she received in the nearly two years she worked at Baylor, Crawford said, “Hundreds.”
