Baylor Sexual Assault Controversy

WacoTrib
May 25, 2016

http://www.wacotrib.com/sports/baylor/football/timeline-baylor-sexual-assault-controversy/article_abf21ab8-2267-51bf-84d8-6268f4222af0.html

[with video]

September 2003: Ian McCaw was hired as Baylor University’s new athletic director — replacing Tom Stanton, who resigned a month before — to help Baylor recover from an unprecedented scandal that included the charge of murder against a former player for shooting a teammate, but also the tape-recorded plot of Baylor’s ex-head basketball coach, Dave Bliss, trying to cover-up major NCAA infractions with a story that the murdered player had been a drug dealer.

Nov. 28, 2007: Art Briles was named new Baylor football coach.

2009: Tevin Elliott came to Baylor from Mount Pleasant. The former Baylor football player was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine in January 2014 for sexually assaulting a former Baylor student in 2012.

Feb. 15, 2010: Ken Starr was formally named Baylor’s 14th president.

June 1, 2010: Ken Starr took the reins as Baylor’s president, taking over for interim president David Garland.

June 7, 2010: Ken Starr penned a letter in the Tribune-Herald about possible realignment of the Big 12 Conference and, with it, the separation of Baylor from its fellow Texas universities in the Big 12.

May 9, 2011: Robert “Rob” David Cole, a Baylor student, was charged in the sexual assault of a fellow student. Police said Cole assaulted a woman while the two were attending a party in a South Waco apartment in January 2011.

2012: Elliott, the former Baylor defensive end from Mount Pleasant, sexually assaulted former Baylor student Jasmin Hernandez at a party at a Waco apartment complex in 2012. He later was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $10,000 in 2014 after his conviction on two counts of sexually assault.

July 2012: Shawn Oakman, a 6-foot-9, 265-pound defensive lineman, transferred from Penn State to Baylor.

Jan. 10, 2013: According to the incident report posted on Twitter by Alex Dunlap of RosterWatch.com, and confirmed by Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton to media to be authentic, former Baylor defensive end Shawn Oakman physically assaulted a woman.

April, 18, 2013: Former players Tre’Von Armstead and Myke Chatman were named by Waco police in an incident report involving sexual assault, but they were never charged. Armstead was removed from the football program in September 2015, and the university expelled him in February. Chatman transferred to Sam Houston State University.

May 7, 2013: Boise State announced that Sam Ukwuachu was dismissed from the team for an unspecified violation of team policy.

June 2013: Sam Ukwuachu transferred to Baylor after playing at Boise State for two seasons.

September 2013: Baylor President Ken Starr and his wife, Alice, lobbied for a Virginia school administrator who admitted to molesting five children under the age of 14 to be sentenced to community service rather than jail time. Instead, a judge sentenced the man to 43 years in prison for the abuse.

October 2013: Baylor football player Sam Ukwuachu — who was convicted on Aug. 20, 2015 — sexually assaulted a now-former soccer player at the university.

Jan. 23, 2014: Former Baylor football player Tevin Elliott was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine on each of two counts of sexually assaulting a former Baylor student in 2012.

June 2014: Sam Ukwuachu was indicted.

November 2014: Patty Crawford became Baylor’s first full-time Title IX coordinator.

Aug. 20, 2015: Sam Ukwuachu, a former freshman All-American at Boise State University before transferring to play football at Baylor, was convicted of sexually assaulting a former Baylor soccer player in 2013.

Aug. 21, 2015: Baylor President Ken Starr issued a statement on “our stance against sexual violence” and tapped Baylor law professor Jeremy Counseller to conduct an internal inquiry into how Baylor handled the allegations against Ukwuachu.

Aug. 28, 2015: Baylor law professor Jeremy Counseller completed an internal inquiry into how Baylor handled the allegations.

Aug. 29, 2015: Waco police responded to a South Waco home, where a former Baylor men’s tennis player was named as the lone suspect in a sexual assault case. The player, who was a member of the tennis team when the alleged incident was reported to police, did not compete in fall 2015 or spring matches in 2016.

Sept. 2, 2015: Baylor hired Pepper Hamilton LLP attorneys Gina Smith and Leslie Gomez to conduct a independent external investigation into how the university handles cases of alleged sexual violence.

Sept. 4, 2015: Shawn Oakman and Orion Stewart, two of the top defensive players on Baylor’s reigning Big 12 Conference championship team, missed the team’s opener against SMU because of violations of team rules.

Sept. 18, 2015: Former Baylor player Tre’Von Armstead was dismissed from the team for an “unspecified team rules violation.” He played in the 2015 season opener against SMU on Sept. 4 and was held out of the second game against Lamar on Sept. 12 for an unspecified reason.

Jan. 1, 2016: The victim in the sexual assault trial of former Baylor football player Sam Ukwuachu reached a settlement agreement with the school.

February 2016: Former All-Big 12 tight end Tre’Von Armstead was expelled from Baylor, and his appeal of his expulsion was denied.

Feb. 4, 2016: Stefanie Mundhenk, a 2015 Baylor gradute, posted a lengthy account online alleging that she was raped twice in one night by another student in March 2015. She said university officials, including Ken Starr himself, failed to take action against the accused student and allowed him to work in an office housing her academic program. “Their actions don’t match up to what they said they could provide me with as a victim,” Mundhenk told the Tribune-Herald. Pointing to a lack of urgency from an understaffed team handling the case, she said that “the entity that was supposed to care didn’t, and when that happens you start to believe your story doesn’t matter. I believed it mattered to me because it changed my life.”

Feb. 8, 2016: More than 200 Baylor students, faculty, staff and alumni stood outside the home of President Ken Starr to express their frustration with how the university has handled sexual assault allegations in recent years.

Feb. 9, 2016: The Tribune-Herald requested on Feb. 9 reports received by the Baylor University Police Department of sexual assaults and other improper sexual conduct during the past 20 years. Per request, the Tribune-Herald agreed to narrow the request by five years, seeking sexual assault reports from Baylor police for the past 15 years.

Feb. 11, 2016: Another Baylor student, junior Cailin Ballard, came forward to share the story of her disappointment with the school’s handling of her sexual assault report, saying she felt blamed by the university’s police department when she reported the October 2013 sexual assault.

Feb. 23, 2016: About 60 people attended a prayer service to support sexual assault survivors at Baylor’s Elliston Chapel. President Ken Starr made a brief appearance beforehand.

March 2, 2016: A former president of Phi Delta Theta fraternity at Baylor, Jacob Walter Anderson, was arrested on a sexual assault charge for allegedly forcing himself on a woman outside of a fraternity party at a house in the 2600 block of South Third Street on Feb. 21, 2016.

March 9, 2016: In the wake of a Baylor fraternity president being charged with sexual assault, the university Greek Life staff sent an email to elected leaders of Greek organizations instructing them not to speak with the media about the situation.

March 29, 2016: The fourth in a four-part prayer service for sexual assault survivors was held at Baylor’s Elliston Chapel.

March 30, 2016: Jasmin Hernandez filed a Title IX lawsuit against Baylor, head football coach Art Briles and Athletics Director Ian McCaw seeking unspecified damages. The former Baylor student twice was sexually assaulted by former Baylor football player Tevin Elliott and alleges school officials knew of previous allegations against Elliott and failed to take proper action to protect other students.

April 13, 2016: Waco police arrested former Baylor football player Shawn Oakman on charges he sexually assaulted a fellow student after leaving a Waco nightclub with her early April 3.

May 11, 2016: Former president of Phi Delta Theta fraternity at Baylor University, Jacob Walter Anderson, was indicted on four counts of sexual assault in an alleged incident in February at a fraternity party.

May 13, 2016: Baylor regents received a “comprehensive briefing from Pepper Hamilton LLP,” the school said in a press release after the meeting. The briefing covered the Philadelphia-based law firm’s findings regarding Baylor’s response to reports of sexual and interpersonal violence. But Baylor officials declined to publicly release the long-awaited report. During the meeting, Baylor officials barred two Tribune-Herald reporters from the building where the regents met — the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative, which received public funds for its renovation in recent years, including funds from McLennan County and the cities of Waco and Bellmead.

May 19, 2016: Texas Attorney General ruled Baylor can withhold certain aspects of police reports that involve alleged student privacy issues but must release some information because a new law makes law enforcement records from private universities’ police departments subject to public information laws.

May 24, 2016: An Austin blogger, citing anonymous sources, reported President Ken Starr was fired. Outgoing Baylor board of regents Chairman Richard Willis told the Tribune-Herald that Starr was still president.