Art Briles — who was ousted last month as Baylor’s football coach after revelations that the program responded to sexual assault accusations against players with indifference or hostility toward alleged victims — blasted the university Thursday, accusing it of wrongful termination and indicating that he has no interest in settling a lawsuit filed by a woman who was sexually assaulted by a football player.
Briles’s attorney filed a motion to that effect in an Austin court and also asked that a judge assign him new counsel. Ernest Cannon, his personal attorney, said Baylor was using Briles as a scapegoat for what an independent investigation determined were failings in how it handled accusations of sexual assault.
“The conclusion is inescapable that the motive of Baylor and the Board of Regents was to use its head football coach and the Baylor athletic department as a camouflage to disguise and distract from its own institutional failure to comply” with federal civil rights protections, Cannon wrote to Baylor’s attorneys (according to the Associated Press).
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Briles was fired, Ken Starr was out as president and later chancellor, and Ian McCaw resigned as athletic director in the wake of findings by the law firm Pepper Hamilton that depicted a football team allowed to run amok by university administrators and law-enforcement officials.
“We were horrified by the extent of these acts of sexual violence on our campus,” Richard Willis, the chair of the Board of Regents, said in May of the investigators’ findings. “This investigation revealed the University’s mishandling of reports in what should have been a supportive, responsive and caring environment for students. The depth to which these acts occurred shocked and outraged us.”
Briles and Baylor are co-defendants in a lawsuit filed in March by Jasmine Hernandez, and Baylor attorneys said last week that the defendants were seeking a settlement. (Although The Post does not identify the victims of sexual assault and rape, Hernandez is no longer seeking anonymity, according to her lawyers.) In her lawsuit, Hernandez claimed the university knew that former football player Tevin Elliott had a history of assaults, failed to protect her and other women, and ignored her when she sought help after being sexually assaulted. Elliott is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted on two counts of sexual assault.
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“Mr. Briles does not wish to settle the [lawsuit] and does not consent to any settlement in that case or any other case in which [Briles] is jointly named as a defendant and currently outstanding or filed in the future,” Cannon said in his letter, noting that there had been no opportunity to review evidence gathered by Baylor or Pepper Hamilton, the law firm that had investigated.
According to Cannon’s letter, mediation is scheduled for Friday.
Meanwhile, the Board of Regents has not yet made Briles’s termination official, and several high-profile donors have been floating his return after a one-year suspension as a trial balloon.
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