2 articles:
NBC news More than a Million Women Share Stories of Sexual Assaults, One Tweet at a Time
Sun, Oct 09 · It started with Kelly Oxford's appeal on Twitter. With the hashtag #NotOkay, Oxford posted several personal experiences of sexual assault and the floodgates opened. http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/more-than-a-million-women-share-stories-of-sexual- assaults-one-tweet-at-a-time-782370371807 Baylor 'set me up to fail'
Ex-Title IX leader says her duties pulled as rape cases mounted
By Andrea Zelinski and David Barron October 5, 2016
Photo: handout Patty Crawford, former Title IX coordinator at Baylor, said she built her office from scratch when she was hired two years ago.
The woman charged with ensuring that Baylor University follows federal laws protecting women on camps said she quit this week because senior university leadership undermined her authority and that she recently filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, alleging that the school retaliated against her.
In her grievance, Patty Crawford accuses Baylor of violating Title IX, which outlines steps universities must take to protect women against violence, harassment and discrimination. She said senior leadership took away her job duties and responsibilities, failed to assign her enough investigators and cut her out of the loop, said Rogge Dunn, her lawyer.
"Baylor was making decisions on Title IX issues without consulting Patty. They would take action against football players, and Patty wouldn't know about it until after it had happened," said Dunn. "She couldn't do her job. Patty complained and tried to work within the system."
The university countered that Baylor has the tools in place to prevent and react to sexual violence and has built a strong Title IX office to handle rape and sexual assault case. The school also accused Crawford of seeking a $1 million buyout and demanding book and movie rights during a mediation hearing.
"Significant staff, budget and support resources were provided throughout the year," said Lori Fogleman, a university spokeswoman, in a statement. "The Title IX Office and its staff have authority and autonomy to carry out their duties, serve the needs of students, engage others on campus for support and manage all responsibilities of the office."
Baylor came under intense scrutiny over the past year when two former football players were convicted of sexually assaulting students. An independent review released in May concluded university-wide failures in Baylor's handling of sexual assault cases, including actions by school administrators to discourage the reporting of complaints and the failure to take appropriate action by the football program and the athletic department.
The revelations led to the firing of head football coach Art Briles and the resignation of the athletic director, Ian McCaw. President Ken Starr was removed from his post, and he later resigned.
Public and private universities are required by Title IX to investigate allegations of sexual assault and violence and to provide support services and academic help to those who report assaults. The federal law was designed in part to help victims stay in school.
"I think Baylor set me up to fail from the beginning," Crawford said Wednesday on CBS This Morning. "I continued to work very hard and the harder I worked, the more resistance I saw from senior leadership. I increased reports by 700 percent over my time and it became clear that was not something the university wanted."
Crawford, who gave no other interviews, said that the university was more worried about protecting its "brand."
"Patty has made it clear that this is not just an athletics problem," said Dunn, her attorney. "This is a university-wide problem. She thinks that Baylor leadership feels that if it throws its athletics leadership on the bus and blames everything on them, problem solved, check the box and move on."
Dunn and Crawford have declined to identify who retaliated, pointing only to senior leadership. Dunn also declined to say whether Crawford and the university reached a settlement agreement but said she has voluntarily resigned from the university. In a separate statement, Baylor said it was, "surprised by the action taken by Patty Crawford given her public comments in August about the strong support she felt from across the University. Her demands in advance of mediation for one million dollars and book and movie rights were troubling."
Dunn declined to discuss Baylor's claim regarding negotiations, instead accusing the university of illegally disclosing discussions from closed mediation.
The battle between Crawford and the university is not uncommon as pressure mounts on both universities and the people charged with following federal law, said Scott Lewis, a partner with the NCHERM Group, the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, a law firm and consulting group that deals with more than 70 colleges.
"What you see now is Title IX coordinators now being imbued with lots of responsibility they always had technically, but are now being pressed even harder by Congress and the courts and [the Office for Civil Rights] to carry out," said Lewis. "When somebody is not given the resources to do their job or the authority to do their job and then criticized for not doing their job, and I'm not saying that is what happened in the Baylor case, it's hard for you or me or anybody to stay quiet."
North Richland Hills Republican state Sen. Kelly Hancock, a Baylor grad, said he sees the situation as little more than a dispute between an employee and her employer that will work itself out. "I tend to think the best advice is to take a long-term perspective," said Hancock. "It sounds like she's thrown out a lot of accusations, which apparently she has some emotions involved. I think the process will work itself out and we'll see where it goes." Baylor's Title IX coordinator resigns as school faces more questions
Rape scandal continues as school's Title IX director resigns
By David Barron
October 4, 2016 Updated: October 4, 2016 7:57pm
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Photo: handout Image 1 of 2
File, Baylor's Patty Crawford in her office, Sept. 4, 2015. (Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune Herald)
The Baylor University official charged with enforcing federal protections for women on campus has resigned unexpectedly for unknown reasons, complicating the school's reform efforts in the fallout of a sexual assault scandal involving its athletic department.
The university announced before midnight Monday that Title IX coordinator Patty Crawford, the first to carry the title, was leaving her job because of "disappointment" over her role in implementing policy changes after an independent review found deep flaws in Baylor's handling of sexual assault cases.
Houston attorney Chad Dunn, who represents eight rape victims who have filed suit against the school, said Crawford's departure reflects the continued efforts of a few Baylor regents to manage the reaction and the fallout related to an outbreak of sexual assaults at Baylor rather than working to stop the problem and punish the guilty.
"It is well past time for Baylor University to stop the secrecy and be transparent about the admitted intentional efforts to undermine and suppress sexual assault victims," Dunn said. "The only Title IX coordinator the university ever hired now looks as if she is also sick of the games."
Crawford did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment, and the only explanation of her resignation was provided in a Baylor news release, which mentioned Baylor's efforts to implement changes in its policies toward sexual assault victims that were recommended by the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton.
"Our understanding is that Patty was disappointed in her role in implementing the recommendations that resulted from the Pepper Hamilton investigation," the Baylor statement said. "The university is grateful for Patty's leadership in establishing fair and equitable Title IX processes that are also supportive of the needs of survivors."
For several months, Baylor University has been facing a groundswell of criticism over its handling of sexual assault cases. The controversy began last year when sexual assault cases against two Baylor football players prompted the school to commission the Pepper Hamilton probe, which concluded that university administrators "directly discouraged complainants from reporting" crimes and "created a cultural perception that football was above the rules."
In the wake of the findings, Baylor fired head football coach Art Briles. Athletic director Ian McCaw and school president Ken Starr resigned.
Two women join suit
Dallas lawyer Rogge Dunn, who represents Crawford, told the Waco Tribune-Herald there was a lengthy mediation session Monday with high-ranking Baylor officials but no agreement was reached. Crawford is set to appear on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday to discuss the situation at Baylor.
In an interview in July, Crawford told the Chronicle that she has spent the past year training various university personnel about students' rights and how to help them access services. Title IX requires public and private colleges to provide protections and support for women who experience sexual harassment, violence or coercion on campus.
Crawford's resignation came one day after two women who said they were sexually assaulted at Baylor joined six other plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in Waco, alleging that Baylor failed to investigate their complaints adequately.
It also came after a story on the Huffington Post website written by victims advocate Brenda Tracy, who addressed the Baylor football team earlier this year to outline the consequences of sexual assault and to describe the attack she suffered at the hands of four men, including two football players at Oregon State, in 1998.
Tracy for the first time in the Huffington Post report disclosed that following her remarks to the Baylor football team, she was berated by an assistant football coach who said that the football program was not at fault for the actions of some of its former players and that Briles had been fired as part of a conspiracy to harm the university's football team.
On the legal front, meanwhile, attorney Dunn said Baylor regents "continue in full cover-up mode" by refusing to deny access to victims of their own campus records related to their assault cases. Crawford's resignation, he said, "is part of that lack of transparency."
Dunn also said that Crawford is likely to be called as a witness on behalf of the eight women that he represents and that "it remains to be seen regarding the quality of work that she did in support of sexual assault victims."
'No accountability'
Waco attorney Jim Dunnam, who filed the lawsuit to which two other victims were added this week, said that while Baylor fired Briles and allowed Starr to resign, both left the school with substantial financial payouts. AAUP Title IX Report
"I do not know of one person who was let go without compensation," he said. "You would think that with all the things (the school) says that they did wrong, there would be people leaving involuntarily.
"Until Baylor provides transparency, we are going to continue to have speculation on who did what and who is to blame," he added. "And that seems to be their intent. … There is no accountability."
Meanwhile the question remains as to who will replace Crawford.
National experts described the job of Title IX coordinator as a position that could be tense and sometimes combative, especially when high-level administrators may want to protect an institution's reputation or athletic department.
The Title IX coordinator must have "respect and authority" from institutions' leadership, said Neena Chaudhry, education director and senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center.
"This has to be someone who takes a balanced approach and isn't weighed by other considerations," said Liz Boyce, staff attorney of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault.
Nancie Wingo, who administers a Facebook group of alumni concerned with sexual assault at Baylor, said the university's announcement came out of the blue.
She said her interactions with Crawford were positive, recalling instances when she would answer Wingo's questions about sexual assault at the university.
Wingo said the timing of Monday's release shows a lack of transparency.
"It feels to me that Baylor's priority is still to just try to move beyond this as quickly as possible and put a Band-Aid on an open wound," she said.
Lindsay Ellis contributed to this report.