Deposed Baylor Coach Art Briles Suing School Officials Who Accused Him of Covering Up Sexual Assaults

Former Baylor coach Art Briles, who was fired in May after school officials claimed that he covered up alleged incidents of sexual assault by his players, is suing four school officials for libel and slander.

The deposed coach is alleging that Baylor regents chairman Ronald Murff, board members J. Cary Gray and David Harper, and vice president Reagan Ramsower falsely claimed Briles knew about the incidents and failed to report them. It also charges those officials with conspiring to keep Briles from getting another coaching job.

The school released a statement in November in which they explicitly stated that Briles was told about an incident in April 2013 and never disclosed it.

In April 2013, a female student-athlete reported to her head coach that she had been sexually assaulted by five Baylor football players approximately one year earlier. The student-athlete provided her head coach with the names of the involved football players. The head coach immediately reported the assault, including the names of the reported players, to the then-Athletic Director, to the head football coach, and to the sports administrator for the female student-athlete’s team. According to Baylor’s investigation, neither the head coach, the Athletic Director, the sports administrator or the football coach disclosed the reported sexual assault to Baylor’s Judicial Affairs or to anyone else outside of the Athletics Department.

Briles gave an interview to ESPN in September, in which he apologized for “mistakes,” but he didn’t specify what those mistakes were.

“I made mistakes,” Briles said. “I did wrong, but I’m not doing this trying to make myself feel better for apologizing. I understand I made some mistakes. There was some bad things that went on under my watch. I was the captain of this ship. The captain of the ship goes down with it.”

The former coach is now claiming that those mistakes don’t include a blatant cover-up, in conflict with the university’s findings.

[image via screengrab]

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