Above the Rules: Baylor's Sexual Assault Crisis

Summary

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Campus Files: Scandals, Secrets & Crimes at American Universities

Episode: Above the Rules: Baylor's Sexual Assault Crisis

Date: July 15, 2026
Host: Margot Gray
Featured Voices: Paula Levine (ESPN Reporter), Patti Crawford (former Baylor Title IX Coordinator), expert analysts

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Episode Overview

This episode of Campus Files delves into the notorious sexual assault crisis at Baylor University—a scandal that exposed systemic institutional failures to address and support survivors of sexual violence, particularly when star athletes were involved. Through the story of Jasmine Hernandez, the episode investigates Baylor’s culture, its prioritization of athletics (especially football), its disregard for Title IX federal mandates, and the way institutional interests were repeatedly put above student safety and justice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Baylor’s Cultural and Religious Context

• Baylor, founded in 1845 by Baptist missionaries, is the world’s largest Baptist university.
• Strict Baptist codes of conduct include bans on premarital sex and, until recently, dancing.
  • “Officially, premarital sex doesn’t happen there. The problem with that position is what it forces the institution to ignore.”
    — Margot Gray [01:46]
• This strict framework led to ongoing institutional denial of sexual violence, as acknowledging non-consensual sex would also be acknowledging any sexual activity on campus.

2. Jasmine Hernandez’s Story: A Survivor’s Ordeal

• Jasmine, raised in a conservative Christian home, chose Baylor hoping its rules would reinforce her religious background and help her avoid confronting her sexuality.
  • “If the rules forbade it, maybe she wouldn’t act on it.”
    — Explaining Jasmine’s motivation [04:30]
• In her freshman year, Jasmine was raped by football player Tevin Elliott at an off-campus party.
• Institutional response:
  • Campus police refused to investigate, citing that the incident was off campus [09:25].
  • No campus resources or support were available for Jasmine or her struggling academic performance.
    • “Even if a plane fell on your daughter, there was no action they could take to help her.”
      — Academic adviser at Baylor [11:07]
  • Jasmine’s mother, Candace, couldn’t find counseling or academic support; Jasmine was soon on academic probation and left Baylor.
  • Jasmine later learned she was the sixth woman to have reported Tevin Elliott; Baylor had done nothing.

3. The Football Program: Central to Baylor’s Aspirations

• In 2001, Baylor aimed to become a major national research institution with a $2 billion endowment—a plan tied to raising its football program’s profile.
  • “Having a successful football team gets you noticed. It is marketing that you can’t buy.”
    — Paula Levine [16:11]
• Coach Art Briles and President Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr) made football the heart of the university’s ambitions.
• Football players received special treatment, including protection from disciplinary processes—errors that fostered a culture of entitlement and impunity.

4. Institutional Protectionism and Failures

• The football program developed its own disciplinary channel, bypassing university and legal accountability.
  • “With an athlete they call the football coach and just that, mere involvement of that coach ... already has an impact on the system.”
    — Expert/Analyst [18:48]
• Coach Briles and President Starr actively intervened on behalf of problematic players like Tevin Elliott, preventing suspensions and ensuring continued eligibility.
• Reports and allegations of assault (even gang rape by multiple players) were either ignored or kept within athletic circles.
  • “Wow, those are some bad dudes. Like, what was she doing hanging out with them?”
    — Art Briles upon learning of a gang rape allegation [20:01]

5. Title IX Ignored

• In 2011, the US Dept. of Education issued guidance clarifying that Title IX required universities to address sexual assault allegations regardless of where incidents occurred [24:04].
• Baylor ignored these guidelines:
  • Did not appoint a Title IX coordinator.
  • Failed to provide support or accommodations to survivors.
  • Suggests willful, widespread non-compliance even after convictions.
  • “There was this real mistaken belief that if this happened off campus, it's not our problem, which is completely against what the guidance was coming out of the Department of Ed.”
    — Paula Levine [25:31]

6. Scandal Breaks Open: The Sam Ukwuachu Case

• In 2015, football player Sam Ukwuachu was convicted of rape at trial, revealing Baylor’s knowledge of his history of violence and its failure to prevent further harm.
• Baylor’s internal investigation was minimal and cleared him, despite criminal evidence [28:25].
  • “A jury ... found him guilty. Makes you wonder how a university process ... did not find him responsible for sexual misconduct.”
    — Paula Levine [28:47]

7. Survivors Fight Back

• Jasmine Hernandez and other women filed federal Title IX lawsuits against Baylor in 2016.
• Jasmine made the deliberate decision to come forward publicly.
  • “I want to tell my story and I want you to use my name because I shouldn’t feel any shame in this whatsoever.”
    — Jasmine, via Analyst [29:49]
• Multiple lawsuits brought national attention and forced Baylor to act.

8. Pepper Hamilton Report and Consequences

• External review by the Pepper Hamilton law firm exposed “institution-wide failure” to implement Title IX.
  • Active discouragement of reports; coaches ran “shadow investigations”; at least 19 football players linked to sexual assaults in 4 years.
  • “Football, the report concluded, operated above the rules.”
    — Margot Gray [31:42]
• Key leadership—Coach Briles, President Starr, and the athletic director—were fired [31:48].

9. Ongoing Reluctance for Real Change

• Allegations continued to surface, suggesting even greater scale to the crisis: up to 34 football players accused of 52 rapes in four years [32:06].
• Problems were deeper than just football or a few bad actors.
  • “Baylor University across the board did an absolutely piss poor job of handling reports of sexual assault, sexual abuse, domestic violence, period, full stop.”
    — Paula Levine [32:26]
• First full-time Title IX coordinator, Patti Crawford, describes extraordinary resistance from administration:
  • Prohibited from saying “sex” or “alcohol” in trainings [33:51].
  • Not allowed to keep paper trails; consistently undermined.
  • Board member asserted, “Title IX is not biblical, and we do not have to comply with it. We have religious freedom, and we do not need to have Title IX.” [34:59]
  • Patti’s work was blamed for the university’s bad publicity, not the underlying problems.
• Patti resigned, filed a Title IX complaint, and went public to say Baylor’s priority was brand protection, not student safety or justice [36:35].

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Paula Levine: “The fact that Tevin Elliott knows, ‘Oh well, the president of Baylor University intervened on my behalf. I am so special, you know, I'm going to get away with this.’ ... That doesn’t give you a sense of feeling like these football players are above the rules.” [20:56]
• Patti Crawford: “One of the board members stood up and said, ‘Excuse me, why is she even here? Title IX is not biblical, and we do not have to comply with it.’” [34:59]
• Narrator: "The allegations are so shocking, some are calling for a complete shutdown of the university’s football program.” [31:42]
• Paula Levine: “A lot of universities when they hire these outside agencies, they do so to whitewash everything ... what the Pepper Hamilton report came out with was ... more damning than ... anyone would have suspected.” [30:34]
• Patti Crawford: “The subtext was, we need the world to think that we’re doing everything right ... and you have to go along with this.” [35:43]

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Key Segment Timestamps

• [01:46] — Introduction to Baylor's strict religious culture and conduct codes
• [06:10] — Jasmine’s experiences in Baylor’s social scene, leading up to the assault
• [09:25] — Campus police refuse to investigate Jasmine’s rape
• [11:07] — Academic adviser’s dismissive response to Jasmine’s mother
• [16:11] — Baylor’s strategic focus on football as path to national recognition
• [18:48] — How football players received special disciplinary treatment
• [20:01] — Art Briles’s response to a reported gang rape
• [24:04] — Title IX federal guidance and Baylor’s non-compliance
• [28:25] — Ukwuachu’s conviction; Baylor’s flawed internal process exposed
• [29:49] — Jasmine goes public with her lawsuit and her name
• [31:42] — Pepper Hamilton findings: football “above the rules,” scale of misconduct
• [33:01] — Patti Crawford describes obstacles as Title IX coordinator
• [34:59] — Direct resistance from board members to Title IX compliance
• [36:35] — Patti resigns, files Title IX complaint, goes public

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Conclusion

This episode paints a damning portrait of institutional betrayal at Baylor University, exposing how the protection of image, tradition, and athletics repeatedly trumped the safety and well-being of students, especially sexual assault survivors. Through meticulous documentation and survivor storytelling, Campus Files confronts listeners with the real, ongoing consequences of such systemic failures—and the courageous efforts of those who dared to demand accountability and change.

Transcript

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Pick up fees may apply. Colleges across the country tend to have similar codes of conduct. No plagiarism, no cheating, no hacking university networks. But at religious institutions, the list looks a little different. Take Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Baylor was founded by Baptist missionaries back in 1845. It's the largest Baptist university in the world, and the school's identity and code of conduct revolve around Baptist scripture. It prohibits all sorts of things other schools allow. Until recently, that included dancing. For the first 151 years of Baylor's existence, students weren't allowed to dance on campus. Another thing Baylor bans is premarital sex. It has for its entire history. Officially, premarital sex doesn't happen there. The problem with that position is what it forces the institution to ignore.

[Expert/Analyst]

From the religion's point of view, there should be no premarital sex. So the idea that they have to address non consensual sex and rape among their students is something that they're not prepared to do because they don't want to acknowledge that it's happening. So therefore we're not going to have a system set up to deal with this.

[Margot Gray]

I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files the sexual assault crisis that unfolded at Baylor. Jasmine Hernandez grew up in Yorba Linda, California. Her parents raised her in a Christian household, Lutheran High School, church on Sundays.

[Paula Levine]

She kind of struggled with that a little bit because she realized early on that she didn't really know what her sexuality was, that she might be gay. And she knew that from her parents perspective they were very loving people, but that anything other than being straight heterosexual was not okay.

[Margot Gray]

This is ESPN reporter Paula Levine. She's the co author of Exposing Rape at Baylor University Amid College Football's Sexual Assault Crisis.

[Paula Levine]

For Jasmine, as she had these feelings in high school and going into college, it was something that she kind of struggled with and I think to some degree in sort of a weird contradiction, she wanted to go to Baylor because she felt maybe it was a place where she could put her religion first.

[Margot Gray]

What Paula means is Baylor explicitly prohibited homosexuality. And for Jasmine, that was part of the appeal. If the rules forbade it, maybe she wouldn't act on it. Jasmin decided to enroll, and her parents were supportive. They felt confident that Baylor would continue what her religious upbringing had started, unlike

[Expert/Analyst]

you would see it maybe like in Notre Dame or another school that is technically religious affiliated. At Baylor, the Baptist tradition is ever present in the education there.

[Margot Gray]

Even Baptist values were woven into the course requirements and they were also woven into the rules.

[Expert/Analyst]

There were pretty stiff violations for alcohol. Now there are at other campuses too, clearly. But I think people would say at the time Baylor was even more strict on some of those things. And the area where they really diverged from what your traditional college experience would be was when it came to sex.

[Margot Gray]

According to Baylor's code of conduct, premarital sex is a misuse of God's gift. The policy states that premarital sex is meant exclusively for procreation and the bond between husband and wife.

[Expert/Analyst]

Now, is that how the student body was, you know, still a college?

[Margot Gray]

In other words, there were students having sex and doing other typical college things

[Paula Levine]

from students that we talked to in the social scene at Baylor was in many ways pretty typical for any college, really. You still had parties where there was alcohol. You still had pregame tailgating where there was alcohol.

[Margot Gray]

Jasmine was no stranger to Baylor's social scene. She and her friends went to tailgates, pre games, fraternity parties. And during the spring semester of her freshman year, she got invited to an off campus party at a football player's house.

[Expert/Analyst]

She wasn't really into sports, she wasn't really into the football team, but you know, she wanted to get to know people.

[Margot Gray]

When Jasmine and her friends got to the party, it was mostly empty, but not for long. People started trickling in then pouring in new faces, new introductions. And at some point she and her friends were introduced to Tevin Elliott. He was on the Baylor football team.

[Expert/Analyst]

Tevin Elliott came to Baylor in 2009. He was a linebacker. You know, he was certainly a good player on a team that was in the top teams in the nation.

[Margot Gray]

Jasmine's friends were starstruck. Personally, she'd never heard of Tevin before, but she got in the group photo anyway. She stood on the far end of the group photo, not next to Tevin, but she felt his arm reach across and grab her waist. When she went to the bathroom and came back, she couldn't find her friends in the crowd. She spotted Tevint. He was tall and asked if he knew where they were. The next thing she knew, he'd grabbed her wrist and was dragging her out the door.

[Expert/Analyst]

One of the things that really stood out to me was the description she made of the intent of him to like, separate her from everybody else. And that moment when it clicked with her that this is not good, that sinking feeling of I'm being overpowered, I'm being taken somewhere, I don't want to be taken, something bad is going to happen.

[Margot Gray]

Tevin wouldn't let go of her wrist. When she tried to break free, he picked her up and carried her across the street, away from the house, away from anyone who could help. Tevin raped Jasmine twice. By the time she got free and made it back to the party, her clothes were covered in mud, leaves were tangled in her hair. She was visibly shaking. When she found her friends,

[Paula Levine]

she told them pretty quickly and definitively that she had been raped. Fortunately for Jasmine, she had friends who had the presence of mind to immediately take her to the hospital.

[Margot Gray]

On the drive to the hospital, Jasmine cried. She asked her friends if she was going to get in trouble for drinking. At Baylor, that was a reasonable thing to worry about.

[Expert/Analyst]

Because of the university's strict alcohol policies. So many of these women would not report their sexual assaults because they would have to acknowledge that they had been drinking. And when they would do that, they would get in trouble for drinking. They get an alcohol violation on the record.

[Margot Gray]

Around 2am Jasmine got to the hospital. Her clothing was bagged for evidence A nurse did her rape kit, and she gave a statement to a Waco police officer. She told him she didn't want to press charges against Heaven Elliott. But when she woke up the next morning, still in her hospital scrubs, she changed her mind. She wanted justice. Her first call was to her mom, Candace. And by the next morning, her mom was on a flight from California to Waco, Texas. Candace sprung into action. The first thing she did was contact campus police to loop them into what had happened. But campus police had no interest in investigating. They didn't open a file. They didn't even write down Tevin Elliott's name, their explanation. The assault had happened off campus. There was nothing they could do.

[Paula Levine]

And Candace Hernandez, like that just killed her. The fact that this university that she trusted to take care of her daughter, to be a place of concern and care and love was basically saying, something horrible has happened to your daughter, and we really can't do a damn thing.

[Margot Gray]

When it became clear that campus police wouldn't do anything, Candace turned to the university itself. Surely Baylor could offer her daughter some support. Jasmine was struggling to get out of bed, let alone keep up with her classes. But when Candice searched the school's website for resources, she couldn't find anything about sexual assault. Not a page, not a phone number. So she reached out to academic advising, figuring they might be able to help.

[Paula Levine]

She made a point of specifically saying, my daughter was raped, and she's really having a hard time with her classes and her grades. And the woman on the phone said to her that there was nothing she could do and that even if a plane fell on your daughter, there was no action they could take to help her.

[Margot Gray]

That's when Candace lost all faith in the university. She encouraged her daughter to take a semester off. Jasmine refused. So Candice kept looking for help. She eventually found what she thought might be a solution. Baylor students were entitled to seven free therapy sessions each semester. But when Jasmine called to make an appointment, she was told they were fully booked. She explained that she was in crisis. It didn't matter.

[Expert/Analyst]

She's telling people why this is happening and, like, nobody cares. Like, nobody's like, oh, we understand you might need some help. You know, we're going to give you a break on your grades or something. That that doesn't happen.

[Margot Gray]

No one from Baylor ever followed up. No one called to check in on Jasmine. No one asked about the rape allegations. The Waco police investigation proceeded slowly in the background. Not that Jasmine heard anything about it. The only thing she heard from the university was that her scholarship was in jeopardy. She'd been an honors student. Now she was on academic probation. In the spring of 2012, she dropped out of Baylor and went home. Jasmine thought she was just unlucky. She had no way of knowing that two weeks before she was raped, another woman had told the university the same thing that she'd been assaulted by Tevin Elliott. The school's response? She was the sixth person to report him. But there was nothing they could do. The best summer pieces are the ones you reach for over and over again. They're comfortable, versatile, and somehow work for almost every occasion. That's why I've been living in Quince this summer. Their 100% European linen pants and tops are lightweight, breathable and incredibly easy to style. I can throw them on with sandals during the day, then dress them up for dinner without really having to think about it. They make it easy to build a summer wardrobe that feels elevated without spending a fortune for cooler evenings. I've been loving their soft denim and organic cotton sweaters and their accessories make even the simplest outfit feel just a little more polished. Quince creates elevated essentials using premium materials like European linen, organic cotton and washable silk, all without the traditional retail markup. They partner directly with ethical factories to cut out the middle bed so you get luxury quality pieces for 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They also have incredible home goods from bedding to furniture. Make your wardrobe feel easier and go to quints.com campus for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com campus for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com campus hey there, it's Jill Schlesinger.

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[Margot Gray]

In the early 2000s, Baylor had a plan, and it was bold. For decades, the school had just been a regional Baptist college. People in the area knew about it, but it wasn't a household name. Now Baylor wanted something more to remake itself as a national research university.

[Expert/Analyst]

We wanted to be a big name. We wanted to be a big presence and wanted to have more prestige.

[Margot Gray]

Baylor outlined the plan in 2001, about a decade before Jasmine got to campus. The goal? A $2 billion endowment in just 10 years. How are they going to do that? Football. What does football have to do with becoming a national research university?

[Paula Levine]

It doesn't matter where a university is, whether you're private, public, having a successful football team gets you noticed. It is marketing that you can't buy. There is a direct correlation between the success of your athletic teams and how many students apply to your university.

[Margot Gray]

That's no exaggeration. When schools win national championships, applications spike. Students want to go somewhere with name recognition, with cachet.

[Paula Levine]

In addition to more students wanting to enroll, the trustees, the donors, the members of the community. As you get more successful, as you increase your profile athletically, they are also more inclined to give money back to the school.

[Margot Gray]

There was just one problem with this strategy. At the time Baylor laid out its plan, the football program wasn't good. They hadn't been to a bowl game in 15 years. In 2008, they brought on a new coach, Art Bryles. They were hoping he could turn things around. It didn't happen immediately, but pretty quickly. Briles delivered. Within three years, Baylor was in a bowl game. And within five, they were Big 12 champions. And coach Art Briles had a powerful ally in Baylor's new president, Ken Starr. Yes, that Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated the clintons in the 90s. It was actually his name recognition that helped him get the job. The thinking was he could help raise the school's profile.

[Expert/Analyst]

He was absolutely supportive of the football team. He'd be out there on the sidelines. I mean, it was a big part of his overall campaign to boost the university's image and relevance and just get the name out there to get more donors.

[Margot Gray]

Privately, Starr told people he had a vision. He wanted Baylor to become the Baptist Notre Dame, the Catholic university in Indiana. Known equally for its academic reputation and its powerhouse football program. And that goal, Paula says, helps explain where things started to go wrong. Because when football becomes central to a school's identity, players often get privileges. They become untouchable. At Baylor, football players didn't just get lighter punishments than other students. When they messed up, they experienced an entirely different disciplinary system, one that ran through the coaching staff.

[Expert/Analyst]

With a regular student, you'll just get a ticket or you'll get arrested, depending on what it is, and they'll just process that and you're on your own. But with an athlete they call the football coach and just that, mere involvement of that coach, whether with the police department or campus police, that unto itself already has an impact on the system.

[Margot Gray]

Take football player Tevin Elliott. In 2011, a year before he raped Jasmine, he was caught plagiarizing. It was his second violation under Baylor's rules. He should have been suspended, but coach Art Briles stepped in.

[Paula Levine]

Art Briles took the somewhat not called for step, a very unusual step, of intervening on Tevin Elliott's behalf and appealing to Ken Starr, who was the president at that time, to essentially give Tevin a second chance. And then in some very odd fashion made the monitoring of his academic program within the athletic department, as opposed to how it would work for any other student.

[Margot Gray]

And it wasn't just academic violations. When it came to sexual assault charges, football players had the same protection.

[Paula Levine]

One of the most telling examples of what happened with how the football player cases were handled was one involving a volleyball player who tells her coach that she was gang raped by some of the football players, five of them actually, at an off campus party. And the volleyball coach shares this information with the athletic director, Ian McCaw and with coach Briles. And coach Briles response to this information is, wow, those are some bad dudes. Like, what was she doing hanging out with them?

[Margot Gray]

Coach Briles never reported it, never alerted anyone that his players might have committed a gang rape. The goal was to keep his players away from judicial affairs at all costs. Paula says this protection led players to believe they were invincible.

[Paula Levine]

You have a real sense of entitlement. You know that you as an athlete can get away with anything. The fact that Tevin Elliott knows, oh well, the president of Baylor University intervened on my behalf. I am so special, you know, I'm going to get away with this. You can't say that for any kid. That doesn't give you a sense of feeling like these football players are above the rules.

[Margot Gray]

Tevin Elliott may very well have remained above the rules. If not for Jasmine, you'll recall that campus police did nothing after her mom reported the rape. But Waco police had opened an investigation. They had Jasmine's rape kit, and in April 2012, Coach Briles got word from the police department his player was going to be arrested. Coach Briles could no longer look the other way. He suspended Tevin. By the time the case went to trial in January 2014, the picture was devastating for Tevin. Four other women came forward and testified that he had assaulted them, too. The jury deliberated for less than an hour. Tevin was sentenced to 20 years in prison. You'd think that would have been a massive story. A starting player on one of the country's top football programs convicted on multiple counts of sexual assault. But it barely registered in the news. Part of the reason may have been what was happening on the field.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Baylor responds as the nation's top offense

[Margot Gray]

short In 2014, Baylor football clinched the Big 12 championship for the second consecutive year. It came just months after Tevin's conviction, and the celebration drowned out almost everything else.

[Expert/Analyst]

Almost

[Margot Gray]

because this was never just about one player, and soon that would become impossible to ignore.

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[Margot Gray]

Back in April 2011, universities across the country had received a letter from the federal government. It came from the Department of Education. 20 pages. The letter had a simple but sweeping argument. Title 9, the Federal Law banning sex discrimination in education, applied to sexual assault, too. You might know Title IX as the law that gave women equal access to sports. That's how most people know it. But this letter was saying, unambiguously that Title IX was much bigger than that. When a student reported a sexual assault. The school had an obligation to respond and to investigate.

[Expert/Analyst]

It really put these schools on notice that you've got to start doing this, like this is required. This is what Title IX requires, and we will be watching.

[Margot Gray]

The subtext was clear. Comply or risk losing federal funding. Baylor ignored it anyway. The letter had stated that every school needed a Title IX coordinator, someone whose job was to receive complaints of sexual assault and make sure they were handled properly. Baylor hadn't hired one, and you heard what that meant in practice. When Jasmine was assaulted, her mother went looking for someone, anyone at the university who would investigate. She couldn't find a single person. Campus police told her that it happened off campus, so it wasn't their problem.

[Paula Levine]

There was this real mistaken belief that if this happened off campus, it's not our problem, which is completely against what the guidance was coming out of the Department of Ed, that if it involves your student, then it is something you need to address.

[Margot Gray]

Baylor had ignored another requirement, too. The letter said that schools had to offer resources to students who reported sexual assault, not after an investigation concluded during it.

[Expert/Analyst]

While you are investigating this, you are required to provide measures to the complainant that helps him or her continue being a student. So does that mean do you need academic help? Do you need counseling? Do you need to be separated physically by class schedule from the person you reported who hurt you?

[Margot Gray]

You'll remember what happened when Jasmine tried to get counseling. She was told they were fully booked. And when her mom called academic advising saying her daughter had been raped, they didn't help either. Baylor was actively violating Title ix. And that was still true even after Tevin Elliott was convicted. A jury had heard from multiple women. A judge had handed down the maximum sentence. The school was shown publicly to have failed them. Even then, nothing changed. It would take something much more shocking to force Baylor's hand.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Sam Okuwachu is going to be sentenced later today after being convicted of rape. And the details surrounding this story are pretty disturbing. Ukuachu was kicked off.

[Margot Gray]

On August 20, 2015, Baylor football player Sam Ukuachu was convicted of sexual assault. He was an all American defensive end. The shocking thing wasn't just the conviction. It was that almost no one had heard of the case until that day. A Texas Monthly investigation published the same morning revealed that Sam had been under indictment for over a year. Baylor knew about it, and they'd said nothing. The article also revealed something else. Before Sam ever arrived at Baylor, coach Art Briles had been warned about him. Sam had transferred from Boise State, where he'd been kicked off the team for disciplinary reasons, specifically violence against his girlfriend.

[Narrator/Announcer]

While head coach Art Briles said that he was not fully aware of the specifics of Okewatchu's violent past over the weekend, the former head coach at Boise State said that he fully appraised Briles of Okuachu's disciplinary record and dismissal.

[Margot Gray]

Sam was accepted by Baylor despite the warnings. And just five months after he enrolled, he was accused of rape. Baylor said that they investigated and cleared him, even though a criminal jury later found him guilty.

[Paula Levine]

The point is that a jury that had a higher standard to meet in a criminal case found him guilty of sexual assault. Makes you wonder how a university process that had to meet a lower threshold for evidence and proof did not find him responsible for sexual misconduct.

[Margot Gray]

How is that possible? Because Baylor's investigation was bare bones. It consisted of just four interviews. Sam, his accuser, and one friend each. Baylor never even looked at the rape kit.

[Narrator/Announcer]

I think the cloud and the scrutiny that they're going to be under over the next several months, I think it could have a long lasting impact.

[Margot Gray]

And potentially Sam's case made national news. Among the people watching were Jasmine and her family. What had felt like bad luck was starting to look like something else entirely. Kevin Elliott wasn't just a bad apple. The university had a sexual assault problem. And Baylor hadn't just let Jasmin down. They'd violated Title IX. Four years after her assault, Jasmine decided to sue. On March 30, 2016, her attorneys filed a federal Title IX lawsuit against Baylor's Board of Regents, its football coach, and its athletic director.

[Expert/Analyst]

When she decided she was going to file the lawsuit against Baylor, she made

[Paula Levine]

a very conscious choice.

[Expert/Analyst]

She wanted to use her name, and she was very forward about saying, I want to tell my story and I want you to use my name because I shouldn't feel any shame in this whatsoever.

[Margot Gray]

Jasmine wasn't alone. In the months that followed, more women sued Baylor. There are disturbing new allegations tonight about

[Patti Crawford]

a sexual assault crisis that appears larger than anyone realized.

[Paula Levine]

Baylor football players accused of the media

[Margot Gray]

firestorm didn't let up. Someone would have to be held accountable. And that became unavoidable in May 2016. That's when the results of an outside investigation came back. Baylor had hired a law firm called Pepper Hamilton to investigate.

[Paula Levine]

A lot of universities when they hire these outside agencies, they do so to, you know, whitewash everything right and make it go away. I mean, this was kind of an unusual circumstance where what the Pepper Hamilton report came out with was I think more damning than I think anyone would have suspected.

[Margot Gray]

Even if Pepper Hamilton had intended to soften their findings, Paula says the evidence made that impossible. The law firm conducted 65 interviews and looked through over a million documents. What they found was not a handful of bad actors. It was a system. They concluded that Baylor had a fundamental institution wide failure to implement Title 9. The athletic department was actively discouraging victims from coming forward. Coaches were running shadow investigations, handling allegations internally, never reporting them up, never involving police. Football, the report concluded, operated above the rules. Over the course of just four years, 19 football players had been linked to allegations of sexual violence.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The allegations are so shocking, some are calling for a complete shutdown of the university's football program.

[Margot Gray]

Bieler had no choice. Coach Art Biles was fired. President Ken Starr and athletic director Ian McCaw were also forced out.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Kenneth Starr's investigation into then president Bill Clinton's affair nearly cost him the presidency. Now Starr losing his post as Baylor president and coach Art Briles out of

[Margot Gray]

a job later, lawsuits would allege that the problem was even worse than Pepper Hamilton had suggested. According to one lawsuit, over the course of just four years, at least 34 football players were accused of committing 52 acts of rape. And the problem didn't stop with the football team.

[Paula Levine]

One thing that I think sometimes gets lost in the telling of the story is that Baylor University across the board did an absolutely piss poor job of handling reports of sexual assault, sexual abuse, domestic violence, period, full stop.

[Margot Gray]

One person had a full view of the scale of the problem. Patti Crawford. Back in 2014, almost a year after Tevin Elliott was convicted, Baylor hired her as its first full time Title IX coordinator. For the first time, students had somewhere to go on campus with sexual assault allegations.

[Patti Crawford]

I had over 90 reports just in the first nine months. When I asked how many reports historically had they had, they gave me a list of 20, 25. I said, wait, this is all the historical cases in judicial affairs? They said, yeah. I said, of all time, Baylor is older than the state of Texas. 25 reports.

[Margot Gray]

It didn't take long on the job to see that the scale of the problem was much bigger than Baylor had let on. And almost immediately, she felt like the university was making it harder for her to do her job. She needed approval from her boss to do just about anything, even scheduling Title IX training sessions with deans and department heads. And when she did hold those trainings, her boss made it clear there were limits on what she could say.

[Patti Crawford]

He's like, you can't use the Word sex. The vice president said, you can't use the word sex. Okay, I'll figure it out. So then I do the next training. Next day, he's like, hey, can I talk to you? Sure, Patty. The vice president, called me, and they said, you cannot say the word alcohol. So it just was this kind of barrier after barrier after barrier.

[Margot Gray]

Still, Patti kept going. In her first nine months, she trained more than 35,000 people. And after each training session, at least a dozen allegations came in. But investigating those reports wasn't straightforward. For one, she wasn't allowed to read police reports directly.

[Patti Crawford]

So our chief of police met with me once a week, and he would sit and read aloud police reports to me, and I would take notes.

[Margot Gray]

Baylor was worried about paper trails, about what might become public. Increasingly, it started to feel like the university didn't actually want her doing the job she'd been hired to do. That feeling intensified after she presented to the Board of Regents.

[Patti Crawford]

When I presented at that first board meeting, one of the board members stood up and said, excuse me, why is she even here? Title IX is not biblical, and we do not have to comply with it. We have religious freedom, and we do not need to have Title ix. I went home and was like, I don't think they actually want me here. I don't think they actually wanted this position.

[Margot Gray]

That became even clearer after the fallout from the Pepper Hamilton report. As we know, Baylor fired its coach, its president, its athletic director. Now it just wanted to move on. But Patty's reporting was getting in the way of that. It showed that the problem wasn't in the past. And Baylor's COO didn't like that.

[Patti Crawford]

And he said, well, I need you to know that a lot of the Board of Regents are telling me that because you've done your job so well, it's put us in this terrible position. The subtext was, we need the world to think that we're doing everything right. We look good, we're checking this list off, and you have to go along with this.

[Margot Gray]

Patti eventually wrote a note to him laying out why Baylor still wasn't in compliance with Title ix, why there was still more work to do.

[Patti Crawford]

And his response was, first thing in my office the next morning and was yelling for, like, 45 minutes about never put anything in writing to him like that again. And that's when I realized, I'm never going to be able to do this work here with integrity.

[Margot Gray]

Patti resigned. She filed a Title IX complaint against the school. And on her way out, she went on national television. She said, she'd been set up to fail from the beginning that Baylor's senior leadership had made one thing clear throughout they were interested in protecting the brand, not the students. If you've got a story idea, we would love to hear about it. Send us an email at campus files pod gmail.com and if you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. While you're there, leave us a review and a five star rating. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast hosted by Margot Gray and Ian Mont. Our executive producers are Leah Rees Dennis and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont and Margot Gray. Sound design and engineering by Andy Jaskowitz and Zach Clark Legal support by Laura Berman and Melissa Jean. Original music by Davey Sumner. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchison, Rose, Sean Cherry, Kirk Courtney and Lauren Vieira. At Vistaprint, we know you've got that idea for your business. Like the one that nails the trade show, levels up your brand or makes

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