Sure is a lot of denial going on in Baton Rouge.
LSU’s failure to adequately address sexual misconduct goes beyond one star running back, a USA TODAY investigation found. Officials in the university’s athletic department and broader administration repeatedly have ignored complaints against abusers, denied victims’ requests for protections and subjected them to further harm by known perpetrators.
At least seven LSU officials had direct knowledge that wide receiver Drake Davis was physically abusing his girlfriend, a different LSU women’s tennis player, but they sat on the information for months, while Davis continued to assault and strangle her. In another case, the school determined that a fraternity member had sexually assaulted two women, but it refused to move him out of classes he shared with one of them and altogether ignored an allegation against him by a third female student.
USA TODAY also found three cases in which, rather than expelling or suspending male students found responsible for sexual assault, LSU allowed them to stay on campus. The men, non-athletes, received “deferred suspensions,” a probationary period during which they must stay out of trouble.
In a fourth case, LSU deferred the suspension of a man who stalked and sexually harassed a fellow student, even after he’d pleaded no contest in court to telephonic harassment.
The article is pretty damning and so is the school’s reluctance to provide information about the incidents.
Sadly, the NCAA has already indicated with Baylor that it’s not willing to go very far in confronting its member institutions over this, so that leaves things up to Greg Sankey. One wonders if he’s prepared to be as stern with LSU as he was with, say, Hugh Freeze.
