Baylor assistant reportedly questioned Brenda Tracy's presence at school
During a visit to Baylor this summer to speak with the football team about sexual assault prevention, Brenda Tracy was reportedly questioned by an assistant coach as to why she was there.
Tracy, who has said she was gang-raped at Oregon State in 1998, joined ESPN's "Outside the Lines" on Friday to discuss a recent blog entry for the Huffington Post, describing the incident from early July.
"I felt like the players were great, they were all engaged," she said about the visit. "I was really surprised and caught off guard when this coach pulled me aside. I was really surprised that he was that bold to say those things, but he was really awful and terrible."
During the past few months, Tracy has spoken to numerous college programs about sexual assault prevention. Her first meeting was with Nebraska in June at the request of head coach Mike Riley, who was the Beavers' frontman at the time of her alleged rape. The meeting with the Cornhuskers led to Jim Grobe asking her to come to Waco to talk with the Bears, which put Tracy in the confrontation with the unnamed Bears assistant.
"One of the first things he said is he didn't understand why I was there," she said. "He said this isn't a football issue. This was an issue on the rest of the campus. And he just went on and on that (former head coach) Art Briles did absolutely nothing and this was all unfounded and nothing happened and they were being treated unfairly and there was some conspiracy going on against Baylor football.
Briles was dismissed in May after an outside investigation found the football program had "no culture of accountability for misconduct," and that "some football coaches and staff abdicated responsibilities" under federal gender equity laws.
Tracy hopes that those fans defending the former coach would turn their support to the victims of various sexual assault cases around the Bears program.
"(Fans) are so angry about Art Briles being fired that they're not taking into consideration anything else," she wrote in her post. "I hope the victims are being supported as vehemently as Art Briles is."