Report: Pattern of mishandling sexual assault, violence cases found at Michigan State

A lengthy report by Paula Lavigne of ESPN's Outside The Lines has found there has been a pattern of denial, inaction, and information suppression of sexual assault, violence, and gender discrimination complaints by Michigan State officials, ranging from the campus police to the school's athletic department.

This comes just hours after athletic director Mark Hollis resigned from his post in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal.

One of the most notable things from the report is the fact the school has been to court three times over the past three years to withhold athlete's names from campus police records. Lavigne also reports the school has "deleted so much information from some incident reports that they were nearly unreadable."

While the entire athletic department is examined, a large portion focuses on the football program under coach Mark Dantonio. Public records show that since he took over in 2007, at least 16 Spartans football players have been accused of sexual assault or violence against women.

After ESPN requested copies in 2014 of all police reports involving football and basketball players since 2011, Michigan State marked out the players' names prior to providing them. ESPN then sued the school for doing so and was awarded the unredacted records. It didn't end there as ESPN submitted another records request last year but was proactively sued by the school to defend its withholding of the documents. A judge would eventually dismiss the lawsuit.

Former Michigan State sexual assault counselor Lauren Allswede told ESPN that seven years ago, the university's general counsel came to her to convince her Dantonio was handling sexual violence allegations seriously. His example was that Dantonio's solution in one special case was to "have the player talk to his mother about what he had done."

Police reports obtained by ESPN show six different cases of complaints involving football players that resulted in no charges being laid. It's unknown whether Dantonio was ever notified of any of the cases.

The basketball program under Tom Izzo is also mentioned in the report for numerous incidents regarding former player and assistant coach Travis Walton. The first of which was from a student who said Walton, then a coach with the program, punched her in the face in an East Lansing bar during the 2010 season. He would continue coaching the team that year and eventually pled guilty to a civil infraction for littering.

Less than a month later, Walton's name would surface in another allegation involving a Michigan State student. This time, a sexual assault report claiming he and two players had raped her off campus. Allswede reports he was fired, but Walton says he didn't return to the program to play professionally in Europe.

Former players Adreian Payne and Keith Appling would also be named in a reported sexual assault in the summer of 2010. Payne is currently playing professionally in the NBA G League while Appling is in jail on weapons charges.