'They don't understand what consent is': Journalist on college football's sexual assault culture
It's one of the most infamous sexual assault scandals in U.S. collegiate history.
An independent investigation found a number of football players on the Baylor University Bears team were accused of —and arrested for — rape and sexual assault.
The head coach was Art Briles.
"Now I understand I made some mistakes. There were some bad things that happened under my watch. I was the captain of this ship. The captain of the ship goes down with it," Briles said in an ESPN interview.
He was fired in 2016 from the Baptist university in Waco, Texas. But across the border, the Hamilton Tiger Cats' CEO Scott Mitchell felt he deserved a "second chance."
Yet just 12 hours after hiring Briles as an assistant head coach for the team in August, the team reversed that decision amidst backlash.
Paula Lavigne, an investigative reporter with ESPN did a lot of digging with colleague Mark Schlabach that brought Baylor University's dark secret to light.
Lavigne tells The Current's host Laura Lynch that when it comes to what Briles admits to knowing, "he has said that he never played someone that he knew had been accused of sexual assault."
"He has said that he never met directly with a woman who reported being the victim of a sexual assault, that he never actively deterred anyone from reporting any incident of sexual assault or domestic violence," she reiterates.
"But in terms of knowing in advance, knowing much before the public knew about [this] he has said that he didn't know."
Lavigne says other administrators in the athletic department did know about allegations, as well as assistant coaches.
Lavigne and Schlabach are the authors of Violated: Exposing Rape at Baylor University Amid College Football's Sexual Assault Crisis. They spoke to former members of the Baylor football team to understand the culture of sexual assault in college football.
"If you don't hear what their mentality is, it's hard to fix it," she tells Lynch.
"It's clear from some of the things they're saying that they don't understand what consent is."
Lavigne tells Lynch in terms of conversations about gang rapes, players said things like, "We thought she was into it" or "This was her reputation."
Baylor scandal a 'game changer'
There's a significance to the Baylor scandal that Lavigne characterizes as a game changer.
She points to the sheer volume of cases that came out highlighting the severity of the issue that Lavigne says is campus-wide, not just segregated to the athletic department.
"The university at one point acknowledges that there were 125 cases. Other investigators there said there's upwards to 400."
Lavigne urges universities to use this as an opportunity to proactively address the bigger problem of sexual assault culture that exists on campuses.
"You can't look at these things as one-offs, you need to understand that this happens, that this has not happened in a vacuum … you need to get on this."
Listen to the full segment near the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by Howard Goldenthal and Ramraajh Sharvendiran.