Ex-Baylor AD Ian McCaw: School's Regents Displayed Racism During Rape Scandal

Former Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw said in a deposition that the university orchestrated "an elaborate plan that essentially scapegoated black football players and the football program for being responsible for what was a decades-long, university-wide sexual assault scandal," according to Phillip Ericksen of the Waco-Tribune Herald. 

McCaw, who resigned from the school in May 2016 after 13 years as athletic director, did so because he "did not want to be part of some Enron cover-up scheme," per a motion filed in the Waco U.S. District Court on Wednesday.

The deposition came as part of a Title IX lawsuit filed against Baylor by 10 women who said they were sexually assaulted while attending the university.

McCaw claimed the school's regents released a "phony" 13-page report of the university's findings after an investigation into sexual assault at the school, adding that Baylor regent J. Cary Gray was tasked with writing a "false" and "misleading finding of fact skewed to make the football program look bad and cover up the campus-wide failings."

Baylor responded to McCaw's statements, per David Smoak of ESPN:

"The plaintiffs' counsel have grossly mischaracterized facts to promote a misleading narrative in an effort to deflect attention away from the actual facts of the case pending before the court. Baylor has compiled and will continue to simply with all court rules in this case. We will maintain our diligent efforts to keep discovery focused on this specific case while steadfastly protecting the privacy of our students and their records that are uninvolved in this matter. As permitted by the court’s rules, Baylor will be filing a written response to the Plaintiffs' motion. Much of the testimony of Mr. McCaw that is selectively quoted in the motion is based on speculation, hearsay and even media reports."

The university ultimately fired head football coach Art Briles and president Ken Starr amid the scandal, in which it was discovered by Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton that administrators "directly discouraged" women from reporting instances of sexual assault and that the football program failed to "identify and respond to a pattern of sexual violence by a football player," per SI.com.

The Pepper Hamilton report added:

"In certain instances, including reports of a sexual assault by multiple football players, athletics and football personnel affirmatively chose not to report sexual violence and dating violence to an appropriate administrator outside of athletics. In those instances, football coaches or staff met directly with a complainant and/or parent of a complainant and did not report the misconduct."

But McCaw said former Baylor Police Chief Jim Doak discouraged and ignored reports of rape during his time at the school, adding that "a Baylor police dispatcher once put a woman reporting that she had been raped on hold to order himself a meal," according to Ericksen.

McCaw noted that the cover-up was orchestrated to avoid negative PR.

"It’s bad for business... It's bad for Baylor’s brand, bad for admission, bad for tuition revenue," he said. "And obviously you know Baylor is heavily reliant—it does not have a large endowment, so it's heavily reliant on tuition revenue. So if there's a dip in admissions, a dip in tuition revenue, that severely affects the university."

McCaw has claimed he found out about the sexual assault allegations through the media, though a civil suit against the school and the Pepper Hamilton report contradict those statements, per a report from Andy Staples of SI.com in May 2017:

"According to the newest suit, [McCaw] was alerted to the gang rape allegation in 2013, about a year after the incident that prompted it. According to filing by members of Baylor's board of regents in response to a suit filed by one of the staffers fired in the wake of the scandal, the investigation by law firm Pepper Hamilton found that McCaw claimed to Baylor’s Title IX coordinator in 2015 that he hadn’t been alerted to any accusations of gang rapes by football players.

"In that same filing, McCaw also is accused of texting 'That would be great if they kept it quiet' to Briles with regard to a police investigation (which was kept quiet) into a Baylor football player accused of assaulting and threatening a non-athlete in a different case."