Baylor has no shame after regents 'scapegoated' black football players in rape scandal

Former Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw swore under oath that BU had an "elaborate plan that essentially scapegoated the black football players and the football program for being responsible for what was a decades-long, university-wide sexual assault scandal."

He also said administrators used "racially charged labels like, '300 pound black football player.'"

Might want to keep that one out of the recruiting brochure.

This is the reason why Baylor wants this testimony sealed, and other evidence suppressed.

Baylor University's effort at transparency and truth comes with an obstacle course of shadows, stop signs, lawyers, finger pointing and now a motion to suppress testimony by an ex-athletic administrator.

Last Tuesday in Virginia, McCaw was deposed in the cases of 10 Jane Does v. Baylor. On Tuesday in a federal court in Waco, Baylor filed a motion to seal his testimony, which was successful.

The motion came about 10 minutes after I called the federal court in Waco looking for the deposition. Draw your own conclusions.

On Wednesday morning, however, the lawyers representing several clients against Baylor filed a new motion against the school to reveal McCaw related materials, among them a long statement he personally wrote and his entire deposition.

In this filing are portions of McCaw's deposition, which reveal an administration that simply had no shame, nor any problem easily violating the very ethos on which the Baptist university is founded. Do unto others is apparently not an across-the-board Christian edict; Save Thy Hide is.

In the portions of the deposition made available in the court filing, McCaw delivered damning accounts of how Baylor officials, including the Baylor police department, deliberately mishandled many allegations by young women who claimed they were raped.

This is everything Baylor officials did not want out, and paints many members of Baylor's board as racist, paranoid and brain dead.

McCaw served as Baylor's AD from 2003 to 2016 when he "resigned." In the deposition, he said he was urged to remain at BU, but that he left because he was "disgusted at that point with the regents, the racism, the phony finding of fact." He also said he did not want to be a part of "Enron coverup."

'Finding of fact' is the term used at Baylor for the investigation completed by the Philadelphia law firm of Pepper Hamilton. Tales of the investigation include Hamilton lawyers asking Baylor employees, "Why are there so many black players?"

In the deposition, McCaw asserts that Baylor Regent Chair Richard Willis "directed" the investigation to accomplish the goal he was seeking. The goal was to blame the football program.

After McCaw left Baylor, per the deposition, he met with Baylor attorneys who told him they were looking at three different outcomes: A detailed document, a summary report, or "to whitewash the whole thing."

McCaw testified that he visited the law firm in Philadelphia, which "resulted in the strategy of Baylor Regent Cary Gray writing 'false' and 'misleading finding of fact skewed to make the football program look bad to cover up the campus-wide failings.'"

In this filing, McCaw also said that now retired Baylor police Chief Jim Doak "systematically buried rape reports, concealed them from McCaw when they involved sports, causing McCaw to learn from them through ESPN."

McCaw also referenced one incident of a Baylor police officer putting a sexual assault complaint on hold while he ordered food.

Baylor provided a statement to the media refuting the motion.

It reads: "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 complied and will continue to comply 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.”

Baylor also said that during the "Finding of Facts" that regents, including Gray, were not present."

The firm of Dunham and Dunham, which represents the Jane Does in this case, issued a response of its own.

“Baylor’s press response is as phony as what McCaw himself calls their 'phony' findings and as pathetic as Baylor’s attempts to cover up for the actions of its regents concealing decades of sexual assault at Baylor. If Baylor really believed that anything in the motion were misleading or out of context, then Baylor could easily allow full excerpts of Mr. McCaw's deposition to be released after removal of any private student information. Instead Baylor has triggered hiding the whole thing. A fair release of McCaw's deposition will show that our filing is both true and in context, that McCaw was entirely credible under oath, and would provide even further testimony of McCaw that Baylor does not want known.“

Despite McCaw's obvious motivations in the deposition, which is to spread the wealth of blame to his ex fellow Baylor officials, at least in the deposition he had rhetorical awareness to admit there were failures and shortcomings within the Baylor athletic department, too.

According to multiple sources, one of the reasons current school officials are confident there will be no significant penalties from the NCAA when its investigation is complete is the problems within the BU athletic department were throughout the entire university.

What McCaw's testimony reveals is there was dramatic differences on how this ordeal should have been handled between the Baylor board and two high ranking officials: McCaw, and former Baylor president Ken Starr.

Wonder what former football coach Art Briles thinks?

Baylor's mission as it relates to this scandal is to upgrade and update its Title IX procedures. It has spent tens of millions to do so.

Baylor's other mission as it relates to this scandal has been to move on, which because both its language and its behaviors are both embarrassing and unbecoming of the largest Baptist university in the world.

All of this should be miles beneath a place like Baylor, but instead makes it appear such behaviors are not just the actions of a misguided few but part of the culture that exists.

So don't bother asking, "Have you no shame?"

They clearly did not.

This story was originally published June 27, 2018 at 3:31 PM.