Ex-Baylor Title IX officer criticizes school's sex assault response

As Baylor University worked to rebut Patty Crawford’s claims about administrators’ unwillingness to change how the school responds to sexual violence, the school’s former Title IX coordinator explained Wednesday the challenges she faced in trying to change the culture at a school mired in crisis.

Following Crawford’s appearance on 60 Minutes Sports on Tuesday, Baylor sought to refute the report on a new web site launched this week, which it calls The Truth. Crawford, meanwhile, spoke with the media for the first time after the report and detailed why she resigned in early October.

In emails, text messages and memos dating back to April, Crawford expressed concerns about hiring decisions, being excluded from meetings and a fragmented implementation of required changes that affected the authority of the Title IX office and Baylor’s compliance with the law.

As she had in the 60 Minutes Sports story, Crawford pointed to the actions of Reagan Ramsower, her boss and a senior vice president and CFO at Baylor, hindering her ability to do her job.

More Baylor assaults, less school response alleged in '60 Minutes Sports' piece

“The last six weeks I was at Baylor, it was explicit that Reagan Ramsower was telling me directly that he did not want this to happen effectively and the better I did, the worse it got for him, and the worse it got for Baylor and the brand,” Crawford told USA TODAY Sports.

Ramsower said Wednesday night in a statement to USA TODAY Sports, “This is just one more example of Patty's fabrications.”

Following her resignation, Crawford said she had been set up to fail. Baylor denied that, and on its newly launched web site attempted to rebut her claims.

The site includes video Baylor recorded of the 60 Minutes Sports interviews titled “The interviews CBS news didn’t want you see”. It also includes documentation of university questions about Crawford's management abilities in addition to excerpts from notes Crawford sent to administrators thanking them for support.

“Baylor is unaware of a single person who has verified Patty Crawford’s false and misleading claims,” the school said in a “fact check” in response to some of 60 Minutes Sports’ questions. “To the contrary, Baylor Regents, administrators and Human Resources executives, along with Crawford’s own colleagues, all agree that she was set up to succeed.

What will it take for Baylor to move forward?

The dueling public statements between Crawford and Baylor come as the Baptist university seeks change in the wake of a widespread scandal.

A “findings of fact” summary of an investigation by Philadephia law firm Pepper Hamilton released in May said Baylor failed to comply with Title IX in its response to reports of sexual violence, even going so far as to discourage reporting in some cases.

Pepper Hamilton made 105 recommendations designed to address the school’s Title IX policy, its support services, training and education, athletic department and culture, among others.

In documentation provided by Crawford’s attorney, Rogge Dunn, she expresses concerns that those changes are being made in without a unified effort to get the university in compliance with Title IX. In a 16-page memo Crawford sent to Ramsower in July, she voiced concerns that the approach was “creating barriers for effectiveness.”

“It was really for the purpose of Reagan Ramsower to say, as CFO and a quantitative person, this is done. It’s checked off. Boom,” she said. “Now we can move forward and not have to worry about this. That’s what it was becoming rather than a real grassroots cultural shift, which is what is needed.”

Title IX lawsuits key to revealing real picture at Baylor

Baylor has touted its changes to USA TODAY Sports, saying it has spent or budgeted $4.3 million to the Title IX office or other support services since Crawford was hired in late 2014.

Baylor spokeswoman Lori Fogelman said Ramsower supported the Title IX office since Crawford started reporting to him in June.

“The facts are clear: Dr. Ramsower did everything possible to set up Patty Crawford for success because he believed that the better she did, the better Baylor did in meeting the needs of sexual assault victims and in complying with Title IX,” Fogelman said.

Baylor pointed to thank you notes Crawford sent as evidence of the support she had.

“I care very much about this work and am grateful to have Baylor's support and your leadership,” Baylor quoted Crawford from a June email to interim president David Garland.

Crawford said she often writes thank you notes as a courtesy and dismissed some as being taken out of context.

Baylor vows openness on new sexual assault response web site

Baylor’s response to the 60 Minutes Sport report does not include the same statements or emails provided by Crawford’s attorney in which she expresses her concerns over a period of months this year. Baylor did not publish the full emails from which Crawford’s quotes were pulled.

Crawford said her work became more difficult after July. At times, she said, she learned more from ESPN and other media reports than she did from the university.

She said she had to come forward because she’s spent her career encouraging others to report discrimination.

Crawford has the support of a 2015 Baylor alumna who credited Crawford with helping her to graduate after dealing with the repercussions of being sexually harassed by a professor. She asked USA TODAY Sports to not be identified by name.

Though administrators helped the woman when she reported the harassment before Crawford was hired, the woman said they were not trained on Title IX issues and did not provide the remedies and resources that Crawford did.

She reached out to Crawford in September to see if she could help combat the impression that Baylor’s sexual assault problem was primarily confined to the football program, a notion she said she found hurtful. Once Crawford resigned, the woman reached out to offer support and vouch for Crawford, who she said changed her life.

Crawford said that although she knows she made changes at Baylor, the cultural shift sought in the Pepper Hamilton recommendations has remained elusive.

“What you need is an institution that supports it, understands it and is going to first accept that it’s an issue and then say how can we change it from grassroots? How do we make decisions with integrity?” she said. “The problem is Baylor has never gotten there, even with all that’s happened.

“Instead, they keep going into self-preservation mode and trying to discredit me personally, which is so silly because all it does is re-illustrate the issues at hand.”