ESPN's Joe Schad broke the news on Tuesday afternoon of another alleged assault that was covered up by the Baylor football staff. Here is what Schad posted — in full — on his Facebook and Twitter pages.
To serve as a summary of the post: a woman, Dolores Lozano, claims that Baylor running back Devin Chafin assaulted her on multiple occasions in 2014, resulting in multiple bruises and contusions (pictured) on her body. Lozano says that she reported the assaults to the Baylor staff, and that nothing was done about it by the school.
Chafin was named in the Outside the Lines reports for having assaulted a woman back in April of 2014, but nothing apparently came of the accusations. Chafin played in 19 total games between 2014 and 2015, rushing for 961 yard between the two seasons. He was later dismissed from the football team about a week ago due to an arrest for marijuana possession.
Like some of the other stories to come out of Baylor recently, the damning part about what Lozano says is that the Baylor coaching staff knew about her assault claim and that they did nothing about it. This included both head coach Art Briles and assistant Jeff Lebby, who is still with the team.
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Lozano later filed a report with the Waco Police Department, and as Schad notes, she is planning to file a Title IX lawsuit against the school
This entire story appears to shed more light on what was happening at Baylor that resulted in the firing of Briles. From a general perspective, this story as a whole keeps getting worse and worse, as it paints a very unsavory culture among the staff within the Baylor administration and on the Baylor football team.
Not everyone is on board with that story, though. Chafin later responded with his own report to Schad, refuting Lozano's story.
A key portion of Chafin's statement here:
Chafin says Lozano is motivated by "her desire to be in the spotlight - a part of the story. And, maybe to get back at me for ignoring her at times."
Chafin said he believes he was finally dismissed by Baylor not because of a marijuana charge, but because of these allegations.
"Right now, they want to clear their names of anything related to assault," Chafin said. "People are looking at me like I abuse women and I don't. It's hard."
Chafin said it hurts to see what has happened at Baylor, with the President, Athletics Director and Head Coach all gone.
"The President and the football coach are not the people to be contacting in cases of serious assault," Chafin said. "Contact the police, not coaches. Go to the police."
That's a pretty damning statement by Chafin, and clearly he believes that he did nothing wrong here. He also says that Briles did not know about the claim, and that Lebby knew because he went to the coach for emotional support.
For now, this looks like it might turn into a case of "he-said, she said", but one thing is absolutely clear: this is going to take a long time to settle and nothing about it reflects fondly upon Baylor.
