The football culture at Tennessee is rapidly coming under heavy fire and intense scrutiny, with yet another disturbing layer emerging as more details of a lawsuit come to light.
Tuesday, six unnamed women who claim they were victims of sexual assault at the hands of UT student-athletes filed a federal lawsuit in which they claimed the university “has created a student culture that enables sexual assaults by student-athletes, especially football players, and then uses an unusual, legalistic adjudication process that is biased against victims who step forward.” Four football players, three former and one unnamed current, are mentioned in the suit.
Also mentioned in the suit is a former UT football player, Drae Bowles, who it’s alleged was assaulted by his Vols teammates after he had “taken Plaintiff Doe IV to the hospital the night of her assault and who had supported her decision to report the incident to the authorities.” As it turns out, The Tennessean reports, Bowles was also attacked a few days later at the football facility by the same teammates who had attacked him the first time.
The twin attacks were just part of a pattern of alleged retribution against Bowles by his teammates, as well as what’s been described as “deliberate indifference” on the part of university officials and athletic department personnel. From the paper’s accounting of the lawsuit, with the “Williams” in question being Mike Williams, a former UT defensive back who’s facing trial next month on rape charges:While the woman, a student-athlete, was meeting with executive senior associate athletics director Jon Gilbert, senior associate athletics director Mike Ward and her coach, she received a message from her roommate “who was witnessing at that moment several football players jumping” Bowles, the lawsuit says. The woman informed the athletics officials of the incident and was told they would “look into it,” according to the suit. The lawsuit says “athletic coaches were present during that altercation.”
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But, the lawsuit says, Williams told police in November 2014 that then-Tennessee defensive back Geraldo Orta had “a hit” out on Bowles.
According to the lawsuit, Orta, a Valdosta, Ga. native, told University of Tennessee police he felt “Bowles betrayed the team and that where (Orta) came from, people got shot for doing what Bowles did.”
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Orta told police in an interview conducted during an investigation into the sexual assault claims against Johnson and Williams that he approached Bowles in Smokey’s Café, the athletics dining facility. Orta admitted getting “in (Bowles’) face” and saying “some threatening things,” according to interviews with police cited in the lawsuit.
Orta also told police that then-Tennessee star Curt Maggitt confronted Bowles in the team locker room “before the team was instructed by head coach Butch Jones not to talk to him and before Bowles was given time away from the team,” the suit says.
In interviews with police, Maggitt said he confronted Bowles and said he purchased alcohol for the party at which the Jane Doe plaintiff was allegedly assaulted, the lawsuit says. Neither Orta nor Maggitt were disciplined, according to the lawsuit.
Shortly after the alleged attacks in November of 2014, the first of which came one day after Plaintiff Doe IV was allegedly raped, Bowles transferred out of the football program and continued his playing career at Chattanooga.
The alleged victim helped by the player claimed in the lawsuit that “the incidents involving Bowles contributed to a culture that intimidated victims of sexual assault by football players.”