Appeals Court Considers Reviving CU Sex Assault Case

No criminal sexual assault charges were filed as a result of the scandal.

May 7, 2007

DENVER (AP) - The attorney for a woman who said she was gang raped at a Colorado football recruiting party said Monday a judge should have considered a pattern of other alleged sexual assaults involving players and recruits.

U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn dismissed a lawsuit filed by Lisa Simpson and another woman, twice ruling the women failed to prove the university was deliberately indifferent to any harassment.

During a hearing at the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeal, a panel of federal judges asked lawyers for both sides to detail what they knew about other allegations of assault and harassment, and who had been notified.

The judges didn't say when they would rule.

Simpson watched the hearing from the front row with her mother, Karen Burd, and declined to comment. Burd said her daughter only wants to get her "day in court".

"That's what we're hoping and praying for," Burd said.

The case by Simpson and another woman was dismissed in March 2005. They say they were sexually assaulted at an off-campus party in 2001 and that CU violated a federal gender equity law by fostering an atmosphere that led to the alleged attacks.

In their appeal, lawyers for the women argued that officials knew of sexual assaults and harassment four years before the 2001 party, and that the school concealed several prior assaults from them.

The recruiting scandal dominated headlines in Colorado in 2004 and beyond for months. Former Gov. Bill Owens at one point appointed the attorney general to lead a grand jury investigation, which resulted in an indictment against a former football recruiting aide for soliciting a prostitute and misusing a school cell phone.

A separate probe, backed by the CU Board of Regents, concluded that drugs, alcohol and sex were used to entice blue chip recruits to the Boulder campus, but said none of the activity was knowingly sanctioned by university officials.


 

 

The school responded by overhauling oversight of the athletics department and putting some of the most stringent policies in place for any football recruiting program. The fallout included the resignation of university president Elizabeth Hoffman and the departure of athletic director Dick Tharp. Football coach Gary Barnett stepped down in 2005.

No criminal sexual assault charges were filed as a result of the scandal.

Sixteen civil rights and women's groups filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the appeal.