re: What in the world is going down in Waco? (Update: Player found guilty of sexual assault)

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We can agree to disagree on the when he should of been off scholarship. You believe he should of been off-scholarship once an indictment was reached. I believe that Baylor restriction from all team activities but allowing him to remain on scholarship was fair until he was found guilty.

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The most concerning part is that the Waco PD, who has investigative powers, looked into this and came to the same conclusion as the Baylor investigation.

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This is Penn state all over again, Baylor didn't want to know.

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Two nights ago, while my 17-month-old daughter nuzzled closely to my chest in deep sleep, I found myself lost in thought while staring at stars in the dark.

Inside the bedroom I share with my wife, twins and three rather spoiled dogs is a Starry Night sound machine that projects different colors of stars upwards towards the ceiling and on this particular night the color on the walls is green. Unable to sleep on this night, but trapped under the weight of a precious child who seemed to be dreaming about Dora The Explorer or Mickey Mouse or whatever escapade a 17-month-old angel engages in while asleep, I didn't dare move.

So, I just stared at those green stars on the ceiling as if I was hypnotized, while my mind entered into a darker place than the room illuminated with lights. With everything I hold dear to me within two feet of my still body, my mind started to think about South Bend, Indiana.

The image that was torturing my mind, heart and soul had absolutely nothing to do with the football game that will take place in 12 days between historical rivals. There were no touchdowns, screaming fans or image of Touchdown Jesus.

All that existed was the haunting image of a woman so alone in her community during the most perilous situation of her young life that she decided that ending it all was the only choice that would ease her pain. She was so alone that she decided no existence all was better than the one she owned.

Inside those stars from which I simply couldn't look away from was a girl named Lizzy Seeberg and in the aftermath of the events from Waco this week, I couldn't control what happened next.

I cried.

For those that aren't familiar with Lizzy, she was a 19-year-old student at Saint Mary's College, a school just down the road from Notre Dame. On the night of August 31, 2010, Lizzy was left alone in a room with a Notre Dame football player, who then sexually assaulted her according to the handwritten statement she provided to school police.

In the direct aftermath of reporting what happened that night, the following occurred.

a. After turning to the police, a mutual friend of the girl and the alleged rapist sent her text messages warning her not to "do anything you would regret," and that "messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea."

b. Over the course of the first 10 days after she reported the crime, the police took zero action. The Notre Dame football player named in her report was not questioned and never so much as missed a practice.

c. So distraught by everything taking place in and around her world, Lizzy committed suicide.

d. The police investigating her claim were so interested in seeking justice that they waited another five days after her suicide before finally questioning the alleged attacker.

e. Since Lizzy was now dead, no action was ever taken against her alleged attacker. No missed practices. No missed games. No missed nothing.

f. In the year that followed the devastating decision to end her life, Notre Dame officials executed a concerted effort to slander the young female's name in the shadows by positioning her as a sexually charged woman who was seeking an apparent good time.



The similarities between Lizzy's situation and that of former Baylor soccer player "Jane Doe" (her court name), whose own sexual assault by a Baylor football player in 2013 led to a felony conviction this week, go well beyond the colors on the uniform and the private school status soaked in Christian values.

In addition to the uncaring investigations and the enabling institutions that protected football over all else, the situations that Lizzy and Jane found themselves in never had to occur, if only the men responsible for bringing the alleged and the convicted rapists had cared enough to know more about the young men they brought into their programs than their ability to disrupt an offense.

As was the case with convicted sexual assaulter Sam Ukwuachu, the man Lizzy believed had stolen her mind, body and soul arrived on his college campus with a reputation of violent behavior off the field and as was the case with Art Briles, nothing meant more than adding a player that might help Notre Dame win, regardless of the costs.

Prince Shembo is the name of the player that allegedly raped Lizzy and before he ever arrived as a four-star prospect, he was suspended as a high school senior for throwing a desk at a teacher that had the gall to take away his cell phone. Let me repeat that Shembo threw a desk at a teacher. And Notre Dame took him in anyway.

Five years after allegedly raping Lizzy, Shembo lost his job in the NFL when he murdered a girlfriend's Yorkie in May. According to the police, Shembo left the tiny animal with a fractured rib, fractured liver, abdominal hemorrhage, thoracic hemorrhage, extensive bruising and hemorrhage in the muscles in her front leg and shoulders, head trauma, hemorrhage and edema in lungs, hemorrhage between the eso****us and trachea, and hemorrhage in the left eye with internal injuries.

This is the man Notre Dame and investigating police chose to protect over the needs of a shattered young woman.

While sobbing quietly in thought about Lizzy and Jane, I could feel my daughter breathing in and out while draped across my body, secure in knowing that there could be no safer place than the nest she'd made for herself on this night. The very thing that comforted her was the thing that was haunting me before I closed my eyes for the night.

There will be a day when Haven is a young adult and I won't be able to protect her as I can currently. At some point, she'll be a young woman like Lizzy and Jane, which means I'm going to drop her off at a college of her choosing and all I'll be able to do at that point is pray that the fates of Lizzy and Jane never find her.

What I've learned in the last 17 months is that nothing terrifies a father more than the idea of turning his little princess loose in a world that is quicker to put her on trial should she ever find herself sexually assaulted than to ensure she's protected from the animal who is responsible. Heaven forbid, such a situation ever involve a football player, because our society has long cared more about wins and losses than protecting those who can't protect themselves.

Just as my mind wandered into thought about what the fathers of Lizzy and Jane must go through on a daily basis, my daughter popped up out of sleep, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. Suddenly, her eyes found my eyes and she broke out in the most beautifully innocent smile these eyes have ever seen.

And I cried some more. For Lizzy. For Jane. For their fathers. For my daughter. For me.

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How do we know that?

Because Baylor defensive coordinator Phil Bennett told a room full of Baylor alumni that this summer, nearly a year after charges were presented and just a few months before Ukwuachu's trial was set to begin. Oh, and Ukwuachu's attorney mentioned the same thing in court this week. Pending pretty much anything but a guilty conviction, the hope was that Ukwuachu would play this year

Meanwhile, over the course of the last two years, Briles went out of his way to remain vague on the circumstances surrounding Ukwuachu when anyone asked about his situation. Instead of acknowledging what was taking place, Briles's disingenuously misled anyone and everyone looking for an answer. Briles would have you believe that because Ukwuachu never played, he took the proper amount of action in such an incredibly dangerous set of circumstances, but the truth is all Baylor ever really did was take his name off the roster, which really isn't the same thing as booting a player from the program at all.

The truth is that he enabled a monster before, during and right up until his conviction of a violent sex crime in almost every way a college coach could possibly enable and protect such a monster.

And now he would like for us all to believe that he's the trustworthy one and everyone else is the liar.

The disaster known as Baylor University ...

In the event you're under the impression that I believe Briles alone is to blame, let's take a look at the incredible set of decisions that took place under Baylor president Ken Starr's watch.

1. Baylor Associate Dean Bethany McCraw, who was responsible for the Title IX investigation of the alleged assault, cared so deeply about finding the truth that she didn't even wait to include the results from the pending rape examination before concluding that "there was not enough evidence to move forward" in the school's investigation of Jane Doe's claim. McCraw's work was so careless and flimsy that none of it was allowed into evidence in court this week
2. In the aftermath of the allegations, rather than take action against the alleged rapist, the school forced Jane Doe to change her classes and her study times, eventually taking scholarship money away from her when she struggled to keep it all together, which caused the victim to eventually transfer.

3. The school knowingly allowed Briles to breach normal protocol in the situation of sexual assault charges involving student-athletes, eventually allowing Ukwuachu to graduate from the school after receiving an uninterrupted education worth six figures.
. He said he told her that if she would have called him that night, he would have given her a ride home

4. The school's athletic chaplain, Wes Yeary, testified on behalf of Ukwuachu, despite the fact that Jane Doe had told Yeary about the assault. According to the Waco Tribune Herald, this is what happened when the prosecution asked if Yeary knew the victim:
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"Under cross-examination, LaBorde asked if he also knows the victim in the case, bringing an immediate objection from Dan MacLemore, who represents Baylor and was sitting in the back of the courtroom. MacLemore said he would assert the pastor's clergy-parishioner privilege if there were questions about pastoral counseling with the victim.

"After a conference in the judge's chambers, which included the victim, Yeary testified that she told him about the assault

5. Perhaps more than anything, every single person involved in this story on the university side of things is guilty for never approaching Briles and saying, "Lord forgive me, but what the ^%$# are you doing? Nothing about your decision-making and actions is worthy of a school that prides itself in being a place of Christian ideologies

The bottom line with Briles

It's his job to know who and what is coming in and out of his program, and no one else's.

Enablers of his activities will have you believe that it takes some sort of telepathic skill to uncover the events that journalists from Texas Monthly were able to find by simply asking the right people. Rather than asking how Briles is supposed to know about these details, perhaps the enablers should be asking how many abusers of women has Briles let into his programs over the years through similar failed background checks

If the message today is that Briles isn't responsible for bringing in a person with a history of violence and possible abuse, then what you're really saying is that he's never responsible for anything other than wins and losses, and maybe that's the way Baylor University wants it.

But, it is his responsibility and not knowing isn't an excuse that works in 2015.

If we're to believe Briles, he unknowingly allowed an abuser to come into his school and within months, that abuser sexually assaulted a women

That's on him. It happened on Briles's watch
If the message today is that he's not responsible for any of this, then let's just throw the idea of responsibility out altogether. At no point in any of this has Briles ever stood up and said, "The buck stops with me. It was my decision to bring him into the program and I am responsible for all things that happen in my program." Instead, he's tried to pin blame on Boise State, Chris Petersen, Tony Heath and just about anyone else he can think of.

Here's the truth

Art Briles is a dangerous, disingenuous enabler of abusers and he must be removed as head coach from Baylor University's football program.

If that doesn't happen, there's zero reason to believe history won't repeat itself. Again.

We cannot allow that happen

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