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Baylor DE Sam Ukwuachu guilty of sexual assault, sentenced Friday

Original story:

Baylor defensive end Sam Ukwuachu has been found guilty of sexual assault in a case from October 2013 involving a former Baylor soccer player, according to Tommy Witherspoon of the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Ukwuachu was indicted on two felony charges of sexual assault in June 2014 for the incident where according to the victim's report, as obtained by the Texas Monthly, he took the woman to his apartment and allegedly forced himself on her despite her repeatedly telling him to stop.

“He was using all of his strength to pull up my dress and do stuff to me,” she said. “He had me on my stomach on the bed, and he was on top of me.” Doe testified that he pulled her dress up, pulled her underwear to the side, and forced her legs open with his toes, her head pressed between his bed and his desk, then forced himself inside of her. Doe was a virgin at the time.
Ukwuachu transferred from Boise State to Baylor in 2013 after being dismissed from the Broncos program. At Boise State, he was accused of being abusive to his girlfriend but was officially dismissed for an unspecified violation of team rules.

Texas Monthly, on Thursday, released a deep dive into the case, offering criticism of Baylor's handling of Ukwuachu's situation. The piece states Baylor requested a waiver in 2013 to allow Ukwuachu to play immediately, but the NCAA denied the request. Ukwuachu was supposed to play in 2014 but was held out due to the rape indictment. Baylor never made any official announcement or statement about Ukwuachu's case as the reason he was not playing.

Baylor released the following statement on Ukwuachu's guilty verdict:

Acts of sexual violence contradict every value Baylor University upholds as a caring Christian community. In recent years we have joined university efforts nationally to prevent campus violence against women and sexual assault, to actively support survivors of sexual assault with compassion and care, and to take action against perpetrators. We have established and fully staffed a Title IX office that employs a Title IX Coordinator and two full-time investigators. Maintaining a safe and caring community is central to Baylor's mission and at the heart of our commitment to our students, faculty and staff.

Update (Friday at 6:10 p.m.): On Friday, Sam Ukwuachu was sentenced to 10 years of felony probation and placed in the county jail for 180 days. He will also have to serve 400 hours of community service. Ukwuachu was facing up to 20 years in prison, according to Tommy Withserspoon of the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Baylor also released a statement Friday following Ukwuachu's conviction.

"Acts of sexual violence contradict every value Baylor University upholds as a caring Christian community," read the statement. "In recent years we have joined university efforts to prevent campus violence against women and sexual assault, to actively support survivors of sexual assault with compassion and care, and to take action against perpetrators. We have established and fully staffed a Title IX office that employs a Title IX Coordinator and two full-time investigators. Maintaining a safe and caring community is central to Baylor’s mission and at the heart of our commitment to our students, faculty and staff.

"After consulting this afternoon with the Baylor board of regents, the executive council and academic leadership, Baylor President and Chancellor Ken Starr called for a comprehensive internal inquiry into the circumstances associated with this case and the conduct of the offices involved. The review will be led by Jeremy Counseller, professor of law, faculty athletics representative to the Big 12 Conference and NCAA and a former Assistant Criminal District Attorney. Mr. Counseller will engage others in his review as necessary and will submit his report to the president at the conclusion of his inquiry. After analysis of his report, President Starr will determine what additional action may be necessary."
 
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Art Briles' apparent lie puts his future at Baylor in doubt

On Thursday, Baylor football coach Art Briles could charitably have been considered an incompetent know-nothing who had little interest in learning the off-the-field truth about a troubled transfer into his program.

On Friday, Briles looks more like a flat-out liar.

Now we'll see whether that's the man the Baptist school in Waco still wants leading its football program.

When Washington coach Chris Petersen issued a statement to ESPN Friday afternoon saying that he personally informed Briles about the reason for defensive end Sam Ukwuachu's dismissal from Boise State (where Peterson used to coach) in 2013, it put Briles' credibility on the front burner. Coaches don't always do what Petersen did. Good for him for speaking up – and bad for Briles.

"After Sam Ukwuachu was dismissed from the Boise State football program and expressed an interest in transferring to Baylor, I initiated a call with coach Art Briles," Petersen, who left Boise State for Washington after the 2013 season, said in the statement. "In that conversation, I thoroughly apprised Coach Briles of the circumstances surrounding Sam's disciplinary record and dismissal."

That came after Briles said this when asked Friday morning if Boise State told Baylor the unsettling details about Ukwuachu's problems: "No. No. That's not true. Lord, no. No, there's no truth. Find out who informed us and talk to them, please."

That would be Petersen. And in two sentences, the former Boise coach basically shredded Briles' limp, we-didn't-know excuse for taking a bad guy who revealed himself to be an even worse guy at Baylor. A guy who, on Thursday, was convicted of second-degree sexual assault of a fellow Baylor athlete.

A damning Texas Monthly exposé that was published this week, before the conviction, revealed that Ukwuachu was a major problem at Boise State:

"In documents from May 2013 obtained by Texas Monthly, Marc Paul, the assistant athletics director at Boise State University, recounts advising to Ukwuachu's then-girlfriend in Boise that she stay away from the house the two shared for several nights, after he put his fist through a window while drunk. Paul also makes plans for how to get police protection for the couple's other housemate, who received threatening text messages from Ukwuachu. Handwritten notes in a document from a Boise State source also refer to times that Ukwuachu would get verbally abusive over "small irritants" like a spilled drink, and note that the woman he lived with acknowledged that she would "probably not" admit it if the abuse were physical. It ends with the words 'NOT healthy relationship!' underlined. …

"And in August 2013, Chad Jackson, a senior associate athletic director at Baylor, was informed by John Cunningham, an associate athletic director at Boise State, that Ukwuachu's previous school did not support any waivers to get the player back on the field."

Yet he was welcomed in Waco in Spring 2013, sat out the '13 season as a transfer – and then sat out 2014 as well, with no real public explanation given by the school and apparently none demanded by the media that cover the Bears.

The reason, we later learned, was that he was accused of sexually assaulting a Baylor soccer player in October 2013. After a school investigation went nowhere, Ukwuachu was indicted in June 2014. The case culminated in his conviction this week.

Yet even after being indicted on two counts of sexual assault, Texas Monthly reported that the Bears were hopeful he would play for them this season. The magazine said defensive coordinator Phil Bennett informed a luncheon gathering this past June that he expected Ukwuachu to be on the field – even though his trial was scheduled to start this summer.

This story comes with the familiar odor of a striver program that has finally reached the top – and is willing to sell plenty of its soul to stay there.

Baylor football historically has been a beaten-down stepchild in the southwest – perennially unable to compete with Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M. That began to change when Briles arrived in 2008, with the breakthrough season coming in 2011 – the Bears went 10-3 and Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy.

The past two years, Baylor has gone 11-2 and been ranked in the top 10. Last year it moved into a spectacular new stadium. This year the Bears start the season No. 4 in the USA Today coaches poll. Big ambitions are being realized at last.

But at what cost?

The odor around this story is familiar in Waco because Baylor has been down a dark road before – and not that long ago, either. It was 2003.

This is the school where one basketball player, Carlton Dotson, murdered another one, Patrick Dennehy. Coach Dave Bliss was found to have committed violations in partly paying for walk-on Dennehy's schooling, and attempted to cover it up by saying Dennehy paid his way via dealing drugs. Bliss' reputation was justifiably trashed, and the basketball program was heavily sanctioned – by the NCAA and the school itself.

Baylor may not have learned very well from its own past. Once again, a coach is now ensnared in a situation that could undo his program building.

On the eve of a promising season, this mess could cost Art Briles his job. The timing isn't good, but neither is Briles' handling of the affair. Removing him is something the school should consider, if it truly cares about an athletic reputation that still bears stains from earlier this century.
 
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