Report: Michigan State Failed to Report Multiple Sexual Assaults; Dantonio Handled Discipline
The Michigan State football program did not report three instances of sexual assault and three incidents of physical violence, according to a report from ESPN's Outside the Lines.
Outside the Lines reports that at least 16 Michigan State football players have been named in accusations of rape or violence against women since Dantonio took over in 2007.
The report seems to contradict head coach Mark Dantonio's assertion that there had only been two incidents of sexual assault during his 11-year tenure as head coach.
"We had one incident that involved three people. We had another incident that involved one. We have 120 players usually on our football team," Dantonio told reporters after four players were kicked off the team and expelled from the university for sexual assault earlier this year.
The details come as part of OTL's scathing report which details a culture of sexual assault within Michigan State's football and basketball programs. The university's athletic department has been in headlines for its mishandling of the Larry Nassar case; Nassar was a faculty member at the university for decades and sexually abused multiple students under the guise of medical treatment during his time there.
According to the OTL report, many accusations of sexual assault were handled by the athletic department, then headed by Mark Hollis, who resigned Friday amid the Nassar fallout. In one instance, Dantonio reportedly handled a sexual assault case by telling the player to talk to his mother about what he did.
The athletic department's efforts to keep sexual assaults in-house were apparently pretty extensive. When ESPN requested police reports and records for every football and basketball player from ten universities, Michigan State tried to block out the players' names. ESPN then successfully sued Michigan State for that move, and the names were released.
