Ex-UNC Basketball Player Jalek Felton Expelled for Sexual Assault, Records Show

Jalek Felton, a former basketball player for the University of North Carolina, was expelled for sexual assault, according to records released by the school on Thursday.

Originally, UNC had announced that Felton was suspended in spring of 2018, before Kerry Sutton, his attorney, claimed on Twitter that he withdrew from the university on Mar. 1, 2018.  

The 6-foot-3 guard was found to have violated UNC's policies on sexual violence or sexual assault. Felton was expelled from the UNC System, ordered to have no contact with the individual who filed the complaint and was banned from campus for four years, reported UNC's student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel and the News & Observer. 

This information was made public after the school released 15 sexual assault records following a four-year lawsuit filed in the fall of 2016 by the DTH Media Corporation, WRAL, The Charlotte Observer and The Durham Herald Sun. 

The N.C. Supreme Court ruled on May 1 that the university must release the disciplinary records for individuals found responsible for "rape, sexual assault or related acts of sexual misconduct." 

In the records obtained by The Daily Tar Heel, there were "10 cases of sexual assault or sexual violence, four cases of sexual misconduct and one case of deliberate touching of another's sexual parts without consent."

This comes just a month after the U.S. Department of Education ruled that UNC had to pay a $1.5 million settlement for misreporting campus crime statistics. 

Jalek, the nephew of former UNC and NBA star Raymond Felton, played 22 games during his freshman year during the Tar Heels' 2017-2018 season. He cited federal privacy laws for not disclosing details concerning his reported suspension on Jan. 30, 2018. 

Although Felton retained an attorney, Sutton told the News & Observer at the time that UNC was only gathering information about misconduct. He was not charged with a crime. 

Rather than transferring to a different school, Felton went on to play professionally for Petrol Olimpija, a team in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as well as teams in Finland and Mexico later in his career.