Irony Alert: Ken Starr Should Lose His Job For Not Investigating Real Sex Crimes
As reports emerge of routine coverups of alleged Baylor football sex crimes, one wonders: where was Ken Starr?
UPDATE (5/26 12:19 p.m.) Baylor has reportedly fired head coach Art Briles.
UPDATE (5/26 2:02 p.m.)… And now the other shoe falls. Ken Starr removed as President of Baylor University.
The next big fish is still Baylor President… for now.: Few moments in history really speak to the heroic ideal of American democracy quite like watching a former federal judge testify to Congress about blowjobs so they could invoke their constitutional power to bring the President of the United States to trial. The 90s were a special time, y’all. That’s how most non-law nerds know Ken Starr — not for his tenure as a judge on the D.C. Circuit or his years as Solicitor General or the fact that he is credited/blamed — depending on your conservative convictions — for the nomination of Justice O’Connor. No, most only remember Starr as the face of the hard-charging investigation into how hard Bill Clinton charged.
Which is why there’s a tragic, horrifying irony to the mounting speculation that Starr — now, as fate would have it, a president himself — could at any point be terminated with extreme prejudice from his current post for not investigating real sex crimes in what’s shaping up to be the biggest college football scandal since the Penn State coverup. And he should.
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For those not following college football, Baylor University, where Starr serves as president, spent decades as the conference doormat until the last few years, when coach Art Briles installed an uptempo spread offense that earned the school a Heisman Trophy (Robert Griffin III) and a consistent place in the top 10 teams in the nation. The team is an offensive marvel to behold. Basically no one can cover these guys.
Except, apparently, the Baylor and Waco Police Departments, who reports suggest were just great at covering up Baylor football. Here’s what’s surfacing:
In addition to the eight allegations of sexual assault that have already been levied against five Baylor players, we found three more allegations of violence against women against three players, as well as a 2011 incident which was a fight at a university-sponsored fraternity party in which at least six Baylor players assaulted a group of students, one of whom ended up in the hospital with facial injuries and three or four displaced teeth.
One would assume such serious charges resulted in police records and investigations, but… something happened. Regarding the fight outlined above, here’s what Mark Schlabach of ESPN found in his investigation:
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When that incident happened [a fight], during the investigation a Baylor police officer called a Waco police officer. After that conversation for whatever reason the Waco police officer asked his supervisor to remove the case from the department’s computer system so it wouldn’t be accessible by the public or other officers. The incident report was locked in the supervisor’s office.
Waco police claim they do this to “protect the integrity” of high-profile cases and not to keep incidents involving the newly successful local football team free from public scrutiny. That may well be, but can’t explain Baylor’s internal foot-dragging. Like how it didn’t look into a police report filed in 2013 until September of 2015.
As the stories leaked and picked up steam following ESPN’s coverage, Baylor engaged Pepper Hamilton to review the school’s handling of the process, which is usually the last step before someone — or everyone — gets fired. The report is now in the hands of the Board of Regents, who are not releasing it to the public, which fuels speculation that the report displays the sort of complete organizational breakdown one would expect when campus police, the athletic department, and the Title IX process all seemingly fall apart under the same circumstances. [CORRECTION: Actually the report isn’t in the hands of the Regents, they’ve merely been briefed on its contents but not given physical copies to keep, apparently to bolster the school’s efforts to deny journalists seeking a copy.]
Now Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has landed in the middle of this controversy, as reporters from the Waco Tribune fight Baylor for access to police documents. Paxton’s lukewarm opinion in favor of the paper on a few limited claims only intensified concerns that authorities are bending over backward to protect Baylor from scrutiny:
In response to a request by the Tribune-Herald for all reports received by the Baylor Police Department regarding sexual assaults and improper sexual conduct and Baylor’s resistance to this request, Paxton’s office said last week that, yes, Baylor must release portions of some reports because of the Texas Legislature’s new law. But it left open questions of whether Baylor must release other portions of reports. Bizarrely, the opinion doesn’t sharply differentiate any of this.
Because Baylor claims some records must be withheld under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the university did not submit actual examples for Paxton’s office to consider, the state attorney general’s office simply didn’t rule on them. At least, so Paxton’s office says in its muddled May 17 opinion. In fact, the attorney general’s office suggests its own inspection of documents supposedly covered by FERPA is inappropriate. If so, such deference to federal authority by that office must rank as a first, given how many times the attorney general has challenged the feds.
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Which brings us back to President Starr. Two decades ago, Starr spent millions in taxpayer money to figure out if a consensual blowjob between adults took place.[1] Today he runs an institution that, from what journalists have uncovered, turned a blind eye repeatedly to sexual assault and domestic abuse allegations. Obviously there are heads that should roll at many levels of the university, but with Starr’s unique background his has to be the first. Regardless of what the Pepper Hamilton report reveals about his involvement or lack thereof in these investigations, having a man whose dogged investigative skills are his primary claim to fame continue to sit atop a university after this sort of scandal is a public relations nightmare the institution cannot afford as it seeks to rebuild its reputation.
It’s a horrible irony and the final confirmation that the sanctimonious talk about investigative integrity and the rule of law was all a smokescreen for an up-the-gut, expensive political witch hunt.
[1] And I’m actually one who thinks Bill Clinton’s liaison probably could support a sexual harassment charge, but in the absence of the other party bringing that claim, it’s not a characterization we should waste money forcing upon that relationship.
Baylor didn’t investigate sex assault claim against players for two years [ESPN]
Report identifies more Baylor football players in alleged assaults [Waco Tribune]
EDITORIAL: Baylor legal moves in sexual assault saga raise questions about Texas AG’s opinion [Waco Tribune]
Ken Starr Seems to Have Lost His Clinton-Era Detective Chops [Esquire]
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
