BALTIMORE — University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) will pay student athletes $4.14 million for sexual discrimination and harassment they allegedly faced from their former swimming coach.
The settlement was approved Wednesday by Maryland's Board of Public Works.
Back in March the United States Department of Justice released an investigative report finding that UMBC failed to address disturbing allegations against former coach Chad Cradock.
Between 2015 and 2020, several male and female athletes came forward accusing Cradock of creating a hostile and hypersexualized environment among team members.
The Justice Department conducted 70 interviews, and reviewed over 100,000 documents alleging sexual misconduct within the university's swim and diving team.
Some accused Cradock of using a camera to film team members showering in the locker room. Others recalled being touched without consent in private areas of their bodies. The report also described sleepovers Cradock would host at his own house with members of his team. Some athletes even recounted Cradock exposing himself to them on occasion.
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Despite receiving several reports, the DOJ said senior administrators failed to properly investigate and address the alleged behavior.
Some supposedly tipped off the coach instead, as stated here in the report.
"On June 29, 2015, a staff member received a letter from unidentified students reporting that “a coach or athletic dep[artment] staff member” used a locker with a direct line of sight into the men’s showers and “has been seen removing an electronic device (camera) from this locker.” The letter ends, “He is a real creep and makes us students uncomfortable. Help!” Upon receiving the letter, Athletics Department staff quickly determined that the locker number referenced in the letter was registered to the Head Coach. University records show that shortly after receiving the letter, a member of the Athletics Department staff shared the letter with five other staff members. Before alerting the University Police Department, two of those staff members opened the locker themselves, determined that it contained the Head Coach’s backpack, removed the backpack from the locker, and placed it in the Head Coach’s office. University police did not inspect the locker until approximately three days later, at which time, the locker was empty. Word of the letter spread quickly among University senior administration and other Athletics Department staff. A University administrator told the Department that upon learning of the allegations, he and a senior administrator went directly to the Head Coach to share the students’ allegations and warn him that the University Police Department planned to search his locker for a camera. When officers returned to search the locker again on July 6, 2015, they did not find a camera in the locker and closed the criminal investigation as unfounded."
Cradock was eventually placed on leave in October 2020. He died the following March.
“The young student-athletes at UMBC experienced a double betrayal: their coach’s prolonged abuse compounded by their university’s utter failure to acknowledge, respond to or remedy this egregious conduct," said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. "UMBC has now taken full responsibility for its failures and has expressed its commitment to addressing them and rebuilding the trust of its community.”
In addition to the financial settlement, UMBC also agreed to follow the guidelines below.
- Significantly improve UMBC’s process for responding to complaints of sex discrimination;
- Provide additional resources and staffing for its Title IX compliance program, including a permanent Title IX Coordinator;
- Provide a full-time support person for those who have experienced sexual assault;
- Deliver training to student-athletes and athletics department employees on healthy relationships, intimate partner violence, power dynamics within the coach-athlete relationship and retaliation;
- Create and enforce a policy outlining expectations for coaching staff behavior and
- Administer surveys to student-athletes about their experiences with sex discrimination and take all necessary and appropriate corrective action.
DOJ said they will monitor compliance, which remains in effect through the 2028-2029 academic year.
UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby was in attendance for the boar meeting and commented on the settlement.
“Sadly, it is possible that we will never know the entirety of the abuse and discrimination perpetrated by the swim coach, or whether individuals experienced harm but saw the lack of appropriate response from the University and were dissuaded from reporting,” Shears Ashby said to Maryland Comptroller and sitting board member Brooke Lierman. “But the DOJ investigation has shined a light on what we believe is the scope of what occurred in that timeframe as you note. We now understand well the culture that persisted for years. And we are addressing it head-on.”
