alleged sexual assault investigation of 4 on 1 by public saftey

[Goose]

lawwarrior--There is NO WAY thhe school covers this up. I believe they will dig deeper than ever because their ass is on the line.

[TallTitan34]

The DPS report from November, the television stations, and newspaper all have stated that police involvement was declined.  I find the timing very interesting, considering it went to the police three days before MU's Sweet Sixteen game.

[Golden Avalanche]

The DPS report from November, the television stations, and newspaper all have stated that police involvement was declined.  I find the timing very interesting, considering it went to the police three days before MU's Sweet Sixteen game.

More and more it seems to be a case where an allegation was made, the University investigated it, the allegations were not found to be backed by evidence, and after many weeks and sudden good press for certain players, the alleged victim decided it was time to rain on the parade and "bring them down" so now the police are called in.

Considering the horrendous media the MPD has gotten the last few years, it wouldn't surprise me if a few of the cigar-smokers felt this might be the time to recoup some good will from the public.

[jficke13]

lawwarrior--There is NO WAY thhe school covers this up. I believe they will dig deeper than ever because their ass is on the line.

I agree. Maybe I was unclear in the way I said it.

The other thing that makes me doubt that this was serious are the fact that there have been less serious incidents that have led to people leaving the team in the recent past. If the allegations were true, under no circumstances would these guys have been on the team all season.

[Mr. Nielsen]

WMLW news just reported, the alleged victim is thinking about dropping the case after threats are made towards her.

[🏀]

WMLW news just reported, the alleged victim is thinking about dropping the case after threats are made towards her.

Wow. I'm getting more and more strongly against this 'victim'.

[jficke13]

A very high up editor of the Journal Sentinel said today that they would consider publishing the names (without them being charged) only if they felt it was likely that there was a cover up going on by MU. They haven't published the names. I think that supports the (obvious) notion that there is no cover up.

[MUDPT]

The Office of Student Development handled the conduct cases when I worked there (last year was '05).  When someone had a conduct hearing, you could go in and view your conduct report.  It drove people crazy because the rules were, you couldn't  photocopy anything, but you could sit there and copy it word for word by writing it down. Only people who were on the conduct report could view it.  No public record of any kind.  I'm confident that the deans that worked in this office wouldn't have stood by and let something this serious slide, "just because it's the basketball team."  No way.  Things may have changed since I worked there.

[Tom Crean's Tanning Bed]

WMLW news just reported, the alleged victim is thinking about dropping the case after threats are made towards her.

If there are threats, they need to be dealt with; however, given the whole timeline and circumstances of this case, I wouldn't be as surprised if "threats" is cover for "I have a weak case".

[mu2031]

My impression has been that the girl honestly didn't realize how big of a deal this would become. I don't think she ever intended the media to be so intrusive or involved. Even if I were a victim, I might prefer anguish in privacy to justice in public, due to the sensitive nature of the claim. You could interpret dropping the charges as a sign that the allegations aren't serious/are unfounded, but you could also see this as a scared girl who was looking for more help than she got at MU (and certainly got more publicity than she bargained for) and is only now realizing that the additional help comes at a great personal cost. She might see "justice" to her accusers as less important than protecting her own dignity. I'm not sure I would handle it differently.

I'm just speculating, of course. But I figure before we throw this girl under the bus, we could give her the benefit of the doubt. I would imagine she isn't on the Scoop (over)analyzing how every event in the day-to-day life of college basketball affects our team....not that there's anything wrong with that.

[ChicosBailBonds]

WMLW news just reported, the alleged victim is thinking about dropping the case after threats are made towards her.

That's pretty sad ,if true, that people are making threats.  This is why so many people that are truly assaulted don't come forward.

No need to be threatening people or intimidating them.  Maybe she's making those up, maybe she's not.

I hate these cases.  There are definitely situations where the chick is hosing the dude(s) and there are definitely cases where the dudes totally screw-up but the chicks are scared into saying anything for fear or reprisal.

What's going on in this case?  Who knows. 

[Clam Crowder]

Yeah alot of people on campus seem to be indicating a certain girl. I have no clue who she is but one of my friends seems to know exactly who it is. If she made this so public before now and then went to Police then kids may know it is and be looking at her in a negative way. Very poor handling by the girl and other students that she probably told out of confidence at first

[wyzgy]

well alcohol would only be involved if these kids were 21 right? yeah right...i believe some form of harassment occurred, most likely verbal in nature that got pretty close to physical, but nothing really to push the allegation,   the next day as these girls reveiwed what they could remember of the night before, the harassment episode took on a life of it's own and some girls probably goaded the victim in to making more of the situation.  victim gets a lot of mixed signals and legal ping pong going on becomes a little more than she bargained for.  now it's sink or swim.  i don't think she wants 15 more minutes of fame.  she has already done some damage and will probably have to cover her a$$.  if it wasn't physical, and was verbal only, my God what have we become.  as soon as she realised that these basketball players don't really have any money(don't start) and the univ. will fight this tooth and nail, is it really worth dragging out all the people for a "beer summit" type mediation?  alcohol, holloween weekend, boys and girls=sexual tension.  for you deer hunters out there, the girls were in rut and the guys were marking their territory and doing head-butts

[shiloh26]

Yeah alot of people on campus seem to be indicating a certain girl. I have no clue who she is but one of my friends seems to know exactly who it is. If she made this so public before now and then went to Police then kids may know it is and be looking at her in a negative way. Very poor handling by the girl and other students that she probably told out of confidence at first

I hesitate to say something like this until we know more.  I understand your sentiment, but if this does turn out to be something as serious as sexual assault, then I can't imagine how hard of a situation this is for the girl, and I hate to call it "poor handling" given that.  I mean, look how much public attention this is getting in a matter that, to her, at its core, is very private.  Basically, I think its easy for us to say, "she should have done x" now, when after this happened, whatever this is, she was probably an embarrassed, scared 18-21 year old who certainly didn't want to draw a lot of attention on what happened. 

Clearly, I have no clue what actually happened, I'm just saying that the above is a plausible scenario here and I don't think we should start criticizing the girl for taking some time to bring this to light before we know what "this" is. 

[Brewtown Andy]

WMLW news just reported, the alleged victim is thinking about dropping the case after threats are made towards her.

Pretty sure threatening/intimidating a victim/witness is a crime in Wisconsin.

[shiloh26]

I think you're misunderstanding what I was trying to get across ... or probably I didn't write it clearly enough.  I'm not suggesting that the fact she didn't take it to cops instead of or before public safety is going to raise questions, but the fact she didn't take it to cops at all.
Believe me, from experience I can tell you any prosecutor is going to look twice - and then a few more times - at an adult's sex assault accusation that's been left unreported to law enforcement authorities for six months. Maybe that's not fair, but it is reality.
Didn't take Crim 001, but I'd venture to guess my knowledge of and professional experience related to the criminal justice system is greater than a very large majority around here.

"Prosecutor" is the key word there. They have free reign in charging or not charging someone.  Ultimately, for the criminal case, whether the victim wants to "press charges" is utterly irrelevant, unlike most legal pop culture would have you believe. That probably plays a factor in any D.A's decision to charge, but he can charge, or fail to charge at his will.  If he places a strong weight on failure to report for a while, then it can end there, if they don't think its a large factor, then it wont stop a case from proceeding. 

[mu03eng]

well alcohol would only be involved if these kids were 21 right? yeah right...i believe some form of harassment occurred, most likely verbal in nature that got pretty close to physical, but nothing really to push the allegation,   the next day as these girls reveiwed what they could remember of the night before, the harassment episode took on a life of it's own and some girls probably goaded the victim in to making more of the situation.  victim gets a lot of mixed signals and legal ping pong going on becomes a little more than she bargained for.  now it's sink or swim.  i don't think she wants 15 more minutes of fame.  she has already done some damage and will probably have to cover her a$$.  if it wasn't physical, and was verbal only, my God what have we become.  as soon as she realised that these basketball players don't really have any money(don't start) and the univ. will fight this tooth and nail, is it really worth dragging out all the people for a "beer summit" type mediation?  alcohol, holloween weekend, boys and girls=sexual tension.  for you deer hunters out there, the girls were in rut and the guys were marking their territory and doing head-butts

My understanding was that DPS was called the night it occurred, so there should be no "I don't quite remember what happened" aspect to this.  Thats why, right now, I'm leaning toward something that was blown out of proportion because the university had every opportunity to do the right things and has shown no history of not doing the right thing. 

Having said that, if there is something to these allegations that is more than inappropriate verbal statements, and the university didn't follow through in the best interests of the victim and university this is a SIGNIFICANT issue to me.  If they tried to sweep it under the rug at all it would be the dumbest thing, because in this day and age there is just no way you are going to get away with it.

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

well alcohol would only be involved if these kids were 21 right? yeah right...i believe some form of harassment occurred, most likely verbal in nature that got pretty close to physical, but nothing really to push the allegation,   the next day as these girls reveiwed what they could remember of the night before, the harassment episode took on a life of it's own and some girls probably goaded the victim in to making more of the situation.  victim gets a lot of mixed signals and legal ping pong going on becomes a little more than she bargained for.  now it's sink or swim.  i don't think she wants 15 more minutes of fame.  she has already done some damage and will probably have to cover her a$$.  if it wasn't physical, and was verbal only, my God what have we become.  as soon as she realised that these basketball players don't really have any money(don't start) and the univ. will fight this tooth and nail, is it really worth dragging out all the people for a "beer summit" type mediation?  alcohol, holloween weekend, boys and girls=sexual tension.  for you deer hunters out there, the girls were in rut and the guys were marking their territory and doing head-butts

Why don't you just make up some player names while you are at it? You've managed to make up everything else about this.

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.

To write the female student off as some loon looking for 15min of fame is insensitive, and quite frankly, the dumbest thing I've read on here in a while. 

On the other side of the coin, to write the players off as thugs is inaccurate and unfair.

Let's see the facts before we start to just make them up.

[GGGG]

well alcohol would only be involved if these kids were 21 right? yeah right...i believe some form of harassment occurred, most likely verbal in nature that got pretty close to physical, but nothing really to push the allegation,   the next day as these girls reveiwed what they could remember of the night before, the harassment episode took on a life of it's own and some girls probably goaded the victim in to making more of the situation.  victim gets a lot of mixed signals and legal ping pong going on becomes a little more than she bargained for.  now it's sink or swim.  i don't think she wants 15 more minutes of fame.  she has already done some damage and will probably have to cover her a$$.  if it wasn't physical, and was verbal only, my God what have we become.  as soon as she realised that these basketball players don't really have any money(don't start) and the univ. will fight this tooth and nail, is it really worth dragging out all the people for a "beer summit" type mediation?  alcohol, holloween weekend, boys and girls=sexual tension.  for you deer hunters out there, the girls were in rut and the guys were marking their territory and doing head-butts

Well hell, MPD might as well drop the charges now.  You've got it all figured out.

[GGGG]

The Office of Student Development handled the conduct cases when I worked there (last year was '05).  When someone had a conduct hearing, you could go in and view your conduct report.  It drove people crazy because the rules were, you couldn't  photocopy anything, but you could sit there and copy it word for word by writing it down. Only people who were on the conduct report could view it.  No public record of any kind.  I'm confident that the deans that worked in this office wouldn't have stood by and let something this serious slide, "just because it's the basketball team."  No way.  Things may have changed since I worked there.

According to their web-site, all of these hearings are audio recorded now.

[StillWarriors]

Pretty sure the identity of the girl and the guys are pretty widely known on campus. A current student I know said there was a lot of talk in the Fall that that allegations were made against a particular player.

Even if this blows over somehow, clearly something occurred (sexual harrassment finding), and I sure hope Buzz dealt with it at the time. I suspect and hope that he did. Buzz makes no bones about putting himself and the team out there as high character guys etc...even if this is blown out of proportion, it sounds like there was something to address, and I really hope he did. It would be against everything he espouses not to. I'm a big fan of Buzz, and would hate if this wasn't handled right. With the rumors of his new deal, clearly the administration must feel it was handled properly.

What a dark cloud over the fun way the season ended.

[Benny B]

Why don't you just make up some player names while you are at it? You've managed to make up everything else about this.

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.

To write the female student off as some loon looking for 15min of fame is insensitive, and quite frankly, the dumbest thing I've read on here in a while. 

On the other side of the coin, to write the players off as thugs is inaccurate and unfair.

Let's see the facts before we start to just make them up.

That is pretty dumb.  Maybe not the dumbest in a while, but certainly right up there.

What would be just as dumb is chasing down a college basketball team - this year's Marquette one, at that - thinking you're going to get 15 minutes of fame.  I can imagine there are some wacky-brained people in college these days, but at Marquette?  We do have minimum standards on admissions, right?  To be this dumb, we're talking tOSU-type intelligence (or lack thereof) there. Then again, chasing down tOSU basketball team looking for 15 minutes would be the smart thing to do.

Houston, we have a conundrum.

[NavinRJohnson]

I'm a big fan of Buzz, and would hate if this wasn't handled right. With the rumors of his new deal, clearly the administration must feel it was handled properly.

You've summed up my feeling nicely. If there is something to this, and it is/was handled a la Steve Alford, I will want Buzz, as well as Cottingham gone immediately. If there is not much to it/its an overreaction/blown out of proportion/something intentional by the alleged victim, etc.  (according to my own assessment, if when we find anything out), and it has been dealt with, I'm good.

[MUfan12]

So to sum up... no one really knows what took place. The only sexual assault on record involving MU was the 5 on 5 one in Newark last Friday. As of now, North Carolina has not been charged.

[BrewCity83]

So to sum up... no one really knows what took place. The only sexual assault on record involving MU was the 5 on 5 one in Newark last Friday. As of now, North Carolina has not been charged.

But in about 5 months look for Buzz to file a report with the Newark police...