A federal judge Wednesday rejected a motion by former Baylor University head football Coach Art Briles to dismiss him as a defendant in a Title IX lawsuit by a former student, who alleges Briles and other Baylor officials failed to act against a Baylor running back who physically abused her.
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman rejected a motion for summary judgment in the lawsuit brought in 2016 by Dolores Lozano against Briles, former Athletics Director Ian McCaw and Baylor itself. She claims officials failed to take serious action against her former boyfriend, Devin Chafin, “in part because Chafin was a member of the football team.”
She accuses Briles of negligence and negligent training and supervision in connection with the football program. Briles was added as a defendant in 2018, when Pitman allowed Lozano to file an amended complaint.
Pitman rejected Briles’ argument that a two-year statute of limitations had expired in the matter. He backed Lozano’s claims that she could not have known about Briles’ possible role until 2016, when local and national media reported on a pattern of sexual assaults and cover-ups at Baylor.
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“We are very pleased with the decision,” Lozano’s attorney, Sheila Haddock, said. “What this decision today means is that we will get to have a jury to decide. … The denial of summary judgment means we will be going to trial, at least against Art Briles.”
Briles’ attorney, Ernest Cannon, said Wednesday he had not yet read the decision and deferred comment to another defense attorney in the case, Reid Simpson, who did not immediately return calls Wednesday afternoon.
Briles, who was ousted in 2016 as a law firm Baylor hired to review the school’s handling of Title IX-related cases returned its findings, rejected all claims of wrongdoing in his motion for summary judgment, filed in November 2020.
“Baylor’s discovery responses and witness testimony also confirm that Briles did not violate any Baylor University policies and did not conceal anything from Baylor or anyone else,” the rejected motion states.
He also asserts that Lozano’s claims are linked to a “PR campaign launched by Baylor and its Regents, principally Merss. Cary Gray and Ron Murff, to shift blame for the ‘Baylor Sexual Assault Scandal’ to Briles and the football program.”
Baylor and McCaw have echoed Briles’ statute of limitations argument in their own motions for summary judgment, which have not yet been decided.
In his order Wednesday, Pitman points out testimony and evidence that Lozano’s attorneys supplied from an unrelated defamation lawsuit that Briles concealed disciplinary problems, and a text from Briles to McCaw about how Waco police would keep quiet about an alleged assault.
Plaintiffs in the Lozano case have agreed to release the city of Waco, which the suit had accused of failing to adequately investigate Lozano’s assault complaints. Haddock said it would be difficult to prove Waco police as a whole had a “custom, pattern and practice” of unfair treatment of accusers.
“We decided our energies were better spent pursuing Baylor,” she said.
While Lozano’s case drags on, Baylor is also facing Title IX lawsuits involving 15 sexual assault survivors. No trial dates have been set in the cases.
Lozano met Chafin when he was a football recruit visiting Baylor in spring 2012, and they began a relationship that fall, according to the lawsuit. Running back Coach Jeff Lebby later enlisted her to tutor Chafin, and she became “Chafin’s de facto handler,” the lawsuit states.
Lozano claims Chafin first assaulted her at his off-campus apartment in March 2014, slapping her, kicking her repeatedly in the stomach, pushing her on to his bedroom floor and choking her until she could not breathe.
She claims that at least six Baylor staffers and leaders were made aware of that assault, including Lebby, an associate athletic director, and a team chaplain.
According to the lawsuit, the only discipline Chafin received was to be assigned additional drills at football practice. According to the suit, Chafin hit Lozano during an altercation in a bar parking lot in April 2014, and she identified him as the assailant when she went for treatment at Baylor’s on-campus health clinic.
Chafin threw Lozano to the ground in a third incident at his apartment in April 2014, according to the suit.
Lozano’s mother contacted several Baylor athletics officials to raise concern about the abuse, but no further disciplinary action was taken, according to the lawsuit.
Briles and Baylor both dispute aspects of Lozano’s account.
Baylor’s motion for summary judgment states Lozano met with Baylor judicial affairs director Bethany McCraw, but declined her offer of a no-contact order. She also declined to file criminal charges against Chafin and continued her relationship with him into April 2014, Baylor’s filing claims.