KU Athletic Dept. Probe Ordered

Doug Tucker

Saturday, May 6, 2000 | 8:30 a.m.

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Kansas football coach Terry Allen, speaking so softly he could barely be heard, apologized Friday for his handling of a sexual abuse charge against two players.

"The way this situation transpired was wrong," the fourth-year coach told members of the Kansas University Athletics Corporation. "I feel very, very, very bad about this."

Athletic director Bob Frederick also apologized and announced an internal investigation was being launched into the way the situation was dealt with.

"Clearly, I've spent a lot of time in the last week thinking about all this. We've taken a lot of shots and deservedly so," Frederick said.

The woman is a Kansas soccer player. Neither she nor the two football players have been publicly identified. The case is now in the hands of police, who have not filed charges.

The woman said two drunken players approached her in the parking lot of a Lawrence nightclub in February and one grabbed her around the waist, lifted her into the air and ignored her requests to leave her alone.

Holding her face down on the hood of a truck, she said, the players fondled, spanked and taunted her.

The woman didn't immediately go to police about the incident, she said, because Allen promised he would punish the players in an "appropriate way" if she did not press charges.

"The only punishment they got was they had to run stairs at the stadium one day," she said Tuesday.

On April 26 she went to police, who made the report public Tuesday.

In a prepared statement earlier in the week, Allen said: "I was not, in any way, trying to make a deal with the student-athlete for her not to report this matter to the police. The actions that I have taken related to this incident are not limited to what has been reported by the media."

Nevertheless, Frederick appeared angry Friday when he admitted to the KUAC, "We made some mistakes when the student-athlete approached members of our staff to report the Feb. 26 incident."

"It would be another mistake if we didn't learn from this," he said.

Allen, 14-20 in three years as Kansas coach, kept his hands in his pockets during his brief remarks at the opening of the meeting of the faculty/student group that oversees athletics.

"Obviously, this is a difficult situation for me," he said. "Basically, I want to tell you I'm sorry. ... I promise you I will learn from this situation."

Frederick said he had asked Barbara Ballard, assistant vice chancellor for the Office of Student Affairs, to make an independent assessment of athletic department policies.

"Dr. Ballard is an outstanding individual whose professional career has been dedicated to helping college students," Frederick said. "She is a widely respected expert in sexual assault issues and victim support services."

Frederick also said he has asked the National Consortium for Academic Sports to have its Mentors in Violence Prevention hold seminars for athletes and staff.