The head coach of UC Berkeley’s men’s basketball team acknowledged he knew that a female reporter was having a problem with his assistant coach two months before the athletic department alerted university officials to the possibility the woman was being sexually harassed, emails obtained by The Chronicle show.
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The fourth-seeded Golden Bears play in the NCAA tournament Friday against Hawaii.
New information is being released on sexual harassment allegations that led to the dismissal of a University of California Berkeley basketball coach.
“To dispel any doubts about Coach Martin’s role, the university will be initiating a review of all of the documents and communications related to his actions”. “We firmly believe the results will support our confidence in Coach Martin”.
Supervisors and managers are required to promptly forward any sexual misconduct complaints, and those who fail to do so may face discipline, campus policy says.
Yann Hufnagel retains same legal firm that defended Victor Conte in the BALCO case, saying that the OPHD report is “wrong”.
The reporter who complained about Hufnagel’s actions told investigators she felt trapped into tolerating his unwelcome advances because she relied on him as a news source. She also ordered Dirks to remove former Vice Chancellor of Research Graham Fleming, who had his own sexual harassment scandal past year, from any administrative duties.
Hufnagel said earlier Wednesday he hired a lawyer to fight the university’s decision to terminate his employment. Being ripped away from a team that I love deeply has been, in a word, unbearable. All three men initially were allowed to keep their jobs but ended up resigning under pressure.
The Hufnagel case is the latest in a string of sexual harassment complaints at UC Berkeley that have come to light in the past year – the third in the past five months.
McNamara says Hufnagel expressed interest in someone who was not a Berkeley student or employee and that he never touched her.
The journalist in question told Cal that after a game, she had given Hufnagel a ride home since he was too drunk to drive and that he had repeatedly solicited her for six with “increasingly explicit overtures”.
Although their accounts differed about whose auto they drove back to his apartment into the garage and who was driving, the investigator found the reporter’s account “credible that [Hufnagel] repeatedly insisted that she accompany him up to his apartment, even after she declined and while she was closed into Respondent’s parking garage and Respondent was in control of her ability to get out of the garage”.
In one reproduced interaction, the journalist asks Hufnagel “Are you thinking I’m going to have sex with you?”, to which the coach responds: “Yes”. “What is your phone number?” Respondent explained, “With all candor, I was trying to trick her into going upstairs”.
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According to a March 14, 2016, report, Hufnagel responded to her rebuffs by thwarting her professionally, providing faulty information as she pursued a story, with this newfound lack of access ultimately costing her her job.
