richard
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A little girl on a big campus
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May 31 01:24 UTC 2002 |
A sad commentary on our times. This story reprinted courtesy
http://www.espn.go.com/magazine, from ESPN magazine:
"The most important recruit in UAB history was a freckle-faced, carrot-
topped 14-year-old named Brittany, who finished high school in under a
year. UAB pursued the 5'1", 120-pound bookworm like it would a
quarterback who could rope the deep out. Brittany, who looks like a
cross between Little Orphan Annie and Molly Ringwald, grew up an hour
down Route 280 in tiny Childersburg (pop. 4900). Frank and Jackie
Benefield, as country as cornbread, had been trying for a child for 20
years before Brittany was born. They called her the miracle baby. When
other children were stuck on c-a-t, Brittany could rattle off b-l-u-e-b-
e-r-r-y. Her second grade teacher suggested Brittany jump through to
third grade. Jackie Benefield wasn't sure, but figured the teacher knew
best.
The Benefields were protective of their only child, who had her dad's
wide smile and her mom's soft eyes. Brittany's social life revolved
around a church youth group, its skate parties and Bible classes. Her
folks were strict about what she could do. While other sixth-graders
rehashed Home Improvement, Brittany kept quiet about her favorites --
Bugs, Daffy and Mister Ed. When Brittany was in seventh grade, Jackie
bought her a new dress for the spring dance. But when a student
threatened to bring a gun, the school cancelled the event. That's when
the Benefields decided to home-school Brittany. The child prodigy
earned her degree at 13. Still, Frank, now 60, and Jackie, 54, worried
about Brittany's future. "I always thought, if we just lived to see her
educated and able to take care of herself, she'd be okay," says Jackie.
In March 1999, 14-year-old Brittany was accepted at Auburn, making
headlines in The Birmingham News. When her scholarship money got lost
in a bureaucratic maze, Auburn told the family not to worry, they'd
hold her place for the next class. A few weeks later, though, Jackie
got a call from UAB. They wanted Brittany too, and they were offering
full tuition. Jackie was thrilled -- and ner-vous; Birmingham, after
all, was the big city.
Brittany, having spent day after monotonous day at home, couldn't stop
smiling. Her plan was to finish law school before she turned 21. As it
turns out, Brittany Benefield's day in court arrived three years ahead
of schedule -- not as a lawyer, but as a plaintiff accusing 26 UAB
athletes of sexual abuse and a university for its culpability in the
matter. Acting through her mother, Brittany Benefield has filed
lawsuits under Title IX in state and federal courts. The Benefields are
suing UAB trustees, administrators, coaches, athletes, resident
assistants, police and others. At the time of publication, the
Benefields were seeking $80 million in compensatory and punitive
damages.
This is the story of what happens when a naïve 15-year-old prodigy
collides with an upward-reaching football program, some of whose
players feel like they own the campus.
***
When the Benefields first met then-UAB president Ann Reynolds and VP of
student affairs Virginia Gauld, they made their reservations known,
according to statements contained in their complaints. The Benefields
say they told the UAB brass that Brittany had never been away from them
for more than a day. "I was worried about her crossing the street or
someone snatching her," says Jackie. A meeting was set up with Warren
Hale, director of student housing, and Susan McKinnon, assistant VP of
enrollment management. The Benefields claim they were assured by talk
of security escorts. According to their complaints, they were told the
dorm to which Brittany would be assigned, Rast Hall, housed only
freshmen and had security every night, and that residents needed a key
to enter the building. The Benefields allege Hale and McKinnon also
promised that one of the girl's suitemates would be a resident adviser,
a student who would monitor Brittany's activities and mentor her. The
UAB officials wanted Brittany to enroll immediately for the winter
quarter in December 1999. Her folks wanted to wait until she was 15.
They agreed that Brittany would begin in the spring, a month after her
15th birthday.
Of the roughly 700 men who lived on campus, nearly one in nine played
football.
From the start, Brittany was a minor celebrity at UAB, although she
says the other students saw her as more circus freak than star. "I felt
very out of place," she says. "When people found out my age, they were
like, 'what are you doing here?' I mean, it was okay to hear that now
and then, but 10 times a day? I was pretty lonely."
Her suitemates, who'd been on campus for six months, had their own
friends. With no one to talk to -- or watch TV or grab a burger with --
her days dragged by in solitary routine: wake up, go to class, head
back to the dorm, study. Her parents brought her home almost every
weekend, with Jackie working longer shifts just so she could pick up
Brittany on Thursdays.
Brittany carried a 3.5 GPA in basic freshman courses in her first
quarter. The Benefields say they wanted her to take the summer off, but
she was adamant about continuing classes so she could graduate in three
years. "I figured if I made her come home, she'd just be staring at the
four walls," says Jackie. "I guess that was my mistake." To Brittany,
the only bummer was that she'd have to change dorms, because hers would
be used to house summer-camp students.
***
Drenched in sweat on a steamy Louisiana night, helmets in hands, the
UAB squad stomped and hollered and let the football world know they
could no longer be ignored. As 86,000 dazed LSU fans watched, the
visitors jumped on the Tiger's face at midfield. On Sept. 23, 2000, the
Blazers -- upstarts with a cartoon dragon on their helmets -- took home
a 13-10 upset victory and a $410,000 paycheck. Who-AB? Not anymore.
Man, you should've heard Ol' Watson before the game that night, down in
the bowels of Tiger Stadium just before his Blazers took the field. The
air was heavy with sweat and menthol; Brown was all fire and
brimstone: "Fellas, lemme tell ya 'bout the irony we have here
tonight," he told them. "Those guys in the other dressing room are no
better than you. Every day you go up against guys who are as good as
they are. I know that. You know that. They just don't know it yet. But
tonight -- tonight! -- they're gonna fiiiiind out."
Brown took a long slow breath, and the team recited the Lord's Prayer.
Brown glanced around the room like a proud father. His baby had sure
grown up fast. The 2000 UAB Blazers looked nothing like the rag-tag
squad that got blistered by Auburn in '96. Out were the D1 castoffs. In
were speedy cover-corners and run-stuffing linemen from Atlanta, the
Florida Panhandle and every holler in Alabama. Brown turned sleeper
recruits into nasty playmakers. He took Prop 48 kids, gave 'em some
love and sharpened the chips on their shoulders. It worked in the
weight room, on the field and in the classroom (more than 60% of the
team members were honor students). Sure, they had a few renegades.
Heck, everybody's got a few, right?
Everyone inside that cramped room knew they were building something
here. Most teams have more cliques than a sorority house, but the
Blazers were different. They were tight. Maybe it was Coach Brown's pep
talks. Maybe it was month after month of gut-busting practice. Or maybe
it was the players' visibility. Of the roughly 700 men who lived on
campus, nearly one in nine played for Brown. They literally had the run
of the place.
***
Just a post pattern from the UAB practice field is Blazer Hall, a 12-
sided, eight-story, antiseptic building that resembles a hospital ward
more than a dorm. In the summer of 2000, Blazer housed mostly football
players, a few basketball players, a handful of women -- and one 15-
year-old girl.
The family's complaints allege that when all of Blazer's residents
assembled for an informal introduction on a June evening, an RA scanned
the crowd and paused on Brittany, uttering an introduction that still
rings in Brittany's ears: "Okay, this is the 15-year-old y'all been
hearing about." Brittany remembers a split-second of silence giving way
to the sound of 40 heads turning at once.
If Brittany had been lonely from day one on campus, she felt absolutely
isolated during those first days in Blazer Hall. The Benefields say in
their complaints that, because the school didn't offer her another RA
for a roommate, they chose a single room for Brittany. They say they
preferred Brittany living alone to her sharing space with female
students who might have beer in the fridge and boyfriends staying over.
On her third day in Blazer, Brittany says, she entered the elevator and
encountered a mountain of a man, a Blazer football player with a bushy
afro and hands as thick as cinder blocks. Brittany tried to avoid
making eye contact, but the man faced her as the doors shut. "Whussup,
shorty?" he huffed, according to Brittany. She remembers feeling the
blood drain from her face. He said he knew her; she was that child
genius. He asked if she'd help him with a paper. Brittany panicked and
stammered: "I'm 15."
"Well, you don't look it," she says he told her.
Brittany's emotions swirled as she stepped off the elevator. The
comment about her appearance transformed her initial fear into a
feeling that surprised her: acceptance. Maybe she belonged in this
strange place after all. "That made me feel a lot better," Brittany
says. That night, she says, the player brought his paper -- and a six-
pack of beer -- to her room. Brittany says she had never had a beer --
or any kind of alcohol -- but felt compelled to accept when she was
offered one. According to Brittany, one led to another. And another.
Brittany got wasted. She'd never even kissed a boy, and now she was
making out with the player. Then they had sex.
The next morning, the burly football players seemed a lot less menacing
to her. In fact, Brittany says, they began to treat her as if she
belonged. That night, another player asked for homework help, and
brought over more beer. Brittany says she got drunk again and the
player persuaded her to perform oral sex. The next day, she says she
got drunk and had sex with a third player, who introduced her to
pot. "I felt accepted," Brittany says. "I felt like they were my
friends."
The players joked with her that she was becoming their "play thing."
She began hanging with them all the time. They'd sit outside Blazer
downing beer, bumming cigarettes, watching cars go by.
On Aug. 7, the school got the exposure from its star recruit that it
had hoped for. The Birmingham News ran a front-page story about
Brittany and a 16-year-old male student, headlined "Whiz Kids." On
campus, though, Brittany was no longer known as a 15-year-old prodigy,
but as that 15-year-old rumored to be doing half the football team.
According to an e-mail from Hale attached to the complaints, he states,
having heard the rumors, that he called Brittany in for a meeting with
a UAB police officer. They asked if she was having sex with football
players. She said no. The complaints allege the school didn't
investigate any further, nor did it notify the Benefields or Alabama's
Department of Human Resources of their concerns of drugs and sexual
activities, despite a state law requiring they do so in the case of a
minor. However, the e-mail reflects that Hale did talk to the
Benefields regarding Brittany "hosting guests." The Benefields
acknowledge Brittany stopped coming home as much, and that she slept
all weekend when she did return. But they say they figured she was just
overworked.
An e-mail from Hale, included in the complaints, indicates that he did
meet with Blazers special teams coach Larry Crowe, letting the coach
know that school administrators had heard rumors about his players and
Brittany. According to the e-mail, Hale told Crowe that a girl
Brittany's age could not consent to sex. No matter the situation, it
was statutory rape. Later that week, the complaints allege, Brown told
his team to stay away from Brittany. "If this gets outside of me," he
said, "I can no longer help you." He allegedly added that it could
mean "jail time."
At first, Brittany felt accepted when the UAB athletes paid attention
to her.
Apparently the Blazers didn't heed the warnings. Some team members
interviewed by The Magazine echo comments in the complaints that a few
days later, Coach Crowe pointed to Blazer Hall and told his players to
stay out of Brittany's room. The next week, according to the
complaints, the players got a warning from "Officer Andy" -- a.k.a.
Anderson Williams Jr. -- a UAB cop who was moonlighting as the team's
unofficial speed coach. Before lecturing the Blazers about lengthening
their running strides, he allegedly reminded the players to "be
careful" with the underage girl.
The Blazers opened the 2000 season on Sept. 7 with a 20-15 home victory
over Chattanooga. Brittany recalls feeling like she was part of the
program, cheering like they'd just beaten Alabama. She'd grown even
more alienated from other students, but now she didn't give a damn what
those losers thought. Though she had moved back into her old dorm,
Brittany's partying escalated from beer to whiskey to vodka. Other
students say her room reeked of weed, but that was just the beginning.
She told The Magazine that the players turned her on to coke, ecstasy
and LSD, and she says one player even tried to turn her out. She
declined to let him pimp her, but she kept sleeping with football
players and began hooking up with some members of the basketball team.
She was being passed around like a mix tape. In all, she alleges, more
than two dozen Blazer athletes took their turn. The complaints even
allege that an employee of the UABPD and the student who plays Blaze,
the school's mascot, came knocking on Brittany's door.
Experts say her attitude was not unusual for a female who has been
sexually abused. "It's not uncommon for a woman who has been raped to
engage in promiscuous behavior," says New York-based sports
psychologist Mitch Abrams, who specializes in trauma-abuse
counseling. "People say, 'See, she's a slut,' or 'See, she loved it.'
But rape is about power, not sex. Someone took her power and now she
was trying anything to get it back."
Brittany tells of one especially harrowing night, when she was invited
to the room of two football players. When she walked in, she says, two
other men were there as well and each of the four took his turn with
her. She recalls leaving the dorm in tears, telling no one.
Later that September, a UAB police officer and other administrators
called in Brittany to discuss a curfew, according to the complaints,
and Brittany was again asked about her sexual involvement with athletes
and drug use. She denied it all. The complaints allege they didn't push
the matter further, nor did they alert the Benefields, who weren't even
notified when her GPA plummeted to 1.9.
That Saturday, the Blazers -- following their huge win at LSU --
crushed Louisiana-Lafayette, 47-2.
Meanwhile, Brittany's downward spiral continued. She stopped going to
class and got high day and night. When some of the players stopped
coming around, Brittany began using meal and rent money to buy drugs,
and, according to the complaints, on Nov. 7, the school sent an
eviction notice to Brittany rather than her parents, even though the
Benefields were financially responsible for her room and board. The
Benefields allege UAB didn't contact them until five weeks later, when
Jackie received a shocking call telling her that her daughter was
getting kicked out of her dorm for not paying rent.
The Benefields raced to UAB, but Brittany was nowhere to be found.
Frank Benefield says he could barely speak when he filed a runaway
report with the UABPD. The next morning, the Benefields' phone rang. It
was Brittany, asking to be picked up at the local airport. Her parents
made the 12-mile drive, but Brittany wasn't there. Instead, she and a
friend, a reputed Birmingham drug dealer, were breaking into the
Benefield home, swiping a handgun and blank checks.
The next day, Sunday, Dec. 17, the Birmingham police nabbed Brittany
and her friend at a pizza parlor for trying to pass a bad check. When
they arrived on the scene, says Jackie, Brittany broke down. Their
miracle baby, tears streaming and body trembling, admitted she'd spent
all her rent money on drugs and that she'd passed a couple of dozen bad
checks. The Benefields took their daughter back to Childersburg, but
Brittany disappeared again after one night. Four days passed before she
called her father from a gas station near campus. She told him she'd
been staying in a boarded-up apartment. She wanted to kill herself. "I
was a zombie," Brittany says. "I was a broken person. The things I'd
been through were unreal."
Two hours later, Jackie opened her front door, laid eyes on her baby
and winced. "I didn't know her," she says. "I saw her face. I saw her
hair, but when I looked into her eyes, they were hollow. I didn't see
who was behind them." The Benefields put their daughter in rehab. It
was Christmas Eve.
Four days earlier, according to the complaints, UAB president Ann
Reynolds had received an e-mail from VP Virginia Gauld, telling her
that the prize recruit had tragically spiraled into drugs, alcohol and
degradation. The e-mail's last line was chilling: "Some times [sic] we
win and sometimes we lose!" Reynolds' reply was just as cold. The
Benefields' suits allege that Reynolds quipped the whiz kid's story had
the makings of a "B movie," and that "she was clearly overprotected and
doted on by elderly parents. Warren Hale and others are to be praised
for trying."
So if everyone was "trying," is anyone to blame? None of the defendants
will comment on the case, but all have either denied the Benefields'
allegations or moved to dismiss the complaints in court. "We're not
called on to defend factual statements," says Doug Jones, who
represents six UAB administrators. "We're called on to defend legal
allegations." Ken Lay, a public defender for 17 Blazer athletes,
released this statement: "Most of the athletes we represent know little
or nothing about Ms. Benefield or her allegations."
Brittany's story may prove to be the most extreme recent case of sexual
abuse in college sports, but it is not unique. Since August, athletes
have been accused of sexual assault and rape at Colorado, Georgia, LSU,
Notre Dame and Oklahoma State. And those are just the public
accusations. In many college football towns, police forces have long
had officers designated to deal with athlete-related investigations.
They're often the first dispatched to the scene and have a prior
working relationship with coaches. The Oklahoma State victim, for
instance, has alleged that a police officer tried to coerce her into
signing a prosecution waiver while she was in the ICU.
"There is such an incestuous relationship [between police and athletic
departments]," says Kathy Redmond, founder of the National Coalition
Against Violent Athletes. "It's very frightening." Seven years ago,
Redmond accused Huskers DT Christian Peter, who'd already been accused
twice of assaulting women, of raping her four years earlier. No
criminal charges were filed against Peter, but Redmond's lawyers
brought a civil suit against him and the university. Soon, she was
taking on an entire football-mad state.
Redmond's lawyer filed a Title IX lawsuit contending the school was
liable under the federal law because the university failed to provide a
safe environment from sexual harassment -- and that inhibited Redmond's
right to an education. NU and Peter settled out of court without
admitting liability. Says Redmond, "I don't think anybody understands
the power that law has over college sports."
Here's where that power lies. Rape and sexual assault are harder to
prove in criminal court than in civil court, so many victims find their
only recourse in a civil case. Title IX suits offer an opportunity for
the victim to be heard away from potentially biased local
jurisdictions, plus access to the deeper pockets of universities rather
than just to individual defendants.
Dr. Abrams, the sports psychologist, agrees that victims and lawyers
don't know the ramifications of Title IX -- yet. "You could see
hundreds, if not thousands, of silent victims come forward," he says.
On Aug. 30, 2001, the same day the Blazers opened a new football season
by beating Montana State, 41-13, John Whitaker and Terry Dytrych,
lawyers for the Benefields, filed a civil suit in state court against
44 people, including members of UAB's administration and police, two
coaches, 26 athletes -- and the mascot"
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