(TEXAS TRIBUNE) -- A lawyer for former Baylor University head football coach Art Briles has accused the school of wrongfully firing him and making him a scapegoat in the university's sexual assault scandal.
"The conclusion is inescapable that the motive of Baylor University and the Board of Regents was to use its Head Football Coach and the Baylor Athletic Department as a camouflage to disguise and distract from its own institutional failure to comply with Title IX and other federal civil rights laws," Briles' lawyer Ernest Cannon wrote in a letter to the school dated Thursday.
The letter was included as an exhibit in a filing indicating that Briles has no intention to settle a lawsuit against him and the university that was filed in March by a former female student who says she was raped by a football player. The suit claims that the school didn't take any action to investigate the student's claim of rape or offer her counseling. She left Baylor in 2013 after being placed on academic probation and losing her scholarship. Multiple other students have come forward with similar complaints.
Baylor has indicated that it hopes to settle the case. But Briles has obtained his own lawyer and declared an intention to fight.
Briles was suspended "with intent to terminate" in May after a law firm hired to investigate the scandal at Baylor found that, among other things, football coaches or staff met with alleged rape victims or their families, but didn't report the allegations of sexual assault to anyone outside the athletics department. As a result, the report said, nobody did anything to "fairly and impartially" investigate.
"The choices made by football staff and athletics leadership, in some instances, posted a risk to campus safety and the integrity of the University," the report said.
In addition to Briles being fired, Baylor President Ken Starr lost his job. Since then, some powerful Baylor donors have argued that Briles deserves to keep his job, and that Starr is more to blame for the problems at Baylor.
