The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (37 page)

Christopher Slusher is the firm’s senior trial lawyer. He’s smart, tough and a seasoned negotiator. Although he and his firm are connected to Missouri’s athletic department by way of referrals, their priorities are not exactly the same. Washington’s coaches were hoping to get their star back in uniform for the season opener. Slusher was looking a little further down the road: Washington’s ability to earn a living as a professional football player was at stake. His bottom line was to fend off any criminal charges that would result in Washington having to register as a sex offender. Even a misdemeanor sexual assault conviction would put a blight on his name for years to come and put at risk his prospects for making it to the NFL.

Slusher got back to Hayes with an answer to her plea offer—no deal.

That put Braeckel in a tough spot. “I felt very weak at the time,” she said. “But I wasn’t going to roll over and play dead. I was going to fight this.”

Missouri coach Gary Pinkel had no choice. On August 26—just nine days before the season opener against Illinois—he indefinitely suspended Washington. He gave no explanation. “I don’t ever talk about those issues,” he told reporters.

Rumors swirled. Four days later Hayes formally charged Washington with felony sexual assault, and Washington surrendered to police. After the arrest, Sarah got a call from Coach Pinkel.

“Coach Pinkel called and told us he was permanently suspended,” Sarah said. “He said he fought for Derrick for over an hour. But he said the curators, essentially the school’s trustees, called him in and told him what they were going to do. He said he wanted to redshirt Derrick until after the trial. And if the trial went well, he’d reinstate him and play him the following year. But the curators wouldn’t go for that.”

Then Pinkel issued a brief statement. “I’m kind of embarrassed,” he told a reporter. “We’ve worked real hard to develop a program that has a very good reputation for being first-class and disciplined. We’ve taken a few hits. And the only way you’re going to get that back is to earn it back, and that’s what we intend to do.”

Two other Missouri football players—a linebacker and a reserve tight end—were arrested for drunk driving within a week of Washington’s indictment. Plus, an assistant coach was arrested in the parking lot of the football facility when police found him behind the wheel of his truck. He was intoxicated at the time. But it was Washington’s arrest that drew national attention.

Braeckel was still at home in North Carolina when the news hit. Her phone immediately began buzzing: the
Kansas City Star
, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, the AP, ESPN and every newspaper and television station in Columbia. She had listed her cell number on the restraining order she had filed back in June. Suddenly every journalist covering the story wanted to talk to her.

She also started receiving menacing text messages. Some Missouri football fans blamed her for destroying the season before it started. Others called her vile names. Some even threatened her.

Braeckel never responded to a single call, and she got rid of her phone. She also started second-guessing her decision to press charges. It felt as if her life were upside down.

Lauren Gavin was having trouble looking in the mirror. It had been more than two months since the incident, and she and Braeckel were still not on speaking terms. The prosecutor had left multiple phone messages. But Gavin had been too scared to call back. All she could think about was the fact that she hadn’t told the police the truth. “I had this huge guilt,” Gavin explained. “I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to get pulled in to testify. I didn’t want to deal with any backlash from the athletes.”

Most of all, Gavin didn’t want to deal with the humiliation and embarrassment that would come when her friends and family found out about her intimate relations with more than one student-athlete. “I had this huge fear,” she explained. “I didn’t want to feel awkward going out in public, running into people.”

At the same time, the lie she had told was gnawing at her, especially when she thought back to her Methodist upbringing. She started praying for guidance, pleading for courage. “What have I done?” she asked herself.

After some soul-searching, she was determined to face her fears.

“It was just a voice inside my head,” Gavin said. “I just kept thinking, the truth will set you free. I have made a lot of mistakes. But I knew what I had to do.”

On September 7, Gavin went to see Andrea Hayes. At first, Hayes suspected that the football team had gotten to Gavin. That wasn’t it, though. On the contrary, it was one of Washington’s teammates who encouraged her to come forward. Sitting in the prosecutor’s office, Gavin confessed that she had withheld some information from Detective Easley when he questioned her days after the incident. Washington, she told Hayes, had in fact
said something incriminating about Braeckel that night. It happened after he had briefly stepped out of Gavin’s bedroom.

“He came back in and I asked him what he was doing, and he said he just went to go say hi to Teresa,” Gavin said.

“And what did you say?” Hayes asked.

“I said, ‘Are you kidding me? You went to go say hi to Teresa? It’s 2:30 in the morning.’ And we just started arguing. And it escalated a little bit. And he’s like, ‘You want me to leave? Like, whatever, Lauren. I just played with her cooch.’ ”

Hayes knew that “cooch” was slang for “vagina.”

“When he told me that,” Gavin said, “I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just trying to upset me. And after that, we ended up sleeping together.”

After having sex, Gavin reported, Washington left. That’s when she got up to use the bathroom and bumped into Braeckel coming out of her room. “She said that she woke up to him trying to finger her,” Gavin said. “And that’s when I knew that he wasn’t just saying it.”

Hayes believed every word of Gavin’s story, especially her explanation for why she had initially withheld information from the police. The other thing Gavin explained was that the environment in the tutoring program was hot-wired for sexual abuse. She fully admitted that the tutors shared in the blame. It wasn’t just the athletes. It was a mutually destructive situation. But Braeckel, she assured Hayes, was never involved with athletes and never wanted to be. She was just there to tutor.

Gavin said she would testify to all of this at trial.

After meeting with Gavin, Hayes expanded her investigation. She interviewed more girls affiliated with the tutoring program. The deeper she dug, the worse it looked. “Listening to what the girls were saying, people have a real ‘thing’ with football players,” Hayes said. “Too many tutors were having sex with the athletes, and really filthy conversations were going on between players and girls. It was a sexually charged environment. It was a joke—the whole tutoring situation.”

Five days after Hayes met with Gavin, police responded to a disturbance call at an apartment complex in Columbia at 1:30 a.m. on September 12. Upon arrival they found Washington’s girlfriend—identified in police records as GR—with blood on her nose and shirt. Her forehead was swelled, and her left eye was hemorrhaging. She told police that they had been arguing when Washington grabbed her by the throat and pinned her
down on her bed, struck her multiple times and pressed two fingers on her eyes.

Two hours later Washington was arrested. According to the arrest report, he told police, “I did not hit her because if I did she would still be asleep.”

News of his domestic violence arrest turned the tide for Braeckel.

By the time she flew back to Columbia to provide a pretrial deposition on January 11, 2011, Washington was the one looking for a plea deal. But now it was Braeckel’s turn to say no deal. “He was willing to plead to felony burglary,” Braeckel said. “But his lawyers wanted me to drop the sex offense part. But that’s what this case was about. So even though I was a wreck at the time, I was unwilling to accept that.”

With Derrick Washington’s trial set to begin in four days, Judge Kevin Crane convened pretrial proceedings in his Boone County courtroom on September 16, 2011. The defense had filed a last-minute motion. The prosecution wanted it denied. In a closed-door session, Washington’s attorney, Christopher Slusher, and prosecutor Andrea Hayes appeared before Judge Crane.

“Okay. What’s up?” Crane began.

“The testimony in the case has been that the complaining witness in this sexual assault case was a virgin,” Slusher said. “She worked in the tutoring program over at the athletic department and that she was teased by people about being a virgin. I had discussions with the state and it came to my attention that they intend to bring out that fact that she was a virgin. Our motion is filed to keep that evidence out.”

Crane turned to Hayes.

“The state does plan to introduce evidence that the victim is a virgin, and we would also be able to establish Mr. Washington was aware that she was.”

“What’s the relevancy?” Crane asked.

“It’s relevant because the other girl isn’t a virgin, and this is a joke, it’s funny, it’s an accomplishment, it’s an achievement,” Hayes said. “She’s a virgin. He’s made jokes about that before. It’s a common thing at the athletic department. ‘Teresa is a virgin.’ It’s like this big feat.”