April 3 (UPI) — The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has agreed to pay $4.14 million to student-athletes who were sexually abused and discriminated against by a former swim coach, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
The settlement agreement comes in response to the Justice Department’s investigation that found the school had failed to adequately respond to allegations that former head coach of its men’s and women’s swimming and diving team, Chad Cradock, had sexually abused and discriminated against student-athletes.
According to the department’s findings, the school’s failure to comply with its responsibilities under Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination at schools that receive federal funding, enabled Cradock to “engage in sex-based harassment, including unwanted sexual touching of male student-athletes, as well as sex discrimination against female student-athletes, on an ongoing basis for years.”
“From approximately 2015 to 2020, the university was on notice of allegations that these student-athletes had been subjected to a hostile environment based on sex but failed to address it adequately,” Justice Department prosecutors said in a March 18 letter addressed to the university’s president, Valerie Sheares Ashby.
“As a result, many student-athletes were subjected to sex discrimination, including unwanted sexual touching and other sexual harassment, which they understood to be a condition for participating in university athletics.”
In the settlement agreement announced Wednesday, the school has agreed to pay former members of both the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams between $60,000 and $180,000.
The Justice Department said the university “fully cooperated” with its investigation and that the institute under Ashby’s leadership has already taken “significant steps” to its prevention and response to sex discrimination, including sexual harassment and assault.
Ashby said in a statement Wednesday to students following the signing of the settlement agreement that the Justice Department’s investigation forced them to “reckon with the past.”
“We cannot take away the suffering and trauma that many of our students endured in those years, nor can we undo the actions or inactions of the past,” she said.
“We can control how we respond to that painful past and how we ensure that this never happens again.”
Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement Wednesday that with the signing of the agreement the university has now taken full responsibility for its failures.
“The Justice Department recognizes the brave and resilient student-athletes who came forward and continue to come forward to share their stories with us,” Clarke said.
“This settlement should send a resounding message to our nation’s colleges and universities: sexual assaults and harassment of students will not be tolerated.”
Cradock was placed on leave from the university in October 2020. He died by suicide in March 2021, five days after receiving an amended notice of allegations against him.