Maryland, My Maryland

At the Balmer Sun  Maryland approves $4M UMBC sexual abuse, harassment settlement

The Maryland Board of Public Works approved a $4.1 million settlement to former University of Maryland, Baltimore County student-athletes who were sexually abused and harassed by the school’s former swim coach.

The U.S. Department of Justice will determine the settlement amount allotted to each individual. UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby said that the former athletes will receive either $60,000 or $180,000, and that no student activities, services or academic programs will be affected by the settlement.

“Students at UMBC today will not pay for the misconduct of the past,” Sheares Ashby said at Wednesday’s Board of Public Works meeting.

Rignal Baldwin V, an attorney representing six former UMBC swimmers who filed suit together against the school, told The Baltimore Sun in a phone interview that he signed up to speak on behalf of his clients before the Board of Public Works on Wednesday, but was not provided the opportunity.

Baldwin also said that he only learned of how the $4.1 million would be split between his six clients at Wednesday’s meeting. It’s now up to his clients to decide whether they want to move forward in the courts or accept the settlement.

“Their choice is to be fair to these kids or subject themselves to years of our scrutiny, and I’m happy either way,” Baldwin said of the university. “But my clients aren’t. They want this to be over.” 
. . .
The Department of Justice conducted a three-year investigation, ultimately finding last month that UMBC had violated Title IX, a federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in education, in its handling of former swim coach Chad Cradock’s behavior. Cradock died by suicide in 2021.

Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who said at Wednesday’s meeting that she survived sexual assault while in college, read excerpts from the report, detailing unwanted sexual touch and inappropriate sexual comments made to male students by Cradock between 2015 and 2020, as well as several instances where members of the university’s athletic department — including Cradock — neglected to report intimate partner violence between male and female teammates to the university’s Title IX office.

“As one student stated: ‘It became clear he would rather let a woman die than report up one of his favorites,’” Lierman read.

FWIW, our younger son Alex graduated from UMBC. But he was never involved in athletics there.