Brenda Tracy on why she went public with Mel Tucker allegations
Brenda Tracy, via her lawyer Karen Truszkowski, explains why she went public with her story. Someone else leaked it to the press:
An outside party disclosed Brenda Tracy's identity to local media, which led to the USA Today story.
Brenda Tracy had no intention of publicly disclosing her identity. She was and continues to be committed to complying with and concluding the MSU internal investigative process. She respected the process and chose not to go to the media to preserve the integrity of the process.
After the investigation process was completed, we would have determined what, if any further steps to take. Instead, her identity was disclosed without her knowledge or consent, warranting express actions to protect her. Her choice to allow this process to proceed privately was taken away.
Let me be patently clear: Brenda Tracy had no intention of disclosing anything publicly until someone else violated her right to confidentiality.
Karen Truszkowski
Attorney for Brenda Tracy
September 12th, 2023 at 2:43 PM ^
Yeah but she's a MeToo extortionist (obvious /s)
September 12th, 2023 at 2:55 PM ^
Ugh if you think the sarcasm was obvious and didn't need to be stated you're not interacting with a lot of Spartan fans.
We're all lucky Mel Tucker is an overpaid buffoon and they're mostly glad for a chance to be rid of him. If it was a coach they actually liked, their treatment of her would be horrific.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:58 PM ^
It's been a mixed bag from what I've seen. RCMB has been the worst, by far. But reddit Spartys have been shitting on Tugger and on MSU admin pretty heavily.
September 12th, 2023 at 6:59 PM ^
RCMB should be ecstatic because they're now off hook for that contract, and it'd have been a slow train wreck.
September 13th, 2023 at 10:11 AM ^
I trawled through several RCMB threads for laughs and found that almost no one was defending Tucker. Most seem glad he’s going to be shown the door. The words “con man” and “grifter” were used frequently.
Yes, it can be a haven for mouth breathing, but in this case it doesn’t seem to be.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:00 PM ^
You can set your watch to this shit. Look out for people downplaying this scandal by saying they're equally at fault or by using dismissive platitudes like "the truth lies somewhere in the middle."
September 12th, 2023 at 3:11 PM ^
The shitty part is that "the truth lies in the middle" isn't a fundamentally shitty thing to say.
It's misogynistic shitbags who weaponize gray area/blurred lines to uphold men as paragons of truth and women as "temptresses."
People suck and if Brenda is misrepresenting anything here it has very little bearing on Mel being a certifiable POS.
September 12th, 2023 at 5:43 PM ^
The shitty part is that "the truth lies in the middle" isn't a fundamentally shitty thing to say.
No, it’s about the worst possible thing to say. It influences the debate in favor of the bigger liar just for the ego trip of seeming reasonable and engaged while expending zero effort at being either.
At least someone throwing around insults is being a transparent homer.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:26 PM ^
I mean, this thread alone has a number of "they're both liars and terrible people" based on, AFAICT, the fact she talked to Tucker on the phone a number of times and that being impossible unless she wanted to have a romantic relationship with him.
As I've gotten older it has become clear that there's a type of person who believes men and women simply cannot have a non-romantic relationship and can't accept that just because they can't envision that doesn't mean it can't happen.
I get a strong sense that Tracy has run into a lot of meatheads in her life, resistant to her message that sexual assault is a real issue on campuses and needs to be talked about before it occurs. Tucker seemed, per the USA Today story, to be receptive to said message and kept having her on campus to talk to their athletes. Tracy's basically running a start-up and needs buy-in from powerful people, so when a prominent coach shows interest it makes sense she'd want to encourage and reciprocate that interest and try to build on it. As it turns out, Tucker's interest shifted from her message (if it ever was) to her romantically, and while in hindsight it might have seemed clear to everyone that their relationship had romantic undertones it probably wasn't to her at the time (and maybe not even Tucker). We've got some evidence that Tucker then lied about various aspects of their relationship while she has records of her attempts to address those undertones, and at this point even if she's "wrong" about perhaps how a reasonable person would view parts of their interactions, it's certainly not this "he said, she said"/50-50 bullshit people are arguing. But as we've seen a bunch of times you gotta blame to the woman at least in part because rich men definitely can't be held accountable for their actions.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:31 PM ^
Well put.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:42 PM ^
It isn’t just rich men. In high school a boy raped a girl and split the town in two. The girl was called all sorts of names by his supporters. This occurred in Saline in the mid-90s.
The automatic attacking of accusers when it comes to rape and sexual harassment is truly repulsive and found at all levels of society.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:56 PM ^
Salvatore you're a cool dude. Random, I know, just sayin.
September 12th, 2023 at 9:21 PM ^
In Saline? No...
September 12th, 2023 at 9:33 PM ^
even in a case seemingly as cut-and-dry as the Steubenville rapists, plenty of bastards in the local area and nationwide found new depths of depravity by defending the actions of rapists and rape enthusiasts & blaming the victim, especially since it made the football team look bad (of course in Ohio)
September 12th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
When I was in advertising, I dealt with a lot of vendors. I had one in California, a radio producer, who I developed a relationship with over the phone. When I say relationship, I mean a great rapport and someone I really enjoyed talking to. We would talk almost daily during work, not always about the project we were working on. It never progressed beyond that. And if he wanted something more, I didn't know about it. If he had started masturbating on the phone and said, "Oh, we were getting along so well, I thought you wanted this," it would've crossed the line in eight different ways. You can absolutely have a platonic, even flirtatious relationship without it progressing any further than talking. If one of the parties wants more, it's on them to explicitly express those wishes. It's not on the other person to take it because the man (in this case) made an assumption based on a flirty conversation. "You should have known" is classic victim blaming.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:54 PM ^
Agreed, Wendyk.
I've worked in marketing/media in Metro Detroit for almost 30 years.
I had a client whose media buying came out of an agency in Denver. The media buyer was a female. We clicked immediately over the phone. Joking around. Gossiping. Etc. We'd call each other just to shoot the shit.
We even met in person...when my wife and I took a ski trip to Vail.
It was clear to both of us that it was a fun but professional relationship. That being said, I suppose if I had been the "Tucker Tugger" in my relationship with the media buyer in Denver, the same people who are victim blaming Tracy might've pointed to the many conversations my client had with me as evidence that our relationship must've transitioned to being "personal" and not just professional.
And people wonder why victims of sexual harassment often times don't report it...or wait months/years to do so. There is ALWAYS victim blaming in these cases. Always.
September 12th, 2023 at 7:47 PM ^
“ALWAYS” victim blaming is a stretch. The NFL subreddit convicted him before the facts proved that he wasn’t even present. Brenda Tracey even criticized sdsu. She did the same thing with Shawn Oakman along with everyone else. Baylor has a much worse track record than msu, so that’s a bit different.
Victim blaming occurs for sure. I see the court of public opinion convicting the accused 100% of the time regardless of the facts.
September 12th, 2023 at 8:00 PM ^
People condemning the accused prematurely does not disprove the statement that there is always victim blaming.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:06 PM ^
I literally acknowledged and explicitly stated that victim blaming occurs. But I get knocked for bringing up the reality that the accused are always guilty in the court of public opinion before the facts come out.
I’m going to continue to get killed for saying this, but this situation presents an opportunity to have some honest and uncomfortable discourse about the intersection or race, gender, power, and sex.
I’ve seen people who say ‘let this play out’ or ‘there may be more to this than what we read on Sunday’ get accused of victim blaming and attacking the victim.
It shuts down any opportunity for discourse. It also creates resentment against. We saw how that quiet resentment played out in 2016.
But attacking those who want to see and hear the facts and broadly calling them misogynists wreaks of that brand of feminism, self-righteousness, and intellectual that has historically and continuously silenced intersectionality or the nuances of core elements of this Tucker-Tracy-Consent matter
September 12th, 2023 at 11:55 PM ^
nuances of core elements of this Tucker-Tracy-Consent matter
The dude masturbated on a zoom call in front of a vendor while he was on a work trip. He admitted to this. She relied on his good will for additional work. He took advantage of that. Even if it had been consensual it was inappropriate and a firing offense. It is in every sexual harassment training you'll ever have. I don't know about misogyny, but trying to split hairs on this is just plain dumb. You can't masturbate in front of the vendors even if they are into it.
September 13th, 2023 at 12:05 PM ^
I’m not hung up on the fireable offense part. He was wrong on so many levels. I can’t overstate his level of idiocy.
Consent is at the heart of the matter. I think we can all agree that this is bigger than whether or not he’s done at msu. That’s a foregone conclusion.
My point is about accusations and immediate reactions. The overwhelming sentiment on here is that he’s lying about everything and that his account has no merit or validity. I’m saying that the accused is not 100% wrong 100% of the time. History has shown us that. Based on what’s out there, there’s a possibility that there’s some merit to his statement. I honestly don’t know. Only the two of them know, but we’re going to shoot that down on here and knock people for wanting to wait and see until what comes out in the wash.
Most importantly, while I hope that he didn’t violate her the way she claims because that’s disgusting and horrible, I hope that she’s being 100% honest. Because any sliver of that not being the case is extremely detrimental to sexual harassment and sexual assault victims given her position.
September 13th, 2023 at 10:15 AM ^
It would seem obvious to most people, but I guess some dudes out there need to be reminded that even flirting isn’t an open invitation to masturbate on a video call.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:52 PM ^
Defly,put.
Definitely echoing my sentiments...
September 12th, 2023 at 4:04 PM ^
FWIW, the USA Today story included a screenshot of a text from Tracy to her assistant in December 2021 saying that she had talked to Tucker about keeping the relationship Platonic and how relieved she was that Tucker agreed.
September 12th, 2023 at 4:11 PM ^
That assistant apparently died in a car crash. Andy Staples I believe reported that.
September 12th, 2023 at 4:44 PM ^
And Tucker's attorney has, allegedly, demanded that the investigation be dropped because that witness is no longer available for questioning.
September 12th, 2023 at 4:09 PM ^
It occurs to me this isn't a he said/she said situation as much as a he said / he said (Tucker & the AD)..
Whatever the ultimate outcome, right now both Tucker and MSU leadership (sigh . . . again) look bad.
September 12th, 2023 at 5:21 PM ^
I notice as well Haller lack of messaging. Hasn't said much, and seems standoffish at the present moment.
September 12th, 2023 at 7:16 PM ^
First, Marco, I wondered why any downvoted you but then realized it was gunk on my screen.
Second, though msu later provided more information about timing, confidentiality, etc., to go into a press conference on a fraught subject, praise yourself for doing better than your predecessors, and THEN displaying the SAME lack of transparency as your predecessors (passive language, non-responsive answers, cutting off questions quickly) is not a good look.
September 12th, 2023 at 4:14 PM ^
I know this is the board's general sentiment du jour. There are many cases where I'm sure you are 100% correct and one person is either entirely or pretty much entirely to blame, and all the platitudes about "two sides" and "we don't really know" are bullshit.
In my likely unpopular opinion that is very difficult to put into words, there has to be some level of personal responsibility involved in some of these scenarios. Before you throw this into the "victim blaming" bucket, let me attempt to explain. While Brenda Tracy has every right to have a non-romantic relationship with a married man, I think we can reasonably conclude that at some point she started picking up that Mel's intentions did not meet her own. I can't say that for sure, but she's a grown woman who runs a foundation, is likely reasonably intelligent and can tell what someone wants from her. That doesn't make her a temptress, doesn't mean she was "asking for it", or mean she shoulders some of the blame. However, I do think it exhibits some poor judgement to continue the relationship, given who Mel Tucker is (a very rich person with a lot of people invested in his success), it likely was not going to end well. Maybe she thought she would lose every future speaking opportunity with him if she ended the relationship, but again, that strikes me as poor judgement.
If you walk around a big city at 3 am by yourself instead of taking a cab/Uber and get mugged, it isn't "your fault." However, you did make a pretty poor and avoidable choice. Everybody obviously has a right not to be mugged, but counting on the police, judicial system, etc to prevent every crime against you is unreasonable - control what you can control, and don't put yourself in bad situation. Lock your car and house at night, even though you have a right not to have them broken into - it's just minimum levels of personal responsibility.
This is the exact advice I will be using with my daughter when she reaches dating age. There isn't anything wrong with dating a popular sports star at school, but be careful and don't put yourself in a bad situation. In a case like that, nothing good will come from it and people will assume the worst about you, as we constantly see people who are good at sports (or really anyone who has many people invested in their success) get the benefit of every doubt. I admire everyone trying to change these narratives, but you still have the ability to make choices that don't put yourself in compromising positions.
Maybe that was all pointless rambling, but it bothers me almost as much to hear "she was asking for it" as seeing any discussion about personal responsibility thrown in the "victim blaming" bucket.
September 12th, 2023 at 4:32 PM ^
Your mugging example is disingenuous. Big city at 3 AM you should rightly assume there are dangerous people about (probably the same number as there always is), but less good people to help you and also no "safety in numbers."
What you're doing with your example by saying she could have ended/limited the relationship is, actually, victim shaming. Mel hired Brenda. Therefore, their relationship is first and foremost professional and he has the power as the buyer. Brenda pushing back on unwelcome comments risks losing her money. So Mel was in the position of power and used that his advantage until he pushed it to far and she did something about it.
September 12th, 2023 at 5:14 PM ^
TLDR "I want to victim blame but don't want to be shamed for it"
September 12th, 2023 at 7:55 PM ^
No, I don't want people to become victims in the first place. If you don't think your actions and choices have any impact on the situations you find yourself in, I don't know what to tell you. But cool snazzy response to further try to shame anyone that wants to have an actual conversation about difficult topics.
September 12th, 2023 at 8:10 PM ^
Women shouldn't have to fear men Whipping their dick out just because they communicate regularly. Consent is not hard FFS.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:26 PM ^
You can declare "there should be no predators!" all you like. What good does this do? Does this deter predators? Does this make people more vigilant against predators? Does this do anything to reduce the objective risk predators impose upon the population?
September 13th, 2023 at 6:20 PM ^
Maybe read the posts this is responind to or work on your reading comprehension. This isn't about if predators should exist (Obviously all non-predators would agree that is ideal). This is about not blaming the victim for the predators actions.
September 12th, 2023 at 5:18 PM ^
Except you're making a lot of unfounded assumptions about her. Sure, you could be right that she flirted or whatever. But you don't actually know that. Whereas there's a 1,200-page report that evidently is damning toward Mel. So: Investigators find X, but you surmise Y. I think most people will go with X until proven otherwise.
September 12th, 2023 at 6:03 PM ^
"You still have the ability to make choices that don't put yourself in compromising positions." I don't disagree with this idea at all. I have a 20 year old daughter and a 23 year old son and this applies to both of them equally. With that said, in this specific instance, I don't think you can blame her for him pulling out his penis. That's not one of those likely situations you should know to avoid when you're engaged in a phone relationship. I don't know how the conversation actually went, none of us do, I'm just responding to the idea that you shouldn't let yourself get into compromising positions. I don't think having 20 phone conversations would lead someone to worry about the other person masturbating on the other end. It's not a rational worry. (And I don't think him being attracted to her was the issue at all. I mean, men and women are around each other every day and find themselves attracted to each other and don't act on it). A rational worry would be, Don't drink from a cup that hasn't been in your possession the entire night. Someone could slip you a date rape drug. Or, Don't go home with a girl who's drunk because if you sleep with her, her inebriation could mean she didn't consent. Those are foreseeable compromising positions.
September 12th, 2023 at 6:10 PM ^
You may actually be trying to point out that Ms. Tracy needs to 'own' her choices and the consequences of those choices. What your post is missing is the fact that the context of her choices makes all the difference in the world.
Mel Tucker and Brenda Tracy are not equals in their professional relationship. As others have stated, he is in the power position as a buyer of her professional services (speaking, education, etc.) and she is therefore subordinate to him in the sense that she is relying on him as a well-known believer and supporter of her cause.
In that context, whatever romantic/sexual feelings he developed were inherently inappropriate to act on because of the power differential. Her choice to accept his offer to speak to his team, which put her in close proximity to him as a subordinate, does not and should not compromise her. The problem is that while she could always have walked away, she would have done so at great professional cost to her cause.
Men like Tucker do not have the right to cross the professional to personal relationship boundary (even though they do it all the time). Doing so and ignoring the dual relationship that creates is outdated buffoonery of the first order. Once he did so it created a personal and professional dilemma for Ms. Tracy that she never should have had to face. The evidence suggests that she tried to clarify the boundaries and keep things professional between them. It also suggests that he agreed to that and then persisted in crossing the boundary anyway.
TL;DR--her choices were compromised by the built-in power differential in their relationship. He did that to her and she had no effective way out but to terminate the relationship. It's all Tucker's fault.
September 12th, 2023 at 6:30 PM ^
I am so confused by your argument. Are you arguing that she should have expected the head coach of the MSU football team to sexually harass her and taken countermeasures to avoid it?
September 12th, 2023 at 9:50 PM ^
Given the overall violent lawlessness Mel has contributed to on the football team, not to mention MSU's sordid history overall, I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation TBH. She may have been blinded to it by her friendship and/or business interest with Mel, but that place has more red flags than the Kremlin on Mayday. And after reading Mel's comments and statement, it seems pretty clear to me that this is a classic case of a manipulator on a power trip who genuinely believed he could get away with cranking his hog on the phone unsolicited with Brenda because, what's she gonna do, say no? Of course she wouldn't say no. Because of the implication.
Which is not to blame her at all. In her business, she is preaching to those who need to hear it, which means dealing with dirtbags all the time, and needing to be on good terms with them to thrive. And Mel probably did a good job fronting as a sincerely interested person, yet ultimately was just another self-serving prick trying to use her. What a shame.
September 12th, 2023 at 6:32 PM ^
How dare you. Just because a woman made and/or accepted dozens of completely platonic phone calls lasting 30+ minutes late at night discussing personal topics for months on end with a very rich married man while her specific expertise is teaching men and woman how to avoid situations that could lead to sexual assault and harassment doesn't mean it was romantic. She obviously thought they were only friends since that's totally normal behavior for two platonic friends. My wife never minds when I chat about very personal topics with single woman after midnight for 30+ minutes every week. They're just interested in getting my support. How could she possibly expect that situation to end up with someone getting the wrong idea? That's ludicrous to even suggest as a possibility. In human history women have never once used sex to get what they want from perverted and extremely rich men. Your clearly a victim blamer who just doesn't want to admit it. Mel Tucker is the only one to blame here.
September 12th, 2023 at 6:47 PM ^
You do know that Mel Tucker said he had been estranged from his wife for a long time in his statement, right?
September 12th, 2023 at 7:15 PM ^
Pretty sure that was the least problematic thing he said.
September 12th, 2023 at 6:52 PM ^
You should go back to pretending to be a koala.
September 12th, 2023 at 9:28 PM ^
Hey, I don't pretend to be a Koala. Am I a joke to you?!?!!
Everyone gets so serious about this shit on our super serious anonymous message board.. It's so boring when you all agree. There's all sorts of possibilities here. I just like to shit talk and make fun of these bad takes with my own bad takes. Throw some bad ideas. Some good ideas out there and see what happens. Nobody knows exactly what happened. Am I a bad koala to find the idea in general of nonconsensual phone sex kinda funny? I don't think, legally speaking or technologically, a phone conversation can be non consensual if you understand how phones work. tbe relationship and the whole thing is an appropriate, but that part . . . C'mon.
September 12th, 2023 at 8:21 PM ^
You've gone into a lot of details about these phone calls (in this post and others), but you label him masturbating on the phone with her as "getting the wrong idea" - just fyi
September 13th, 2023 at 11:00 PM ^
This release was done by someone within the MSU structure. It's one of two things.
1. Someone who was in a minority view point among the MSU brass was upset that Tucker was going to get off too easy and wanted to let this out into the public to try and use public opinion against him.
2. The majority view is that they want out of the Tucker contract and this is the get out of (contract) jail free card they were looking for.
I believe that Tracy didn't want this to leak. I'm sure Tucker didn't want this to leak. That leaves MSU senior folks. And I see the two possibilities above as to why it was leaked.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:46 PM ^
Wow. While Mel deciding to romantically pursue a sexual assault advocate (along with, well, you know) is beyond bad, the decision to "out" the victim for a story is pretty bad in its own right.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:47 PM ^
And putting Harbaugh's name in the mix too. W/e... he's getting his just desserts.