Allswede (Former MSU Sexual Assault Counselor) Fires New Shots at Dantonio
Lauren Allswede, MSU's former Sexual Assault Counselor, is not happy that Dantonio said ESPN's reporting was false and she fired off new shots back at Dantonio and told him that he must accept his individual responsibility.
Some of her quotes:
"They don't appear to see the women as anything more than a number, or anything other than a threat to their reputation"
"They haven't been to a medical forensic exam, watched people jump when a picture is taken or wince when a swab is taken ... They don't see the shame these survivors feel -- the visceral collapse, the shaking leg, the knotted tissues, and averted eyes"
"Dantonio and Izzo should tell us how they are weak. They should tell us how they are scared, that they've worried no one will ever love them again. That they have difficulty concentrating or carrying on lighthearted conversation. ... And if you think that's unfair, why do you think it is fair for survivors?"
She point blank says that athletes accused of sexual assault got preferential treatment:
"Whatever protocol or policy was in place, whatever frontline staff might normally be involved in response or investigation, it all got kind of swept away, and it was handled more by administration [and] athletic department officials," Allswede, who worked at MSU for seven years, told Outside the Lines. "It was all happening behind closed doors. ... None of it was transparent or included people who would normally be involved in certain decisions."
I don't think Dantonio did himself any favors with his press conference, especially if Allswede is proven correct. Dantonio has already lied about the whole he has never had to deal with sexual assaults from his players before (unless he is completely incompetent and has no control).
January 28th, 2018 at 1:17 AM ^
January 28th, 2018 at 8:09 AM ^
January 28th, 2018 at 9:42 AM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 9:55 PM ^
Mandatory reporter applies to nearly everyone at a public school. My wife is a mandatory reporter and she knows if she fails to report an incident (and she has reported in the past) not only could she lose her job but be sued and face criminal charges.
And Title IX is a federal law. There plenty with which to indict. When the levee breaks and people start making deals for testimony, it will be a flood.
January 28th, 2018 at 7:41 AM ^
and sometimes at schools kids say flippant remarks, but you never know when they're actually in need of help so you always call and have the experts decide the severity.
January 27th, 2018 at 10:23 PM ^
But a pervasive attitued is "I know nothing. No one told me."
MSU should have instituted reporting procedures long ago to make sure everyone all the way to the top were notified of sexual assault accusations after the Penn State travesty. Instead, they seemed to double down on cover ups given all the reports coming out.
Simon never heard anything.
The trustees never heard anything.
The assistants tried to discourage reporting.
Blackwell trying to cover up until it blew up on him and he became the scape goat.
Plausable denial seemed to be the MSU policy and that whole school needs an overhaul. And it is too pervasive to not be an organized policy just as it was at Penn State. Someone had to screw up and leave documentation.
I realize I'm forgetting to give credit to Simon,Dantonio and Izzo for their great contributions to the school.
January 27th, 2018 at 10:27 PM ^
Klages has been gone for a while now. Nasser has been convited. Simon and Hollis going down seems to indicate that this is serious enough even beyond that.
Connecting the dots from there tp other parts of the athletic program will take time. But there's definitely smoke here. Don't think MSU leadership gets away with just what we've seen so far.
The witness statements are fresh in peoples minds and the numbers are staggering. This has traction. What will be the issue I am thinking is evasive coverup and outright lying. Dantonio's "I've done nothing wrong" coupled with other statements he has made over time will be contrasted with evidence and facts that investigators gather. So, I think results will be more of the forced to resign rather than jail variety but there will be change.
January 27th, 2018 at 9:37 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:03 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:57 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 11:39 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 9:39 PM ^
that get douible posted....
January 27th, 2018 at 9:34 PM ^
That was a misstep, no matter what these investigations reveal, it's one thing to defend your program, it's another to defend a program and refute a report that very well may be true. Of course we do not know much about Lauren Allswede but I'm more willing to give her the benefit of the doubt as more layers of the onion are peeled back in this ESPN report. E60 tomorrow morning should be interesting.
January 27th, 2018 at 9:41 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:02 PM ^
Ya know, back during the Morris concussion debacle, that seemed to define the perfect PR disaster. Well MSU has one-upped M by a large margin; it's just stunning to me that they not only got off on the wrong foot when it started, but continually deny and making utterly self-serving, obtuse, and insensitve remarks time and time again by people who should know better. What they face is bad enough, but they are grabbing more shovels and digging themselves in deeper. Dantonio may have dug his grave with that performance.
January 28th, 2018 at 8:21 AM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:02 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:09 PM ^
Joe Paterno says Hi.
Winning college football coaches are little kings. They start to lose touch with reality.
January 27th, 2018 at 10:11 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:12 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:24 PM ^
Joe Pa fans will fight in the bunker till their very last breaths.
January 27th, 2018 at 10:25 PM ^
How were you even able to keep your lunch down?
January 27th, 2018 at 10:31 PM ^
January 28th, 2018 at 9:27 AM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:07 PM ^
This has been his legacy all along. Dude's exactly like Tressel, win at all costs and hide behind the veneer of disciplinarian. He's gotten away with it for so long because, let's face it, no one outside of Michigan gives two shits about MSU.
January 27th, 2018 at 11:02 PM ^
Can we stop comparing what Dantonio allegedly did to what Tressel did?
Tressel covered up his players getting a few goodies. Dantonio is apparently covering up rape.
Not nearly in the same ballpark.
January 28th, 2018 at 8:24 AM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 11:40 PM ^
It’s odd: It's the people *inside* MI (or connected to it) who keep assuming and insisting that outsiders don’t care. What is that based on?
January 28th, 2018 at 1:42 AM ^
They are now, because it's being shoved in their face with the most prolific pedophile of all time.
January 27th, 2018 at 10:37 PM ^
body of graduates, parents and current students will respond. There have been a few slappies tweeting or posting bravado at RCMB, but MSU is not full of fanatics and idiots.
Overall, there are many good people who are intelligent who have daughters too. I just have trouble accepting that MSU stakeholders outside of some donors, fanatics and trustees will be fine with Dantonio coaching on. Grass roots response from MSU students even could go a long way to getting MSU back on the path to correcting the culture.
Winning is just not everything. I think the 'on field' success pales' in the harsh light of this day. No school or university should be proud of accomplishments that come at a human cost of suffering like these.
Personally, I think now that people actually are beginning to understand the gravity of this, many will snap out of the 'must beat the rivals and win' mentality.
January 28th, 2018 at 5:18 AM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 9:35 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 11:47 PM ^
Better think again. This is a national story and it just depends on how much traction it continues to get. Dantonio's hardass act may work in football circles but it won't fly with many around this country who won't take kindly to football being placed above the lives of sexual assault victims.
They should all go.
January 28th, 2018 at 5:33 AM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 9:38 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 10:01 PM ^
I agree MSU should get rid of Izzo and Dantonio . They both contributed to the negative atmosphere there . It will be tough to win over those who want to over look that , in favor of a winning program .
January 27th, 2018 at 10:04 PM ^
Schuette offered few details on how his investigation of MSU will proceed, and did not take questions from reporters. He said his office will send a letter to Fitzgerald seeking all information gathered as part of the review he conducted for the university.
He said the university's response "to this simple request will speak volumes."
In early December, Schuette asked MSU to provide the findings of the internal review conducted by Fitzgerald, a former federal prosecutor. Fitzgerald said he could not provide Schuette's office with any investigative report because he said none existed.
Fitzgerald told Schuette no one at the university was aware of Nassar’s crimes until news articles published in 2016.
The Lansing State Journal on Friday reported that an MSU report on a 2014 Title IX investigation into a sexual assault allegation against Nassar concluded the former doctor’s conduct could open the university to lawsuits and expose patients to “unnecessary trauma based on the possibility of perceived inappropriate sexual misconduct.” That investigation exonerated Nassar, and the version of the report including that language was not given to the victim in the case, Amanda Thomashow.
He also said the result of his office's investigation will be a report that will be transparent and made available to the public.
He briefly touched on the requests by MSU's Board of Trustees a week ago for an investigation by his office.
"I don't need advice from the Board of Trustees at MSU about how to conduct an investigation," Schuette said. "Frankly, they should be the last ones to be providing advice, given their conduct throughout this entire episode."
Schuette added that the board's conduct in response to Nassar, "Speaks for itself."
MSU President Lou Anna Simon resigned Wednesday, and Athletic Director Mark Hollis retired on Friday. Also on Friday the MSU Board of Trustees accepted Simon's resignation and appointed board secretary and university Vice-President Bill Beekman to handle day to day operations while a search is conducted for an interim president.
Earlier this week, MSU learned via a letter from the NCAA that its athletic department is under investigation for potential rule violations in connection with Nassar. Lawmakers are also demanding records related to MSU's investigations of Nassar between 2014 and 2017 be handed over in the next two weeks.
The first horse to the trough drinks the cleanest water.
January 27th, 2018 at 10:09 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 9:44 PM ^
Izzo provided shelter to Appling and Payne despite Appling admitting to the elements of rape in the pertinent police report. It's maybe the most jaded thing - the Payne buddying up to the poor terminal cancer victim, all under the gauzy focus of ESPN - I've seen in college sports. Of the three, I'd say Appling's the best, because at least he showed contrition.
Dantonio had players so entitled - from Glenn Winston to the Dorm Vikings to the rapists from last year - that he has been at worst tone deaf and (more likely) someone who ran as much interference as he could to keep players on the field. He's the exemplar of all that's bad in college sports from a "wins justify the means" perspective.
Consquently, I am Jack's utter lack of surprise that these sorts of accusations are being tossed around. They're being tossed around because they fit. While not directly related to the Nassar atrocities, Izzo and Dantonio have been complicit in their programs' athletes' atrocities. They're both trash, and it's good to see them called out as such.
January 28th, 2018 at 1:55 AM ^
It was Payne who was contrite about the situation when talking with investigators, going so far as to apologize for what happened. Appling, a complete piece of shit human being, never admitted to any wrongdoing, and is now in jail for multiple weapons charges.
January 28th, 2018 at 8:39 AM ^
When LJ Scott was arrested for what - the ninth time he had been driving on a suspended license - and then wound up playing the following Saturday, it told anyone paying attention everything they needed to know about the extent to which Dantonio placed winning above all else.
January 27th, 2018 at 9:42 PM ^
But when you have this kind of criminal, scum bottom of the barrel behavior, and you try and defend these aholes, you have no business coaching anyone!! I think Allswede is pretty credible and Dantonio trying to make it sound like nothing happened under his watch is disgusting. No way he should get through this unscathed. Football aside, I have no respect for msu's head football "coach."
January 27th, 2018 at 10:09 PM ^
No matter which one you believe, there's going to be no ducking for cover and stalling until the details are hidden this time. There's already tons of lawyers involved, and with the AG and increasing involvement of the Fed, it's all going to come out eventually.
I'd put my money on Allswede. I think a lot of heads are going to roll before this is over and I think Dantonio and Izzo (and other coaches) are going to be shown the door - and maybe worse - by the time it's over. We're going to be reading about this all year long.
January 27th, 2018 at 11:06 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 9:50 PM ^
January 27th, 2018 at 9:50 PM ^
doing a lotta victim blaming - just a cesspool over there - used up all my downvotes lol
January 27th, 2018 at 9:52 PM ^
Fuck 247. They're a disgusting, complicit organization.
January 27th, 2018 at 10:34 PM ^
If you don't mind my asking, what happened with you over there? It was something with the fuckbois at Bucknuts, right?