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Arizona State took months to address sexual harassment allegations made by three women against booster

The Arizona State Sun Devils logo Sparky is shown on the court before the college basketball game between USC and Arizona St. on Feb. 8, 2020. (Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Arizona State Sun Devils logo Sparky is shown on the court before the college basketball game between USC and Arizona St. on Feb. 8, 2020. (Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Arizona State University officials have acknowledged that allegations an athletic booster allegedly harassed three women married to members of the athletic department "could have been resolved in a quicker timeframe."

The school said in a statement released to Yahoo Sports that an outside investigation determined the booster subjected the three women to “unwelcome comments and physical contact.” It has since canceled the booster’s season tickets and informed him he is no longer welcome at university events.

ASU released the statement in response to an 11-page legal claim filed in Arizona this week, obtained by Yahoo Sports on Wednesday evening via a public-records request through Arizona’s board of regents. The notice of claim alleges multiple Arizona State officials waited nearly five months to investigate claims of “assault and sexual harassment” of the wives of three Arizona State athletic department staff members. This includes Leslie Hurley, the wife of ASU head basketball coach Bobby Hurley, who said the booster “acted inappropriately” toward her.

The notice of claim — a precursor to the filing of a lawsuit — was filed to multiple state agencies by former Arizona State senior associate athletic director David Cohen, who was removed from his position in August and formally terminated in December. Cohen alleges in the notice of claim he lost his job in retaliation for insisting athletic director Ray Anderson and other ASU officials investigate the allegations brought forward by the three women, including his wife. He’s seeking $1.5 million to settle the claim for reasons that include lost wages, pain and suffering and emotional harm.

In the notice of claim, Cohen details the encounter of his wife, Kathy Cohen, with a prominent ASU athletics booster, Bart Wear, at a Pac-12 tournament basketball game in March. According to the notice of claim, Kathy Cohen left her seat at T-Mobile Arena to use the restroom at halftime and attempted to pass Wear, a former ASU football player, in the aisle. Wear is alleged in the notice of claim to have “put his hands on her waist, moved his hands up the side of her body to the sides of her breast, held his hands on the sides of her breasts and said, ‘Dave is lucky to have you.’”

ASU’s statement said an independent investigation “did not conclude that the donor had grabbed anyone or sexually assaulted anyone.” In a Dec. 10 letter from a school official to Wear revoking his tickets, ASU acknowledged the evidence collected during its investigation supported the allegation that Wear ran “his hands up her sides, brushing the outside of her breasts while commenting she was ‘too good’ for her husband.”

When Yahoo Sports asked about the two statements, ASU said Cohen "changed his story in August of 2019 about the nature of the allegations and said that Mr. Wear had grabbed a victim's breast." ASU said the investigation “found that untrue."

Cohen's attorney Michael Perez refuted that claim, calling it a "semantics game" and said it was "an absolute fabrication" that Cohen changed his story. Perez told Yahoo Sports: "It doesn't matter if Wear grabbed, groped, touched or felt. You had a dominant male who presses himself on a female victim, and ASU is trying to defend the actions as if they're somehow appropriate."

In the letter to Wear, ASU states that its policy “prohibits any acts of harassment or discrimination against any person who participates in an ASU-sponsored activity,” and that Wear was found in violation of that policy.

Multiple attempts across two days to reach Wear for comment were not successful.

On the night of this alleged incident, the wives of two other ASU athletic staff members told Kathy and Dave Cohen that Wear had acted inappropriately around them in the past. Leslie Hurley, through her lawyer Barry Mitchell, has acknowledged she is one of the individuals mentioned in the notice of claim.

The notice of claim details how Leslie Hurley alleged to the two other women how Wear would “frequently approach her during ASU games” and “inappropriately put his hand on her leg while talking with her.” This bothered Leslie Hurley enough that she, according to the notice of claim, would “ask other people sitting with her to stand in front of her when Mr. Wear approached so as to prevent him from touching her.”

According to the notice of claim, the outside review of the allegations, run by the law firm Armstrong Teasdale and paid for by ASU, determined in November “there is sufficient evidence to conclude that [the women were] sexually harassed by Mr. Wear based on the credibility of the witnesses and the weight of the evidence.” ASU told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday that the independent investigation is not available, as it’s “confidential and only shared with the university administration.”

Cohen was removed from his job and told he was fired on Aug. 15 and terminated formally on Dec. 11. The notice of claim alleges this was in “clear retaliation” for prodding Anderson and ASU officials to investigate. The ASU investigation determined the university “did not retaliate against Mr. Cohen with respect to his termination,” the school said in its statement to Yahoo Sports.

“Even though this has been a very challenging and difficult time for my family, I am confident I did the right thing,” Cohen said in a statement to Yahoo Sports. “I spoke out because I have a moral responsibility to protect three women that the University failed to protect. These women are the victims, and they deserve to be heard.”

Claim: Alleged incidents first reported to AD on March 25, 2019

Wear’s alleged incidents were reported to Anderson on March 25, 2019, by Cohen with another witness present, according to the notice of claim. Wear was informed of his disassociation from the university on Dec. 10, according to documents provided by Arizona State.

Cohen’s lawyers said in a statement: “Arizona State University obviously learned nothing from the #Me Too movement.”

Multiple athletic department officials and a board of regents member knew of the allegations, according to the notice of claim. Those athletic officials included Anderson, the athletic director who went on a golf trip with Wear “using Mr. Wear’s private plane service” about six weeks after learning of the allegations, according to the notice of claim. When reached by Yahoo Sports on Wednesday night, Anderson said, “I’m not talking to you.” He directed a reporter to ASU media-relations officials.

“Related to the donor issue, the university acknowledges that the matter could have been resolved in a quicker timeframe and has taken steps to remind those involved that we have investigative resources to deal with these types of issues as soon as they arise,” the school said in its statement to Yahoo Sports.

ASU also said in its statement that Cohen initially downplayed the seriousness of the incidents by saying they could have been addressed privately with Wear. The school says the investigation only took place in the summer after “new allegations of misconduct” emerged, as opposed to earlier reports of “unwelcome comments and contact.”

The notice of claim paints a different story. When confronted at one point about not investigating Wear, Anderson said he wasn’t going to be told “how or when to talk to a [expletive] donor,” according to the document. Another time, the notice of claim says that Anderson said he wanted to wait for Wear to return from vacation before addressing the allegations. Later, Anderson mentioned wanting to return from his own vacation, according to the document.

After the initial allegations in the spring and throughout the investigation into his alleged actions, Wear appeared to continue enjoying the perks and access of being a booster.

Wear took the golf trip in May with Anderson and football coach Herm Edwards. There’s no evidence Edwards knew of the allegations against Wear. Edwards referred a request from Yahoo Sports for comment to ASU media officials.

Wear also took a trip with donors to Michigan State in September for ASU’s game there, which occurred while the investigation was ongoing. He sat courtside at an ASU basketball game on Dec. 7. ASU claims in the disassociation letter to Wear this went against his agreement to “voluntarily refrain” from ASU games and “caused consternation to individuals who had complained about your conduct.”

As recently as Monday, Wear was listed as a board member of the Sun Devil Club, ASU’s booster group, on the website. That reference has since been removed.

Claim: Incidents allegedly occurred at Pac-12 tournament

A notice of claim is essentially a precursor to a lawsuit, a necessary legal step in Arizona before a lawsuit against a state entity like ASU can be filed. It’s a document that tells the story of Wear’s alleged actions and the university’s lack of response through the lens of Cohen, an administrator who worked at ASU for five years. He’d previously worked in sales for the Minnesota Vikings new stadium, the Atlanta Falcons and Portland Trail Blazers before Anderson hired him in June 2014.

Wear moved back to Arizona in 2013 and reengaged with the school where he played football, according to the notice of claim. His LinkedIn biography refers to him as an “investor and philanthropist,” as he worked at an investment firm until 2013. The precise amount donated by Wear annually isn’t known, but he wasn’t a transformative donor who gave enough to have buildings named after him.

Wear can be seen posing courtside at an ASU basketball game in a Twitter picture on ASU’s official account in January 2016 with former Olympian Michael Phelps. In a 2016 article from the summer Olympics, Wear identifies himself as a USA Swimming board member and a neighbor of Phelps in nearby Paradise Valley.

The timeline of alleged incidents begins on March 14, 2019, in Las Vegas during Arizona State’s Pac-12 tournament victory over UCLA.

That’s when Kathy Cohen alleges Wear “put his hands on her waist, moved his hands up the side of her body to the sides of her breast.” During the same UCLA game, another allegation emerged.

The wife of another ASU athletic staff member said in the notice of claim that Wear “rubbed her back and asked inappropriate personal questions.” She asked David Cohen, who oversaw the basketball program and tickets, to move her seat the following game to be away from Wear.

Following the game, Kathy Cohen, Leslie Hurley and the wife of the other athletic staff member discussed their different encounters with Wear. As the women talked about these incidents, David Cohen joined the group. This was the first time Cohen had heard of the alleged incidents, including the wife’s allegations from earlier that night. According to the notice of claim, Cohen wanted to immediately report the issue. The three alleged victims asked him to wait until the conclusion of the season to report it to Anderson, the athletic director.

According to the notice of claim, David Cohen reported the incident to Scott Nelson, the head of the Sun Devil Club — a booster group that supports Arizona State athletics — four days after the incident. When ASU’s season ended with an NCAA tournament loss on March 22, which fell on a Friday, Cohen reported the incident to Anderson on March 25, the following Monday. Nelson joined him in the meeting because Wear was a Sun Devil Club member. Nelson referred a request to comment to ASU media-relations officials.

From there, the notice of claim details at least five ASU officials aware of the allegations.

The findings of the firm Armstrong Teasdale, which ASU paid to investigate the claims after Cohen’s August removal from his job, brought disagreement. Cohen’s lawyers disputed much of the independent review, calling it “woefully deficient and incomplete” and saying it attacked Cohen’s character.

That entire timeline led the notice of claim to conclude: “ASU showed more concern for the convenience and reputation of a prominent booster than the victims of assault and sexual harassment,”

On Aug. 15, Arizona State officials told David Cohen he’d been fired. Cohen was officially terminated on Dec. 11, after the investigation.

Conflicting portraits emerge in the documents about Cohen as an employee. The notice of claim states Cohen received “the highest bonuses in his department for four straight years.” In the letter regarding his dismissal, the university acknowledged he’d received the largest bonus of his tenure just a few months before his dismissal. Cohen oversaw men's basketball, which made back-to-back NCAA tournaments for the first time since 1981.

Cohen claimed retaliation by alleging the university made changes to his job in the wake of him bringing forward the allegations – a change in reporting structure, his responsibility overseeing swimming taken away and a change to Anderson having discretion to determine 40 percent of his bonus.

ASU strongly denied Cohen’s claim that he was fired in retaliation, saying his “termination” had “nothing to do with the donor issue.” The university statement claims the termination stemmed from Cohen “refusing to cooperate with a department reorganization that was planned prior to any complaints.” In the letter informing him of his dismissal in December, Cohen is described as “hostile and defiant” in response to a department restructuring and cited “prior instances of poor behavior.”

In the statement, the university concluded on Cohen’s dismissal: “Mr. Cohen’s failure to meet the professional standards of the Sun Devil Athletics department was the reason for his termination.” The school also said that when Cohen reported Wear’s behavior, “he indicated he felt the matter could be addressed privately with the donor through a request that he be more mindful of his conduct and respect the personal space of others.”

Cohen’s lawyers disputed that claim in a statement: “The canned response from ASU blames Mr. Cohen for the sexual harassment his wife and two other women experienced, omits key facts, attacks his job performance, and downplays Mr. Wear's conduct in a bullying attempt to deflect blame from itself.”

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