Opinion ID: 6112413
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Student A and Lida DeGroote

Text: Student A was a member of the softball team. She and Bradford met as high school students during an athletic recruiting trip to the University in January 2015. The University first learned about Bradford’s violence against Student A in the fall of 2015, at the start of their freshman year. On September 21, 2015, four female students saw from the window of another building Bradford and Student A physically fighting in a dormitory study room. They knocked on the Resident Adviser’s (“RA”) door and told him what they had seen. The RA went to the other building to investigate. The RA talked with Bradford alone while Student A waited outside in the hallway. Bradford told the RA that the two of them were “just joking” and that Student A “was just mad at [him] regarding a situation that happened earlier.” The RA contacted the on-call University Community Director who instructed the RA not to call the police. An incident report was filed in “Advocate,” the University’s case management system. According to the report, the RA “felt like this may have started off as a very serious physical and verbal altercation between resident Bradford and resident Student A, but then may have turned into somewhat of a joke.” After speaking to Bradford and Student A together, the Community Director wrote in a report that they told him that they were “just joking” and “agreed that they w[ould] not engage in this type of behavior in the future.” The Community Director never talked to Student A alone. BROWN V. STATE OF ARIZONA 25 In late 2015, Student A’s parents learned of her abusive relationship with Bradford. A campus police report recounted that Student A’s parents had told Student A’s head softball coach about Bradford’s violence against her after they had broken up in November 2015. The coach recounted in a deposition that Student A’s mother had called him in January 2016 and had told him that she and Student A’s father were concerned about her daughter’s relationship with Bradford, and that they were relieved that they had broken up. The coach maintained in his deposition that he was unaware of any abuse and that Student A’s mother did not tell him in her January call what had disturbed them about Student A’s relationship with Bradford. In January 2016, after his conversation with Student A’s mother, the softball coach called Erika Barnes, the University’s Title IX liaison to the Athletics Department. In her deposition, Barnes recounted that the coach informed her that “Student A and her boyfriend broke up,” that it was “not a good situation,” and that Student A was “really upset.” Barnes told the softball coach that she wanted Student A to meet with a school psychologist. Barnes told the psychologist about the call and said that she wanted Student A to meet with her. Neither Barnes nor the softball coach contacted anyone on the football coaching staff. Sometime after January, Bradford and Student A began to see each other again. On March 22, 2016, Student A arrived at a study hall with a black eye and finger marks on the side of her neck. Two of her teammates went to talk to the softball coach. They told him that in the fall of 2015 Bradford had pushed Student A up against a wall, put his hands around her neck, and choked her. They told him that Student A now had a black eye and finger marks on her neck. 26 BROWN V. STATE OF ARIZONA One of them recounted in a declaration that the coach told them that he knew about the situation with Student A and Bradford, and about the efforts to keep Student A away from him. When Student A arrived at softball practice that day, the assistant softball coach saw the black eye and overheard conversations between the players saying that Student A’s boyfriend may have been responsible. He asked Student A what happened. She replied that had been hit by a door. The assistant softball coach called Barnes later that same day. On March 23, the next day, the head softball coach told Student A’s two teammates that they should meet with Barnes and tell her everything they had told him. The two teammates met with Barnes that afternoon and told her what had happened the previous fall, including that Bradford had choked Student A. They told Barnes about Student A’s black eye and the finger marks on her neck. They told Barnes that Bradford had told Student A that if she reported the abuse, he would send compromising pictures of her “to her mother, grandmother, and everyone.” The softball teammates also told Barnes that they heard that Bradford was hitting another girlfriend, Lida DeGroote, and that DeGroote often had bruises and marks all over her body. They reported hearing that in front of others Bradford had kicked and thrown DeGroote’s dog into another room. They told Barnes that Bradford’s roommate and best friend from high school had told them that Bradford “had a violent past,” that Bradford was not afraid “to hurt someone,” and that “people need to be careful.” Barnes took detailed notes of her conversation with Student A’s teammates. On March 24, Barnes called Student A into her office and asked her about her black eye. Student A reported that BROWN V. STATE OF ARIZONA 27 she was clumsy and had run into a door. That same day, Barnes accompanied Student A to another building to meet with Susan Wilson, a Title IX investigator in the Dean of Students Office, to “hear about [her] options” if she ever decided to file a complaint against Bradford. Barnes sat in on the meeting with Wilson. Barnes testified in her deposition that she told Wilson about Student A’s black eye and her story that she had been hit by a door. Wilson testified in her deposition that she did not see a black eye and did not ask Student A about a black eye. Barnes and Wilson both testified that Student A told Wilson that Bradford had choked her. Wilson asked no follow-up questions about the choking. When Barnes returned to her office after the meeting with Wilson and Student A, she photocopied her notes from her interview with Student A’s two softball teammates the previous day. She sent the notes to Wilson and to Kendal Washington White, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students. In her meeting with Barnes and Wilson, Student A had told them that Bradford might be living with a student named “Lida.” Barnes and Wilson thought that Student A might have been referring to Lida DeGroote because, as Wilson stated in her deposition, “Lida’s an unusual name.” On several occasions during 2016, Barnes had been in contact with DeGroote and her mother about various things, including credits for an internship. Wilson knew that Chrissy Lieberman, Associate Dean of Students, was “actively meeting and working with Lida DeGroote” concerning academic matters. Wilson went to Lieberman’s office and told her that a student by the name of Lida had been mentioned by another student and that DeGroote might be in a concerning relationship. Lieberman met with 28 BROWN V. STATE OF ARIZONA DeGroote the next day, but the focus of the meeting was an academic matter. Lieberman tried indirectly to get DeGroote to talk about any other problems she might be having, but she did not ask DeGroote directly about her relationship with Bradford. DeGroote did not volunteer any information. Neither Barnes nor Wilson, nor anyone in the Dean of Students Office, contacted anyone on the football coaching staff about the reports of Bradford’s violence against Student A and DeGroote. On Saturday night, April 9, Bradford went to Student A’s dorm room. He was intoxicated. For nearly two hours, he banged on Student A’s door yelling at her to let him in. Student A refused to open the door and repeatedly told Bradford to leave. Bradford finally left about 1:30 a.m. Student A’s softball coach called Barnes the next morning to tell her about the incident. Barnes contacted Student A and asked if she wanted to call the police. When Student A replied that she did, Barnes called the University of Arizona Police Department. Later that day, a university police officer met in Barnes’s office with Student A and Barnes. Student A told the police officer about the door-banging incident, and about Bradford’s previous assaults. In the presence of Barnes, she told the officer that on at least three occasions Bradford had choked her to the point that she could not breathe. Student A asked the officer how to get a protective order from the county court. Later that same day, Barnes called Greg Byrne, the University Athletic Director. Barnes testified in her deposition that she told Byrne only about the door-banging incident. Barnes did not tell Athletic Director Byrne about Student A’s black eye, the finger marks on her neck, or the BROWN V. STATE OF ARIZONA 29 prior choking incidents. Nor did Barnes tell Byrne about the reports that Bradford had been assaulting DeGroote. Byrne told Barnes that he would contact the head football coach, Richard Rodriguez. Because Rodriguez was traveling that day, Byrne spoke to Bradford’s position coach instead. The position coach and Athletic Director Byrne met with Bradford. They discussed the door-banging incident and gave Bradford “a lecture on underage drinking.” The position coach later talked to head coach Rodriguez about the door-banging incident. The position coach testified in his deposition that Bradford received three days of what he characterized as “physical punishment” for violating the team’s underage drinking rules. On April 11, 2016, Wilson issued a no contact order to Bradford. In relevant part, the order provided: “You are prohibited from having any contact with Student A . . . This directive applies to both on and off campus contact.” Bradford was reassigned to another dorm for the remainder of his freshman year. The football team’s Player Rules required freshmen to live in a university dorm. DeGroote testified in her deposition that even though Bradford was supposed to have been living in Student A’s dorm, in fact he had been staying at DeGroote’s house on “most nights” from January to April. Instead of moving to his assigned room in the new dorm, Bradford moved into a teammate’s offcampus house for the remainder of his freshman year. On May 10, 2016, Lida DeGroote’s mother spoke on the telephone with Associate Dean Lieberman about DeGroote’s academic matters. During the conversation, DeGroote’s mother brought up the issue of DeGroote’s safety. DeGroote’s mother did not mention Bradford by name. She testified in her deposition that she told Lieberman: “Now we have another issue with her safety. I 30 BROWN V. STATE OF ARIZONA believe you saw the bruises on her when she was in there.” The reference was to bruises Lieberman should have been able to observe during a meeting with DeGroote a month before. Lieberman did not respond. DeGroote’s mother testified it was “just crickets,” an “uncomfortable” silence.