Mel Tucker, the football coach at Michigan State, is charged with pestering a rape survivor sexually.

Their collaboration ought to have been beneficial. As a result, the activist has turned it into a controversy, accusing the coach of the same wrongdoing that they both advocated against.

Mel Tucker, one of the highest-paid coaches in sports, is the accused. He is the head football coach at Michigan State University. Brenda Tracy, a rape survivor who has dedicated her life to educating athletes about sexual abuse, is accusing him.

Tucker admitted to masturbating during the call in his remarks to the Title IX investigator, but he also claimed that Tracy greatly misrepresented the incident. He claimed that their “phone sex” was consenting.

In a letter to the investigator dated March 22, Tucker stated, “Ms. Tracy’s twisting of our totally consenting and intimate relationship into claims of sexual exploitation has greatly damaged me.” “By no means did I engage in misbehavior, but I am not proud of my judgment, and I am finding it hard to forgive myself for getting into this predicament.”

An outside Title IX lawyer was brought in by Michigan State to look into the issue. In July, she completed her inquiry. The Spartans’ bye week is set for October 5 and 6, when a formal hearing to decide whether Tucker broke the school’s code prohibiting sexual harassment and exploitation will take place.

Everyone has a lot on the line.

Tracy claims that Tucker is carrying out a threat to destroy her image and job by portraying her as a person who files false reports and juggles personal and professional relationships. She worries that he will erase her legacy.

If Michigan State dismisses Tucker for cause, which would be a remarkable fall from the upper echelons of college coaching, he may forfeit the approximately $80 million he is owed. Tucker signed one of the most lucrative contracts in college sports history two years ago.

reached on his cell phone by USA TODAY Tucker hung up on Saturday night when a reporter brought up the subject.

Tucker was placed on paid leave by the university pending the outcome of the Title IX inquiry, shortly after USA TODAY’s report was made public.

“Under the current circumstances, this measure of suspending Mel Tucker without pay is… necessary and appropriate,” Interim President Teresa Woodruff stated during a press conference on Sunday night. “We do not take these acts lightly.”

Most of the time, USA TODAY does not identify those who report sexual harassment. Tracy consented to being named and to having access to over 1,200 pages of case files.

Schools are required by Title IX, the federal law that forbids sex discrimination in education, to look into claims of sexual harassment that occurred during or in connection with a program or activity at the school. Many of the variables at play in this case, including the passage of time, the difficulty of establishing consent, and the lack of eyewitnesses and recordings, make such accusations intrinsically difficult to decide.

To further cloud the picture, the organization entrusted with gathering evidence is arguably best recognized for having repeatedly failed to intervene against one of the most serial sexual abusers in American history.

Michigan State administrators disregarded allegations against Larry Nassar, the disgraced former U.S.A. gymnast and campus doctor who was accused of sexually abusing over 300 female athletes while posing as a medical professional, for almost 20 years. He has been given a minimum sentence of one hundred years in prison.

In the midst of their attempts to regain the trust of the community in East Lansing, staff, alumni, and students, Michigan State administrators must now determine whether the star of their esteemed football program is guilty of sexually harassing one of the most powerful national detractors of gender-based violence.

Some believe that the university’s handling of the situation will make it obvious how committed it is to moving forward.

“This is more than just Coach Tucker and Brenda Tracy,” Boston University professor Jennifer Gomez, who studies the impact of violence and interpersonal trauma, said. “A huge number of other individuals could be greatly harmed or greatly healed by what transpires here.”

The meeting: A shared objective helps a Spartan coach and a rape survivor form a professional bond.

After a mutual acquaintance introduced them, Tracy and Tucker initially met in August 2021 during her first visit to Michigan State.

Presenting her testimony to a crowded auditorium in the Spartans football operations building, Tracy recounted how, twenty years after reporting the incident to the police, she had been sexually assaulted by gang members when she was a twenty-four-year-old mother of two.

She concluded by challenging the “good men” there to utilize their status and power to inform themselves and confront inappropriate behavior.

She had given the speech to at least 40,000 coaches and athletes more than 100 times by that point. She received a $10,000 speaking fee from Michigan State.

As head coach, Tucker was in his second season. Before taking the head coaching position at the University of Colorado in late 2018, the former defensive back from the University of Wisconsin-Madison spent 20 years managing defenses for 10 collegiate and NFL clubs. A year later, Michigan State doubled his pay to entice him to leave.

A chronology of Mel Tucker’s stay at Michigan State

Tracy and Tucker “hit it off” right away, as they both told the Title IX investigator afterward. Their shared passion for Jordan sneakers—shelves of which adorned Tucker’s office walls—led them to become friends.

Tucker informed the investigator that she had been a big hit with players and that her speech had moved him. They talked about her visiting the university again in the future.

Tracy informed the investigator that she felt she had found a champion in Tucker when she fled East Lansing. His enthusiasm for her cause encouraged her participants to sign her promise to get “ongoing, affirmative consent” before having sex with someone else, among other things.

Through emails, texts, and itineraries, their assistants throughout the course of the following year arranged for Tracy to make two additional trips to Michigan State: one for a training session with coaches and players in July, and the other for the spring game in April 2022, where Tracy and her organization, Set The Expectation, would be honored on the jumbotron.

Tracy’s phone bills indicate that the two spoke on the phone at least 27 times during that time, or once every two weeks for a half-hour on average. They claimed that in order to fit their work schedules, they frequently communicated at night. After talking about their careers, they got into more personal topics, including families, mental health, and day-to-day life.

When Tucker was leading Michigan State to an 11-2 record—its greatest season in six years—and negotiating one of the richest coaching contracts in history, their conversations peaked in the fall of 2021.

He signed an extraordinary 10-year, $95 million contract with Michigan State in November, which came with full guarantees—even if the school fired him for subpar work. According to the terms of the contract, he could only lose out on the money if he committed a significant breach, was found guilty of a crime, or participated in behavior that “would tend to bring public disdain, contempt, or ridicule on the institution, in the reasonable judgment of the university.”

According to what they both told the investigator, Tucker, who had been married for almost 20 years, began to show romantic interest in Tracy at that point.

Where their stories differ is in whether Tracy returned the favor.

The contentious call: “Are you touching yourself?”

Tucker disclosed to the investigator that he and Tracy had become romantically involved and had candid conversations about it.

Tucker claimed that they had a habit of making suggestive remarks about each other’s appearance and physique. Tracy informed him that if he wasn’t married, she would be “all over” him and that she wanted a “sugar daddy” who would give her money every month to be his girlfriend.

Despite their shared desire for a romantic relationship, Tucker stated they had decided it would be “too complex” due to his marriage and their physical distance from one another.

Tracy, on the other hand, informed the detective that Tucker’s love interest in her was wholly unbalanced. She claimed that she started to sense that he was more interested in her than in her cause.

According to Tracy, Tucker messaged her after seeing pictures of herself on her Instagram profile, saying things like, “This is the one,” or praising her eyes. Along with sending her two gifts—a pair of Jordans and $200 via Venmo—Tucker also gave her a $2,500 donation to her foundation.

Tucker made a FaceTime call to Tracy once. He was shirtless in bed. Speaking of his miserable marriage, he identified as “more or less single.” Then, she claimed, he asked her, “If I wasn’t a football coach and if I wasn’t married, would you date me?” on a call that she received on November 9, 2021.

Tracy recalls trying to set boundaries on multiple occasions, and she said that she would not because they worked together. Tucker seemed to agree when she made it clear during a chat on December 1st that their relationship would only be friendship-based.

Then, according to phone records, Tucker called her four times following the spring game. Tracy claimed he begged her several times to see him by himself, without her help, and that he even offered to sneak into her hotel through the back door to avoid being seen. No, she replied.

The call arrived twelve days later.

Tracy was working from her Oregon home office. According to phone records, Tucker called her at 12:39 a.m. EST while staying at a motel in Florida. It was a 36-minute call.

Tucker claimed that Tracy’s remark that he should work out more to look better in his underwear attracted him. They then talked about how having phone sex could make things more complicated in their relationship. He agreed when Tracy remarked that having sex once would be harmless.

According to case files, Tucker informed the investigator, “There’s no doubt about that, unquestionably.” It was she who declared that they would proceed.

All of that is denied by Tracy. She stated that the call began normally. However, she claimed that when she emailed Tucker a picture of them from the spring game, he replied by making fun of her buttocks and referring to himself as an “ass guy.”

She recalled Tucker’s voice becoming stranger and deeper as he went on to discuss her posterior. When she questioned what he was doing, he replied that he was caressing himself because he had a “hard dick.”

“Are you caressing yourself?” According to the investigation report, Tracy asked. “Yes,” was Tucker’s reply.

Oh my god, Tracy claimed she thought to herself, “I can’t stop this from occurring.” She said that she didn’t think to hang up at that precise moment. She eventually replied something like, “We are just friends; that’s it. If you do this, I don’t ever want to hear about it.”

Tracy claimed that Tucker said, “Thank you, good night, love,” to her once he was done. “Yes,” was her reply, and he hung up.

She then spent some time crying while sitting at her desk, staring at her phone.