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Female reporter's harrowing tale adds to allegations against Norwood Teague
When Minnesota athletic director Norwood Teague resigned Friday amid allegations that he sexually harassed two women at a party, one of the obvious questions was whether this was an isolated incident or part of a larger pattern.
Thanks to the honesty and courage of Minneapolis Star-Tribune writer Amelia Rayno, it's now clear Teague's behavior was hardly the out-of-character drunken mistake he tried to portray it to be.
Rayno, who covers Minnesota basketball for the Star-Tribune, wrote a first-person article Sunday night that revealed she too had been a victim of Teague's sexual harassment. The unwanted advances began on Dec. 13, 2013 when Rayno agreed to get a drink with Teague as reporters often do as a means of cultivating sources and gaining insight into the teams they cover.
Teague asked me about my longtime boyfriend, as he often did. My mistake was acknowledging that we had just broken up. The switch flipped. Suddenly, in a public and crowded bar, Teague tried to throw his arm around me. He poked my side. He pinched my hip. He grabbed at me. Stunned and mortified, I swatted his advances and firmly told him to stop. He didn’t.
“Don’t deny,” he said, “our chemistry.”
I told him that he was drastically off base, that my only intention in being there was as a reporter – to which he replied: “You’re all strictly business? Nothing else?”
I walked out. He followed me. I hailed a cab. He followed me in, grabbing at my arm and scooting closer and closer in the dark back cabin until I was pressed against the door. I told him to stop. I told him it was not OK. He laughed. When I reached my apartment, I vomited.
Later that night he texted: “Night strictly bitness.’’
The ensuing text messages the Star-Tribune published reveals the pattern of abuse went on for months. Rayno stopped speaking to Teague whenever possible — a nightmare scenario for a beat writer — yet for the next eight months he continued to text her things like "R u pouting?,” "Ur no fun anymore" and "Ur giving me a complex."
What Rayno's account suggests is that it may not be long before more victims come forward and accuse Teague of harassment.
This is a man who was apparently brazen enough to send suggestive text messages to two female university employees and a reporter with no regard for the potential paper trail he was leaving behind. If that happened at least three times in Teague's three-plus years at Minnesota, it's a good bet that it also may have occurred during his tenure as athletic director at Virginia Commonwealth.
The bigger question now is whether anyone in a position of power at Minnesota was aware of Teague's transgressions prior to the first two women coming forward. The university ought to launch an independent investigation into that matter.
If the answer is yes, Teague should never have been allowed to keep his job. If the answer is no, Minnesota should evaluate how Teague's behavior went undetected for so long.
Regardless, credit the two female university employees for having the courage to file a formal sexual harassment complaint against Teague. And credit Rayno for being willing to come forward and attach her name to a first-person piece that corroborates their story.
Rayno wrote that her only regret was not going public sooner with this story, but she cannot be blamed for staying silent at first.
In an era when female sports writers still face a much tougher fight for credibility than their male colleagues, it took great strength of character for Rayno to speak up at all.
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
