Former University of Arizona assistant track coach Craig Carter is suing the student athlete he is criminally charged with assaulting and stalking.
Carter, 48, is accused of choking a female student athlete he was coaching and of threatening her with a box cutter last spring. He is also accused of trying to drag her out of a UA classroom, UA Police Department records show.
Carter resigned from his job as a UA throws coach on May 20 in lieu of termination. His criminal case is pending in Pima County Superior Court. Police reports say he waived his Miranda rights and that he admitted to choking and threatening the student athlete.
In a counterclaim to a civil suit associated with the case filed in Pima County Superior Court, Carter and his wife, Jo-Anne Carter, accuse the student athlete of causing them emotional distress.
State of Arizona paying legal fees for coach
The counterclaim the Carters filed is in response to a civil lawsuit the student athlete filed as a “Jane Doe” in November against the university, saying it failed to protect her from repeated rapes by Carter.
That lawsuit, which says the athlete had “no ability” to consent to having sex with Carter, names as defendants Carter, the UA, the Arizona Board of Regents, head UA track and field coach Fred Harvey, and UA athletic director Greg Byrne.
UA officials have said that once they were aware of the coach’s misconduct, they acted immediately to inform law enforcement and remove him permanently from the university.
The Carters, via their lawyer, John Munger, say the student athlete shouldn’t be allowed to file the lawsuit anonymously and have asked the court to make her name public. They say Carter and the athlete were in a consensual relationship.
The state is paying Munger to represent Carter in the civil action, but Munger told the Star that the state is not paying for the couple’s counterclaim. To date, the state has paid $24,338 for Carter’s legal fees, according to the Arizona Department of Administration.
The Star is not identifying the student athlete, who graduated last year and is living outside of Arizona, because she says she was the victim of a sex crime.
“Because Plaintiff Jane Doe is a victim in a pending criminal case, her name has never become published in the criminal case,” her attorneys, Lynne M. Cadigan and Michael J. Bloom, wrote in response to the counterclaim. “As a crime victim, she is entitled to have her privacy protected, and, for that reason, was listed as Jane Doe in the complaint.”
Cadigan and Bloom have asked Pima County Superior Court Judge Sarah R. Simmons for an expedited hearing on the matter so that the student athlete’s name does not become public.
“The counterclaim is nothing more than an attempt to harass and shame a victim of a crime,” Cadigan said.
Athlete says she feared
for family, future
The student athlete, 24, is adamant that she was never in a romantic relationship with Carter, who recruited her by visiting her hometown while she was still in high school. She told the Star that Carter subjected her to sexual assaults over two and a half years and that she feared for her family and her athletic future if she didn’t comply.
Athlete-coach and teacher-student relationships are regarded in universities and in the athletic world in general as inherently unequal. Athletes can be particularly vulnerable because they are often passionate about their sport and look to their coach as a mentor and integral part of their future athletic success, experts say.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s model policy on preventing inappropriate relationships between student athletes and athletic department personnel says, in part, “Whether the student is 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 or older, she or he is significantly less powerful than a head coach, assistant coach, athletics trainer …
“It is this power differential that makes such relationships inherently unequal, and when the relationships are unequal, the concept of ‘mutual consent’ becomes problematic.”
An Arizona Board of Regents policy says, “no university employee shall engage in a romantic or sexual relationship with a student who is enrolled in that employee’s course, or whom the employee supervises or whose work s/he evaluates, or over whom the employee exercises any administrative or disciplinary authority.”
Jane Doe versus UA
The Jane Doe lawsuit filed by the student athlete details her final two-and-a-half years on the UA track team, beginning at nationals held at the University of Oregon in 2013. That’s when the athlete went to a house party, then says she caught a ride back to the hotel with Carter.
The lawsuit says that before they got to the hotel, Carter stopped the car in a remote area and sexually assaulted the athlete. He took a picture of her naked and used it to blackmail her, called her a “slut” and said he’d hurt her if she told anyone, court documents say.
The athlete was stunned, overwhelmed and powerless to resist that and subsequent sexual assaults, says the lawsuit.
Cadigan and Bloom write that the athlete feared Carter would take away her scholarship — and her chances of competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro — if she did not submit to his demands. They say she suffered emotional injuries caused by being subjected to repeated sexual assaults and harassment, and that her athletic career was irreparably damaged.
The athlete no longer competes in track and field, and said she gave up her dream of going to the Olympics after she got injured and began to falter with Carter as her coach. She told the Star that she can no longer go near track and field facilities because they make her feel ill.
Munger, the Carters’ attorney, says the facts of the counterclaim speak for themselves. He said what transpired between Carter and the athlete over two and a half years is separate from the events that occurred over several days last April and resulted in the criminal charges. The counterclaim says publicity about the Jane Doe lawsuit has wrongfully damaged the reputations of the Carters, who are parents and grandparents.
“The Carters object to the failure to name the plaintiff, and demand that the plaintiff’s full name be substituted for the fictitious name ‘Jane Doe,’ both because the Carters cannot answer without knowing the name of the charging party, and because the plaintiff is not entitled to use a fictitious name in this matter,” Munger writes.
“The above-captioned lawsuit was filed under the fictitious name, ‘Jane Doe’ in order to create and perpetuate the false impression that (the athlete) was and is a minor or other protected person. The above-captioned lawsuit was filed under the fictitious name ‘Jane Doe’ in order to create and perpetuate the false impression that Craig Carter was a sexual predator or miscreant.”
Imbalance of power
Coach-athlete relationships should never be sexual and it’s up to the coach to set those boundaries, says former Olympic swimmer Katherine Starr, founder and president of the non-profit California-based Safe4Athletes organization, which advocates for athletes who have been sexually abused or harassed.
The United States Olympic Committee’s SafeSport program defines sexual misconduct as, “any sexual interaction between an athlete and an individual with evaluative, direct or indirect authority.” The program’s handbook notes, “an imbalance of power is always assumed between a coach and an athlete,” regardless of the athlete’s age.
“It is no different than a patient and therapist or a student and teacher. When a coach and athlete get together there is an emotional bond created,” Starr said. “It’s for the athletic experience, but the coach can take advantage of that bond sexually.
“It is a fundamental part of you that defines you that is at stake. It’s the coach’s responsibility to set boundaries and not allow or engage in this (sexual) behavior.”
Even when an athlete says a sexual relationship with her coach is consensual, her willingness should be regarded with suspicion, “given the fundamentally unequal nature of the relationship,” says the New York-based non-profit Women’s Sports Foundation, which aims to advance the lives of women and girls through sports and physical activity.
“Consensual and/or sexual relationships between coaches and athletes undermine the professionalism of coaches, taint the atmosphere of mutual trust and respect between coach and athlete, and hinder the fulfillment of the overall educational mission of athletics,” the foundation says.
But Carter and his wife say in their counterclaim that Carter was in a consensual relationship with the student athlete that left him, not the athlete, emotionally fragile and vulnerable.
Hiding in the bathroom
One of the student athlete’s close friends said she witnessed Carter’s escalating threats against the athlete. She says the athlete feared Carter and believed he would hurt her family. At one point Carter went to the student athlete’s home trying to find her, said her friend, who was there at the time.
“We were both hiding in the bathroom when he came to the house and we were both in tears and so scared that something would happen,” the friend wrote in a letter to the court. The friend is also an athlete and took out an order of protection against Carter after he was arrested.
The Jane Doe lawsuit says that as the student athlete neared graduation, she told Carter the assaults had to stop. The counterclaim says Carter was, “shocked and distraught” that the athlete ended their relationship.
Police records say Carter later put a box cutter to the athlete’s throat and choked her in his office on Monday, April 27, 2015, sent her threatening emails and went to one of her classes and tried to drag her out the following Wednesday. While records say he admitted to the crimes, he hasn’t been convicted and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Pima County Superior Court.
In addition to criminal charges of aggravated assault, stalking and interfering with an educational institution, Carter is facing four felony counts of aggravated harassment.
The harassment charges were added in January. A Pima County grand jury indictment says Carter made Facebook and Skype contact with the student athlete’s close friend, violating the order of protection she had against him. The indictment says Carter also tried contacting the woman’s family.
