Report: Tom Izzo 'sought out' witness to alleged 2017 sexual assault by player before police investigation
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and two of his assistants contacted a student witness in a sexual assault investigation involving one of his players in 2017 before that witness had discussed the incident with police or Michigan State investigators, according to ESPN.
The incident involved then-freshman guard Brock Washington and a female student who said she was forcibly groped in 2017.
The incident
According to the report, Rebecca Lambert — who identified herself publicly — told police that she and a group of friends were hanging out in a friend’s dorm on Aug. 28, 2017. She then left to go grab a phone charger from her room and said that Washington followed her. Once in her room, she said Washington closed the door and groped her, grabbed her butt, tried to pull her to the floor and attempted to touch her vagina and kiss her without her consent.
Lambert said Washington stopped when two of her friends knocked on the door.
“When he tried to push me onto the ground, my initial thought was, ‘I’m about to be raped,’” Lambert said, via ESPN. “I could never say what would have happened if my friends hadn’t knocked on the door.”
Lambert’s roommate was asleep in the dorm room when she and Washington entered, per the report, but was woken up by them. She said that she heard the two kiss and believed that Lambert wanted Washington to stop and leave based on what she had heard, but stayed quiet because she didn’t want to embarrass Lambert.
Washington told police later that he believed he had consent to kiss Lambert and touch her butt, but said that he didn’t attempt to touch her vagina or push her to the floor. He told Michigan State investigators days later, however, that he never touched Lambert’s butt.
Lambert’s story remained consistent to both police and university investigators.
A Title IX investigation in October determined that Washington did not violate the school’s sexual misconduct policy. He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in 2018, according to ESPN.
Tom Izzo gets involved
Michigan State student Brayden Smith — the son of Steve Smith, who played for the Spartans from 1987-91 when Izzo was an assistant there — was with Washington and the group that night, and considers Washington to be his best friend.
He stayed behind when Lambert and Washington left the room, and told police that he thought the incident was consensual.
Smith was interviewed by police and told them that he had already been approached by Izzo and assistants Dwayne Stephens and Mike Garland about the incident, who asked him “if he was OK and if there was anything that he had seen during the evening,” per the report. He told the same thing to university investigators later.
“[Brayden’s] perception of this conversation with [the coaches] was not to get information out of him, but rather to ensure that he was OK and remind him to be responsible,” police said in their report, via ESPN.
While Smith has a unique relationship with Izzo and the rest of the coaching staff — he said he considers the coaches his “godfathers” given his father’s history there, and that they check in on him from time to time, per ESPN — the move puzzled W. Scott Lewis, the co-founder of the Association of Title IX Administrators.
“It's entirely another level when my player says, ‘Oh, my friend Brayden was there,’ and you call Brayden in as a coach and say, ‘Tell me what your perspective is,’” Lewis said, via ESPN. “Now you're investigating. You're not just being supportive of your athletes. If you know the police are looking into this or the Title IX office is looking at this, it becomes even more inappropriate for you to step in and do your own ad hoc Title IX investigation.
“Once you're calling in other people, it starts to reek of either you investigating this yourself or trying to intimidate a witness.”
Michigan State supports Izzo
Michigan State spokeswoman Emily Guerrant told ESPN that they didn’t feel Izzo or his assistant’s decision to contact Smith violated their policy of university employees interfering with or conducting his or her own investigation, given Smith’s relationship with them.
Michigan State athletic director Bill Beekman stood by Izzo — who just finished his 25th season with the Spartans — on Thursday, too.
"Tom Izzo has been a beacon of integrity in his profession for nearly four decades, including a quarter century as head coach,” Beekman said in a statement, via ESPN. “There's nothing to support any claims that any member of the men's basketball staff conducted their own investigation, or interfered with any ongoing investigation. Any insinuation to the contrary is nothing more than an attempt to smear a coach, a program and an entire university.”
Still, even after Washington’s guilty plea, Lambert feels shorted.
“I’d like an apology [from Izzo],” Lambert said, via ESPN. “I didn’t lie. I tried to say something … It did me no good to report it through the school specifically. I didn’t enjoy anything that happened. I don’t know what benefit anyone really gets from reporting sexual assault.’
The incident marks the latest sexual assault allegations surrounding Izzo, his program and the university as a whole in recent years. Former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to decades in prison in 2018 for sexually abusing more than 150 women and girls under his care. A Michigan State student came forward last year, too, four years after she was allegedly raped by three members of the basketball team. Izzo allegedly allowed a student-assistant to remain on his staff after misdemeanor assault charges for punching a female student in the face at a bar in 2010, too. A female student also accused two Michigan State players of raping her in 2010, though no charges were filed.
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