The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (35 page)

At Missouri, sex between athletes and tutors was common enough that the participants had a name for it: “friends with benefits.” But the idea of casual
sex with athletes had no appeal to Teresa Braeckel. She was a virgin, a fact that made her the subject of ridicule among some athletes.

Meanwhile, Braeckel’s close friend and roommate Lauren Gavin was also a tutor, and she was caught up in the friends-with-benefits system. Derrick Washington was one of the athletes Gavin slept with. Washington had a steady girlfriend, but once or twice a week he would drop by Gavin’s apartment for sex.

Braeckel didn’t meddle in Gavin’s business. They’d met when they were freshmen and had been tight ever since. But the situation eventually became awkward. Braeckel had become Washington’s tutor and Gavin’s roommate. Since she was rarely home, Braeckel had never crossed paths with Washington when he was at her place to see Gavin. Nonetheless, Gavin would report that Washington sometimes made jokes about having a threesome with them. Braeckel didn’t find that funny. But she didn’t find it alarming either. She’d been around athletes enough to know that was par for the course. “Things like that get said in the locker room, on the practice field, on the team bus and in other situations,” Braeckel said. “I think men bring up threesomes just to see what they can get away with. So I didn’t let it bother me.”

Nonetheless, Gavin reminded Washington more than once that Braeckel was a virgin.

June 18, 2010, was a Friday. That evening Teresa Braeckel met up with some girlfriends at Harpo’s, a popular bar in Columbia. It was dollar-beer night, and Braeckel had at least seven beers. Around midnight the group walked to a nearby Mexican restaurant to get a bite to eat. It was around 1:00 a.m. when a friend brought Braeckel home.

She had planned to go right to bed; she was beat and had to be at the rec center in the morning to teach swim lessons. But she noticed that Gavin’s bedroom door was ajar and the light was on. Braeckel peeked in. Gavin was on her bed, worn out from a long day of babysitting. But she wanted to hear about the girls’ night out. Braeckel gave her a quick rundown, then asked why Gavin was still up.

“Derrick Washington might be coming over,” Gavin said.

Braeckel knew what that meant. “Then I think I’m going to go ahead and get ready and go to bed,” she said, exiting the room.

The apartment had suites of two bedrooms at each end, with bathrooms connecting them. Gavin and Braeckel were suite mates, their rooms
separated by a bathroom. After removing her contacts, Braeckel washed her face and put in her night guard: she had a terrible habit of grinding her teeth in her sleep. Then she stepped into her bedroom, closed the door, undressed and slipped into a pink lace tank top and an extra-large pair of plaid boxer shorts. She didn’t bother with panties. After plugging in her cell phone and setting her alarm clock, she turned off the light and climbed into bed. It was around 1:30.

Banging on the front door to the apartment woke Gavin at 2:30. She checked her phone and noticed a series of missed calls and texts from Washington. He’d been trying to get in for a while, but Gavin had fallen asleep waiting for him. Groggy, she went to the door and let him in, not bothering to turn on the lights. He followed her to her bedroom. After a few minutes, he stepped out, saying he had to use the bathroom.

Suddenly Teresa Braeckel opened her eyes. It was pitch-black. But she felt something in her vagina. Fingers. She tensed up. Lying on her left side, she was facing her bedroom door. It was partially open.

Terrified, she didn’t make a sound. Neither did the individual behind her, not even as he pulled away from her bed and left the room. She never saw his face, just his figure. But as she remained motionless on her bed, she felt pretty certain of his identity. Afraid to cry or scream, she just waited. Finally, after roughly twenty minutes, she heard the front door to the apartment slam shut. He had left.

Braeckel fumbled for her glasses, got out of bed and threw on some clothes. She walked out of her room just as Gavin exited the bathroom.

“What are you doing up?” Gavin said.

“I woke up to Derrick fucking fingering me,” Braeckel snapped.

Gavin froze.

Braeckel started shouting, blaming her. Gavin said nothing. She was in shock. So was Braeckel. The friends-with-benefits system suddenly had serious consequences. Braeckel grabbed her car keys and cell phone, then stormed out of the apartment.

After driving aimlessly around Columbia, Braeckel pulled in to the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour supermarket around 4:00. She spotted a police officer in his patrol car. Her adrenaline rushing, she reached for her phone to call a friend. That’s when she noticed a missed call from Derrick Washington.
They had exchanged cell numbers back when she tutored him; it was required in case one or the other had to cancel a session at the last minute. But they hadn’t talked in many months. She noticed that his call had come in at 2:19, about the time he showed up to have sex with Gavin. She figured Washington had been unsuccessful in reaching Gavin to let him in, so he tried her number. Never mind that it was the middle of the night. Typical, she thought.

Crying, she started calling and texting friends for support. But nobody was awake. Desperate, she called her home back in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Joe Braeckel was in bed when the phone awakened him. Half-asleep, he picked up and immediately recognized his daughter’s voice. She was crying hysterically. In between sobs, she told him what had happened.

The first thing he wanted to know was whether she was in a safe place. She told him she was in a parking lot with her doors locked and a police officer was parked about fifty yards away.

Joe Braeckel took a deep breath. He and his daughter were extremely close. He was always there for her. But nothing in his life experience prepared him for how to handle news that his daughter had been violated in her bed. He was heartbroken. She was inconsolable and alone. All he could think to do was keep her on the phone. Thirty minutes later they were still talking.

“Dad, what do I do? Do I go up to this officer in his car and tell him?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

She started sobbing again.

Later that morning, Braeckel showed up to teach swim lessons. She hadn’t slept and looked like hell. Her boss sent her into the swim office, and Braeckel called the women’s shelter. A counselor referred her to the hospital, where a nurse trained to deal with sexual assault victims performed an exam. The hospital also notified the police. Before long, Braeckel was in a room with an officer. She gave a statement, detailing what happened.

The rest of the weekend was a blur. On Monday morning Detective Sam Easley showed up at Braeckel’s apartment. He photographed the crime scene and had Braeckel walk him through the events of the previous Friday night. Then he talked to Gavin.

It wasn’t the first time that Gavin and Easley had met. Six months
earlier—on January 11, 2010—Gavin filed a police report of her own, alleging another Missouri athlete—the basketball standout Michael Dixon—had raped her in her apartment. Gavin underwent a rape kit at the hospital, and Easley conducted the criminal investigation. In his report, he noted that “she was afraid of what might happen” if she pressed charges. Ultimately, Gavin declined to cooperate with prosecutors, choosing instead to meet with the head basketball coach, which led to Dixon issuing her an apology. She dropped her complaint at that point. (Dixon would later withdraw from the University of Missouri after a second woman on campus accused him of rape in November 2012.)

Gavin’s ordeal turned out to be the tipping point for Braeckel. “Lauren and I never went to another basketball game after that,” Braeckel explained. “And I quit tutoring at that point. It was no longer worth it to me.” And Gavin went to the head of the tutoring program and said she no longer wanted to tutor basketball players. But she continued tutoring football players.

Sensitive to Gavin’s history, Detective Easley went gingerly when he questioned her about Derrick Washington. But Gavin was mortified and said little to help the investigation. She confirmed that Washington had been at the apartment on the night in question. But when Easley asked if Washington had said anything incriminating about Braeckel that night, Gavin told him, “Derrick didn’t say anything to me.”

“How could I tell the detective that I knew this guy did this, but I slept with him?” Gavin explained. “Plus, there was the huge embarrassment that I was still hanging around with these types of guys. So I lied to him.”