Last week, University of Minnesota athletic director Norwood Teague resigned after a woman came forward and accused him of getting drunk and sexually harassing her through a series of lewd text messages recently. Teague said he was sorry in a statement and made it seem like an isolated incident. However, it sounds like this is not the first time Teague has used his position of power to sexually harass a woman on the job.
Yesterday, Star Tribune reporter Amelia Rayno—who covers the Badgers and college basketball as a whole for the newspaper—wrote what she later described as "the hardest thing I've ever written." It's a column that accuses Teague of sexually harassing her on multiple occasions. You can check it out here:
In her piece, Rayno details a pattern of sexual harassment involving Teague dating all the way back to December 2013. She writes about how she shared drinks with Teague on multiple occasions before that but that, one night after she revealed that she had broken up with her longtime boyfriend, Teague started sexually harassing her regularly. According to her, he touched her inappropriately during meetings, he contacted her constantly, and he sent her text messages like this that she ignored:
“Ur no fun anymore."
It got so bad that, eventually, Rayno stopped speaking with Teague altogether and eventually reported his behavior to her supervisors. And while it doesn't seem like they did a whole lot to help her—one of the options they provided her with was moving to a new beat that wouldn't involve much interaction with Teague—she found a way to work through it…even though that should NOT have been the solution.
You can read her powerful piece here. It's sad to think about how many other female reporters and members of the media are probably definitely subjected to the same kind of behavior on a regular basis.
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[via Star Tribune]
