WACO (TX)
Deadspin
August 27, 2018
By Patrick Redford
According to a report from PR Week, Baylor officials placed a mole within several support groups for sexual assault survivors as a way to control their messaging and keep the university from looking bad.
Baylor currently faces a Title IX lawsuit from 10 anonymous former students for their alleged serial mishandling of sexual assault cases over the past decade, and Baylor football players have been accused of committing 52 rapes over four years. Per PR Week, the school attempted to curtail the voices of sexual assault survivors by embedding an insider (identified as Matt Burchett, director of student activities at Baylor) into survivor groups and getting them to soften their stances.
Burchett reportedly used his role as the school’s chief event planner and student life liaison to gain the trust of the groups. He would pretend to help them organize activities, all while siphoning information back to Baylor officials and to Ketchum, a PR firm retained by the school in the wake of reporting on its handling of sexual assaults.
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