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A woman who said she was gang-raped by Oregon State University football players met with the players' former coach on Thursday, 18 years after the assault. Mike Riley, now the head football coach at the University of Nebraska, had invited Brenda Tracy to discuss the rape with his team. "I don't feel like there's any type of unfinished business between me and Coach Riley at all," Tracy told ESPN. "I feel like he is a friend and an ally now."
Tracy didn't always feel this way. After Riley only suspended the players for one game each and said that they had made "a bad choice," Tracy said she "hated this man more than my rapists." She went public with her story in 2014 in an article published in The Oregonian. Since then, Tracy has helped Oregon State University lobby the Pac-12 Conference to adopt new rules barring teams from recruiting athletes who have been dismissed from other teams for violent behavior. Earlier this month, her son created a petition urging the National Collegiate Athletic Association to adopt similar rules.
"I think that every university should bring a survivor to speak to their team," Tracy said. "We have a unique viewpoint and a lot to offer on this problem. Who knows better how to fix this than someone who has been through it?"
