DENVER—A former University of Colorado football player at the center of a sex and drugs scandal that erupted at the school in 2002 now faces prosecution for an alleged assault that happened before he joined the team.
An Arapahoe County District judge has ordered District Attorney Carol Chambers to suggest a special prosecutor by July 6 to bring charges against former cornerback Clyde Surrell and another man in an alleged sexual assault that happened after a high school graduation party in 2000.
Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. ordered charges be filed by Oct. 5. Chambers’ spokeswoman, Kathleen Walsh, said the office would review Samour’s order.
Surrell was at the off-campus apartments of two women the night they claimed they were gang-raped by football players and recruits in December 2001, according to court documents. He also was in a hotel room where a student trainer said she was coerced into performing oral sex on a recruit on Nov. 23, 2001.
Julie Stene contacted Aurora police in June 2000, about 18 months before the alleged assaults that led to the CU scandal. She had gotten drunk at a party and then woke up in her garage the next morning wearing only a polo shirt and showing signs she had been sexually assaulted.
The Associated Press does not normally identify victims of sexual assault, but Stene is speaking publicly about her case.
After DNA tied Surrell to Stene’s alleged assault soon after the event, Stene declined to pursue charges because her father was dying of leukemia and her parents were getting a divorce, among other personal issues. Stene contacted prosecutors again in 2004 after hearing about the CU scandal.
In court documents, Surrell and the other mansaid they had consensual sex with Stene. Surrell at first denied having sex with Stene but changed his story when confronted with DNA evidence, according to Samour’s 91-page order.
“I had a bad feeling in my stomach that Clyde was involved with it, and it turns out that he was,” Stene said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press Saturday. “At that point I felt really, really bad that I had not gone through with the prosecution in 2001.”
The DA’s office in 2004 refused to bring charges, citing concern about “jumping on the CU bandwagon,” according to court testimony.
“Hey, look, I had nothing to do with what happened at CU,” Stene said. “Don’t tell me I don’t have a case because some people in Boulder are having issues.”
Walsh said the DA’s office examined the case after Chambers took office in 2005 and decided there was insufficient evidence to file charges. The Larimer County District Attorney’s Office reviewed the case in 2007 at Chambers’ request and agreed.
But Samour ruled that her continued decision to not pursue charges is “unjustifiable, arbitrary, capricious, and without reasonable excuse.”
“To deny her petition would be to exacerbate the injustice she has already suffered,” Samour wrote in his order.
Samour ordered that the men be charged with first-degree sexual assault on a helpless victim, or second-degree assault on a victim incapable of knowing the nature of her conduct.
Such an order to compel prosecution is extremely rare.
“In my 21 years as a prosecutor I’ve been once before a court arguing such a motion and never had any one of those granted,” said Don Quick, District Attorney for neighboring Adams County whose office has served as special prosecutor in other cases.
The University of Colorado in December 2007 agreed to pay $2.85 million to settle the lawsuit by the two other women who claimed they were sexually assaulted by football players and recruits. The women’s saga sparked a football recruiting scandal, prompted broad university reforms and led to a shake-up of the school’s top leaders.
The women’s lawsuit alleged CU violated federal law by fostering an environment that allowed sexual assaults to occur. The suit accused the university of failing to adequately supervise players when the women were raped in 2001.
According to court documents from the lawsuits filed as part of Stene’s bid to compel prosecution in her case, Surrell was at both women’s apartments where the alleged assaults occurred Dec. 7, 2001.
Another document filed as part of the lawsuit include an affidavit from a female student identified as “Student – Trainer B” that a player believed to be Surrell coerced her to perform oral sex on a football recruit at a hotel because CU wanted that player to attend the school. That alleged assault happened after a celebration of Colorado’s 62-36 win over Nebraska.
No criminal charges were filed as a result of the women’s complaints.
The fallout from the scandal included the resignations of CU System President Betsy Hoffman and Athletic Director Dick Tharp. CU head coach Gary Barnett survived the scandal, but he later took a buyout.
“It’s one of the last issues that’s a hold over from the (scandal) in that there was never a criminal prosecution” said Stene’s attorney, Baine Kerr, who also represented one of the women in the lawsuit against CU. “It is finally headed in the right direction and I hope for a successful prosecution.”
Stene graduated from Northern Arizona University in 2005 and is working as a private preschool teacher in Aurora.
This story has been updated to remove the name of one of the men accused of the sexual assault because he was never charged. Surrell is now deceased.
