Ex-ASU admin defends not escalating reports of sexual harassment by donor

PHOENIX (CN) — Former Arizona State University Athletics Director Ray Anderson said on the stand Thursday he didn’t escalate a report that a donor sexually harassed three women because he didn’t think the conduct described to him amounted to sexual harassment.

“He grabbed ahold of me, put his hands on my waist, ran his hands up my body and left them on my breasts,” Kathy Cohen recalled in a federal courthouse Wednesday, referring to donor Bart Wear at a basketball game in March 2019.

She, Leslie Hurley, wife of head basketball coach Bobby Hurley, and Lindsey Wood, wife of assistant coach Ben Wood, told Kathy Cohen’s husband David Cohen, who reported it to Anderson a week later and is now accusing the school of retaliating and firing him from his role as a senior associate athletics director.

“He did not describe sexual harassment,” Anderson said from the witness stand Thursday afternoon. “Inappropriate touching.”

Cohen was fired in August 2019, five months after Cohen first told him about the harassment and a week before the university initiated an investigation. That’s because Anderson didn’t confront Wear or report the incident to anyone else until then.

In 2021, Cohen sued him and the Arizona Board of Regents, the university’s governing board, claiming that Anderson retaliated against him for reporting the harassment and pestering him for updates while Anderson declined to act.

Anderson admitted on the stand Thursday that ASU’s Title IX training makes no distinction between sexual harassment and “inappropriate touching.” Instead, it was a judgment call he made on his own.

Anderson said he, Cohen and another employee agreed not to report Wear but instead confront him directly.

“We should tell him to calm down,” Anderson recalled Cohen saying to him in 2019. “He said it very calm, with no sense of urgency.”

Anderson told Cohen that he would have the initial conversation with Wear.

“You never had that conversation, did you?” plaintiff attorney Jeff Feasby asked.

“No,” Anderson replied.

Cohen, whose testimony took up most of Wednesday and Thursday, said he didn’t come with a recommendation for how Anderson should act or how Wear should be punished, but instead hoped his boss would do the right thing. He said Anderson assured him it would be taken care of.

But weeks later when Cohen asked Anderson how the conversation went, Anderson said he hadn’t had it. In May, Anderson and Wear took a private jet on a two-day golf trip, and Anderson still didn’t confront him.

“That was a mistake,” Anderson admitted.

He testified in only the last 20 minutes of the day Thursday, and due to scheduling conflicts with other witnesses, likely won’t retake the stand until Tuesday.

In the five months between the report and Cohen’s termination, Anderson renegotiated Cohen’s annual bonus, removed swimming and diving from his responsibilities, and assigned him to report to another associate athletic director rather than to Anderson directly.

“That was a punishment,” Cohen said.

Cohen was still in charge of ticketing for football and basketball — basketball being his favorite to manage.

“If Mr. Anderson really wanted to retaliate against you, he could have kicked you off of men’s basketball, right?” defense attorney Robert McKirgan asked.

Cohen’s counsel objected before he could respond.

In his cross examination, McKirgan pointed to past issues Cohen had in his role as alternatives for why he was fired, including a $690,000 check for the university that Cohen deposited into his own bank account in 2017. Cohen said Vivid Seats inadvertently wrote the check to him rather than ASU, but he deposited it into his own account for safekeeping before returning the money to Vivid Seats and directing them to rewrite it to ASU.

McKirgan also brought up a time Cohen was privately reprimanded by the Pac-12 athletic conference for his behavior at a game. Leslie Hurley, who testified after Cohen but before Anderson, said Cohen confronted the officials about fans hurling vulgar remarks at her and her daughters. That corroborated what Cohen explained on Wednesday.

McKirgan props up those incidents as evidence that Cohen was fireable. But according to court documents and witness testimony, neither were cited as a reason for Cohen’s termination at the time.

Cohen plans to call seven more witnesses, including Bobby Hurley and University President Michael Crow. Attorneys say testimony should conclude on Wednesday.

Follow @JournalistJoeAZ