LSU head coach Ed Orgeron knew that Derrius Guice sexually harassed at least one woman and lied about it, a woman said Friday when testifying in front of state lawmakers.
Gloria Scott, 74, worked part-time security at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, and she remembers when the then-LSU player and his friends approached her at at her post outside Elevator 8 in Bunker G in 2017.
“I like to f— women like you, you older women, because y’all know y’all like us young men to f— y’all,” Scott said Guice told her. “And, you know you want this body.”
Guice continued to sexually harass the then-70-year-old, making vulgar comments and rubbing his body up and down from his chest to his genitals, according to USA TODAY.
Scott asked him to leave her alone, but the running back star refused. She told lawmakers that she tried to report the incident to LSU athletic department administrators, the school’s student accountability director, and directly to Guice’s head coach, Ed Orgeron. However, the school wouldn’t take action, even when she asked for Guice to be held from the Citrus Bowl that year.
Verge Ausberry and Miriam Segar told her “they would never let that happen.” These two are the only LSU officials facing discipline for mishandling harassment complaints after the school’s Title IX scandal.
Prior to Scott reporting the incident, Guice had already been accused three other times of sexual misconduct. But still, LSU did nothing.
Orgeron later called Scott to ask her to forgive Guice, calling him a “troubled child.” The head coach continued, telling her that the player was “just kidding.”
“I was so hurt and so nervous and so upset,” Scott, who is a great-grandmother, during the Senate Select Committee on Women and Children hearing. “Never in my life have I had a man or child talk to me like he did.”
“It doesn’t matter how good of a player, football, basketball. You still have to do something when they do something wrong,” she added.
The committee is holding hearings on LSU’s failure to comply with Title IX requirements to report and investigate incidents of sexual misconduct after the school released the Husch Blackwell report. This document included sexual misconduct allegations against former head football coach Les Miles, who recently parted ways with Kansas amid the fallout.
LSU suspended Ausberry and Segar for 30 and 21 days without pay, respectively, after the report was published.
According to the Husch Blackwell report, two rape allegations against Guice and another allegation that he took nude photos of a woman without her consent had already been reported to school officials prior to Scott informing LSU about what happened to her.
Up until this point, Orgeron had not been mentioned in connection with the school’s failures. The law firm did mention Scott’s incident in the report but was “not able to identify ‘the coach’” who called Scott on Guice’s behalf. In his interview with Husch Blackwell, Orgeron reportedly denied having direct communications with Scott.
The report states “that Derrius was probably just kidding around and that Derrius came from a broken home,” before “dismissing” her.
“To hear all of the other allegations, it wasn’t surprising to us,” Scott’s granddaughter said to USA TODAY. “If you can disrespect a 70-year-old woman like that, you can do much worse.”
