The best grade Syracuse University's administration could have given the 2005 report into allegations of sexual abuse against Bernie Fine would have been an incomplete. The leaked report was featured by the Post-Standard on the front page of the paper this morning. It is 15 pages. It summarizes conversations with key players including Bobby Davis, Bernie Fine, Mike Hopkins and another man who lived in Fine's home as an adolescent. Allegations are set out against Fine. Davis' credibility is attacked. He is called a liar.
What's not included in this report is a clear sense of investigative curiosity. There are interviews with people who would not have expected Bernie Fine to have done anything wrong. The people Davis pointed out might have information about other cases were not all interviewed. There does not appear to be an attempt to reach outside the comfortable circles of acquaintances to truly investigate whether the Davis claims have merit.
The Human Resources department and the university hired attorneys chatted with Coach Jim Boeheim, but did not take a statement from him. They gave great weight to the Post-Standard and ESPN for investigating these claims a few years prior and not running a story. The lack of publication led to the assumption there was no merit to the charges made by Davis. The investigative team did not notify the Syracuse Police about the allegations or the District Attorney. They did not appear highly motivated to conduct an exhaustive review.
The written document also comes up short. Any formal report, paper or legal brief would have a beginning, middle and an end. This one skips the ending. There is no conclusion drawn. There are no recommendations made. There is no opinion stated on whether Bobby Davis' allegations have merit or whether Bernie Fine ever acted inappropriately with the boys, teens and young men in his life.
Of course, this criticism of the investigation and the accompanying report has no bearing on whether anything illegal or immoral took place, but a more complete picture might have allowed concerned parties to make a better judgement.
Given what we know now it's hard to believe the Chancellor and the Trustees accepted this report as final in 2005. Maybe it was intended as preliminary. That is the only conclusion considering it clearly is not final.
It will be a great disappointment in the coming months of the Syracuse University Board of Trustees does not come out with a stinging rebuke of the university's 2005 investigation into the claims made by Davis. A trained investigative legal team could quickly come up with a laundry list of problems of the way this was handled seven years ago.
Read the Syracuse University 2005 report here.
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