The Trail Blazers revealed they conducted an investigation into the 1997 sexual assault allegations against Chauncey Billups but refused to answer questions.
Editor's Note: This story includes graphic descriptions of sexual assault allegations.
The Trail Blazers made it clear on June 29's introductory press conference that they were done discussing new head coach Chauncey Billups's past—his sexual assault allegations.
The organization opened the presser by announcing it had concluded its own investigation into the 1997 alleged rape that led to then-Celtics rookie Billups and several of his friends and teammates being sued by a woman who said he and his friends sexually assaulted her.
General manager Neil Olshey was the first to speak.
“With all sincerity, and you have my word along with everyone else in the organization, we are aware of the concerns that have been expressed by people regarding some serious allegations Chauncey faced in 1997. We took the allegations very seriously, and we treated them with the gravity that they deserve,” he said. “Even though other NBA organizations, business partners, television networks, regional networks, have all enthusiastically in the past and present offered Chauncey high-profile positions with their organizations, we wanted to make sure we had our own thorough process because some things are just bigger than basketball.”
Olshey added that the franchise did a traditional background check as well as an outside investigation that “corroborated Chauncey’s recollection of the events that nothing non-consensual happened.” However, the franchise has not released any details regarding the investigation, and when questioned about the details pertaining to this topic, Olshey declined to answer, saying it was “proprietary.”
“So you’re just going to have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed,” Olshey said.
But Oregon Public Broadcasting discovered and reported that the Trail Blazers' investigation came together rather quickly, and the plaintiff's attorney, Margaret A. Burnham, told the outlet, "it’s news to us that they conducted an investigation."
What happened in November 1997?
In a civil case filed in federal court in Massachusetts (a final version that was obtained by Defector Media), the plaintiff, listed as Jane Doe, alleged that three men, including Billups, raped her at the house of Billups's Celtics teammates Antoine Walker.
Doe said in the lawsuit that her and Walker (a co-defendant) had dated "from time to time," and had known him since May of that year. She also stated that she knew Michael Irvin (not the former NFL player), a co-defendant in the lawsuit, since he lived with Walker.
Doe met up with Ron Mercer (another co-defendant), Walker, Irvin and Billups on the night of Nov. 9, 1997 at a Boston comedy club with a group of other men and women. At the end of the night, she left in a car that Billups drove, and both Mercer and Irvin were in the vehicle. Doe said in the lawsuit that they went to Walker's home.
It was at his house in Irvin's bedroom that she stated she was sexually assaulted. Doe said that she tried to stop the assault “but found she was not strong enough to protect herself from her assailants.” She also stated later in the lawsuit that she could not fully remember what happened because she was unconscious part of the night.
However, there are parts she remembered.
Irvin allegedly “gripped her head tightly with both of his hands while forcing his penis into her mouth” in his bedroom while he was naked. Doe said in the lawsuit that she remembers gagging and that two other men were in the room and also naked. However, Doe could not see their faces and could not lift her head.
"On information and belief, these two other men were Billups and Mercer, the men with whom she had come to Waltham that evening," the lawsuit states.
At one point, Walker entered the room, and Irvin allegedly said to him, “Don’t you want some?” According to the complaint, Walker declined because "I just got through with someone in the next room.”
Doe recalled Irvin saying to the other men in the room, "Yo, who wants some? Who wants some?"
According to the complaint, she lost consciousness, and when she woke up, she was still naked and in Irvin's bedroom. Used condoms and condom wrappers were allegedly all over the floor.
Doe rushed out of the room, calling a friend and saying "something bad" happened to her. She found Dennis Smith, a man she said was also at the comedy club, asleep in the basement and "pleaded with Smith to take her home." He did, and told her not to "tell" what happened that evening.
When she got home, Doe said she was vomiting and had severe pain in "her back, rectum, legs, neck and throat." She went to Boston Medical Center later that day, and the exam found bruises all over her body as well as injuries to her throat, cervix and rectum.
Her back injuries “were consistent with the plaintiff having been dragged across a rug," and she was diagnosed with shock, per her complaint. A rape kit was done and photographs of her injuries were taken. Sperm was retrieved, but they could not establish if it was Irvin, Mercer or Billups at the time.
According to the complaint, she went to the police the same day.
Was a criminal investigation conducted?
A criminal investigation never resulted in charges against Billups or the others.
According to the complaint, Mercer told police that Doe wanted to have oral sex with him, and that it happened at his residence, not Walker's. Billups also allegedly said she voluntarily had oral sex with him as well that night, adding that it happened at Mercer's house.
Irvin also told investigators that he had "sexual relations" with her that night, per the document. He added that it was consensual and that it occurred at Mercer's home.
“He told police authorities that plaintiff wanted ‘more sex’ at Walker’s home,” the complaint said, “but that he, Irvin, was too tired, and therefore he went to sleep.”
According to the complaint, Doe has no recollection of being at Mercer's home in Waltham, and denied having any sexual contact with anyone at his house.
"If, as Mercer, Irvin and Billups have claimed, she was taken to the Mercer home on the night in question," the lawsuit said, "it was against her will and while she was unconscious."
Doe sued the men under the then-new Violence Against Women Act, which is known as the federal legislation that criminalized domestic violence. But, it also made it easier for victims of crimes of violence motivated by gender, which Doe alleged in her lawsuit, to sue for civil damages in federal court.
Specifically, she sued Billups, Mercer and Irvin for emotional and physical distress, stating the three men "acted with malice based upon the plaintiff’s gender." Walker was sued for not protecting her in his home.
The lawsuit ended up getting entangled with the VAWA legal debates, and in each of the men's responses, they held firm that Doe was trying to ruin their reputations. The men filed motions to dismiss.
“The Defendants’ good characters are falsely maligned and unfairly tarnished merely by the filing of such unfounded scurrilous allegations as are made in the original complaint and the contradictory Amended Complaint,” argued the opposition to Doe’s motion to disclose. “Thus they chose to advocate continued sealing of the proceedings in this action. Yet unilateral disclosure of the nature and particulars of this action by the plaintiff’s attorney, even to the Department of Justice, is inconsistent with the purposes of impoundment of the record. In a very real sense plaintiff seeks ‘to have it both ways,’ exclusively for her benefit.”
Through many battles, Walker eventually won his argument to be dismissed from the case on Dec. 18, 1998. But, the judge denied the motion to dismiss from Mercer and Billups on March 26, 1999.
In his lawyers' response, Billups later stated that he was not at Walker's home when Doe says she was assaulted, according to a court document filed March 1999 in the case. The records revealed that Billups denied having intercourse with Doe and denied the assault occurred.
“Billups admits that on an evening in November 1997, plaintiff initiated and consented to oral sex with him, in an automobile,” the court filing from Billups states. “Billups further admits that he has described plaintiff’s actions to the Waltham Police Department and to the Office of the District Attorney for Middlesex County. Billups states that he has never had any other contact, sexual or otherwise, with plaintiff.”
Billups and Mercer eventually settled the civil lawsuit, according to a court document filed in December 1999, and the terms are not public.
How did Billups get here?
When Portland announced its head coaching search in early June, Billups was one of the candidates publicly endorsed by Damian Lillard, who later revealed he was not aware of the sexual assault allegations.
The franchise received pushback from fans when the news was leaked that Billups was the frontrunner for the position, even more so when news broke that the Trail Blazers passed over Spurs assistant Becky Hammon. She would have been the NBA's first female head coach.
Per OPB's report, Portland's investigation into the 1997 rape allegations occurred over a matter of days. ESPN and The Athletic reported that final interviews occurred the week of June 21, and Olshey told reporters the team's investigation happened after Portland offered Billups the job.
The franchise announced on June 27 it had an introductory press conference scheduled for the new head coach. Two days later, Billups, now 44, addressed what happened.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about how every decision that we make can have a profound impact on a person’s life,” Billups said. “I learned at a very young age as a player, not only a player but a young man, a young adult, that every decision, you know, every decision has consequences. And that’s led to some really, really healthy but tough conversations that I’ve had to have with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time in 1997, and my daughters about what actually happened and about what they may have to read about me in the news and in the media.
“But this experience has shaped my life in so many different ways. My decision-making, obviously. Who I allow to be in my life. The friendships and the relationships that I have and how I go about them. It’s impacted every decision that I make. You know, it really has. And it shaped me in some unbelievable ways. So I know how important it is, you know, really, to have the right support system around you in particular during tough, difficult times. And it’s something that I’ve tried to instill in all of the players that I’ve played with over the course of my career, just sharing some of my experiences and things and maybe it will help them, you know, down the road at some point.”
The Athletic's Jason Quick later asked the head coach to elaborate on his comments. It was then that a member of the Blazers’ staff, off-camera but audible in the video, intervened and said, “Jason, we appreciate your question. We’ve addressed this. It’s been asked and answered, so happy to move on to the next question here.”
At the same media gathering, Olshey said to Bleacher Report's Sean Highkin, who asked for more details on the investigation, “That’s proprietary, Sean, so you’re just gonna have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed.”
OPB retraced the 1997 case, contacting different key members of the lawsuits on both sides. One of the defendant's attorneys told the outlet that he hasn't spoken to Billups in years, adding that he was not contacted by Portland as a part of its investigation.
OPB also reported that the Trail Blazers allegedly did not contact the current DA of Middlesex County, where the allegations took place, or the former district attorney, Thomas Reilly, who led the investigation into the allegations and decided not to press criminal charges.
The police department in Waltham, the suburb where the alleged sexual assault occurred, told OPB that it had received on recent inquiry regarding Billups from Dave Hallman, who runs an Oregon-based security firm. The Waltham Police Department told the outlet they received the request for information on June 24, and Capt. Steven R. Champeon said to OPB via email, "no information was released by our department."
News of Billups's hiring broke the next day.