For UW-Whitewater’s former wresting coach, Tim Fader, doing the right thing went terribly wrong.
In 2014, when he reported to police that a wrestling recruit had sexually assaulted a woman, he was fired.
Fader filed a federal lawsuit against the former Chancellor Richard Telfer and athletic director Amy Edmonds, accusing them of retaliating against him because he reported the crime to the police, and not to campus police which is a violation of University policy.
The Wisconsin State Journal reports:
A former UW-Whitewater wrestling coach has sued the university’s athletic director and former chancellor, saying they pushed him out of his job after he reported a sexual assault allegation to police instead of to campus officials.
In a complaint filed last week, Tim Fader, who is now the head wrestling coach at UW-Eau Claire, accused former Chancellor Richard Telfer and athletic director Amy Edmonds of retaliating against him because his report to police made it harder to “cover up” the 2014 sexual assault report.
Fader’s lawsuit in federal court seeks unspecified damages from Telfer, who retired in 2015, and Edmonds for wrongful termination and defamation. It alleges that Fader was a successful and decorated head coach at UW-Whitewater in 2014, recently named the d3wrestle.com coach of the year, when officials suspended him and decided not to renew his contract with the university.
In April of that year, according to Fader, the mother of a former UW-Whitewater student he knew told Fader that the former student had been sexually assaulted. Fader “immediately” contacted Whitewater police about the allegation, his complaint states.
According to WISC-TV, which first reported Fader’s lawsuit, a UW-Whitewater wrestling recruit was accused of the sexual assault; the recruit was questioned by police, but Walworth Countyprosecutors declined to file charges against him.
For more on this story, visit Wisconsin State Journal.