According to ESPN, three Michigan State players have been charged with sexual assault from a January incident, according to a statement from the Ingham County prosecutor.
“I have decided to authorize sexual assault charges against the three persons whose warrants were requested by the MSU Police,” prosecutor Carol Siemon said via ESPN. “We are alleging that on the night of January 16, those three persons sexually assaulted a woman in an East Lansing apartment on campus.”
The players have not yet been named. The prosecutor’s office does not typically release the names of those charged with crimes until they have been arraigned. The three players are expected to be arraigned Tuesday.
The Detroit firm Jones Day, which was hired by the Spartans as an external investigator, reported that Curtis Blackwell, who was recently let go, failed to report any information to the MSU Police Department after speaking with the three players.
The report, completed recently by Jones Day law firm, found evidence that former staffer Curtis Blackwell violated the university’s relationship violence and sexual misconduct policy. Blackwell, according to the report, spoke to three players and a parent about the incident in January without reporting to his superiors what he learned from those conversations. Jones Day said the firm was not able to determine the severity of Blackwell’s violation because he and the three players declined to speak to their investigators.
Via MSU President Lou Anna Simon:
“Dantonio immediately conveyed the information regarding an alleged assault to MSU PD so it could open an investigation, and he encouraged the player who reported the assault to cooperate with authorities,” the report reads.
“Coach Dantonio and his team — particularly Coach Dantonio — handled this in the utmost manner with integrity and with swiftness and consistent with the policies that takes all of those issues off the board with respect to Coach Dantonio and the team that is currently there,” University President Lou Anna Simon.
