DENVER - The University of Colorado said it planned to hire a special administrator to oversee its athletic department and scandal-plagued football program after a female placekicker said she was raped by a teammate four years ago.
Katie Hnida said in the upcoming edition of Sports Illustrated that she was assaulted in the summer of 2000. Now at the University of New Mexico, last year she became the first woman ever to score points in a Division I-A college football game.
Three other women have sued the University of Colorado in federal court, saying they were raped by players or recruits at or after an off-campus party in December 2001.
No assault charges have been filed in those cases, but Boulder County prosecutor Mary Keenan said in a deposition for one of the lawsuits that she believes the football program uses alcohol and sex to entice recruits.
Meanwhile, The Denver Post reported yesterday that a fifth woman told police more than a year ago that she was raped by a football player. That woman did not want to press charges.
If and when she decides to come forward
I will support her in doing so but I respect people's privacy Keenan told the newspaper.
Hnida, 22, issued a statement Tuesday through the University of New Mexico, saying she was healing from horrors endured at Colorado. The statement does not mention rape, and she says she does not plan to press charges.
Hnida's statement, however, was intended to confirm the account in Sports Illustrated, New Mexico athletics spokesman Greg Remington said. Attempts to locate Hnida were not immediately successful; there was no telephone listing under her name in Albuquerque.
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