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Brenda Tracy stood in front of UC Berkeley football players and coaches in August wondering if she dared say the name of one of the men she said gang raped her two decades ago in Oregon.
Then it spilled out.
“He went to school here,” she said. “He was on the team.”
Tracy, 45, felt all eyes on her as she described the Cal player who she said was involved in a gang rape, an episode that has propelled her to devote her efforts to ending sexual violence in college athletic programs. She has founded an advocacy group and gives talks to football players and other athletes around the country.
At UC Berkeley in August, Tracy said she had dreaded the idea of speaking there and was not sure she would accept the invitation to address the Golden Bears football team because a trip to Berkeley would be different from the 80-plus schools she had visited since 2016.
“You never even know what different trauma hits you,” Tracy said in telephone interviews. “You don’t even know what you have left to heal. I always knew Cal would eventually call. I always wondered if I’d go.”
Tracy offered unflinching details of being raped, sodomized and robbed by four men in Corvallis, Oregon, over a six-hour period. One of the rapists, she told the audience, was former Cal wide receiver Michael Ainsworth.
Ainsworth, then 18 and a high school football star, was on a recruiting trip at Oregon State when he and three other men — two of them Beavers football players — were arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting Tracy. Tracy decided not to testify and ultimately, neither Ainsworth nor the other men faced charges in the case. Ainsworth told authorities that the sex was consensual, according to news reports at the time.
Now, half a year after Tracy’s talk to the Cal team, the UC Berkeley football program is facing allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment leveled by a former student who said she had served as a sports medicine intern working with the football team.
Paige Cornelius, 20, wrote in a detailed Facebook post last month that she was subjected to “ruthless, endless and persistent sex harassment” from players and coaches.
Cornelius, who said she left UC Berkeley this year, said she wrote the post about her experiences because athletic officials — including Cal football coach Justin Wilcox — did not respond to her emails asking them to address the incidents.
A source close to the department said the woman’s social media posts were the first officials there had learned of the allegations. Wilcox has said that campus authorities are investigating the matter.
“We take great pride in trying to create an environment where everybody is respected and everybody feels safe — the entire football program and the institution,” Wilcox said, “and this cuts to the core.”
In a telephone interview with this news organization, Tracy said about the Berkeley allegations, “If there is a problem, then it needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed now.”
Tracy was 24 and a waitress from Salem when she was attacked in 1998, she said. The alleged assailants were arrested on suspicion of sodomy, unlawful penetration and sex abuse.
Tracy decided against testifying, she said, after receiving death threats and feeling as if she didn’t have support from authorities, who described it as a case of “he said/she said.”
When the Beavers players did not face charges, Oregon State coach Mike Riley suspended them for one game and referred to their actions as “a bad choice.”
Ainsworth ended up at Cal in 1999 but left school after a year. While at the university, he was the subject of an academic fraud scandal in which a former Berkeley professor admitted to giving Ainsworth and another football player credit for academic work they did not complete.
After Tracy described Ainsworth’s role in the alleged assault in her talk at Berkeley last summer, current Golden Bears players asked, “What number did he wear? We don’t want to wear it. We don’t want to be associated with this guy,” she said.
She said some of the players “couldn’t rush me fast enough to hug me, thank me.”
Wilcox told reporters the next day that the football program planned to support Tracy’s campaign.
“You’re going to hear more about it from us, addressing issues of sexual assault and domestic violence,” he said. “She is a survivor, and she hits you right between the eyes with it.”
Attempts by this news organization to reach Ainsworth for comment were not immediately successful.
Tracy’s speeches have resonated with audiences in an era of #MeToo and #TimesUp movements and sexual assault scandals involving USA Gymnastics and U.S. Swimming. The advocacy organization she founded, Set The Expectation, is aimed at combating physical and sexual violence in athletic programs. Her efforts follow those of Kathy Redmond, who in 1997 launched the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes, after alleging she was raped twice by a former University of Nebraska football star.
Tracy, a registered nurse and mother of two, did not plan to become the face of a national campaign. It began after a 2014 series about her rape in the Oregonian.
Riley, the Oregon State coach at the time of the alleged rape, responded in the comments section under the story:
“Today’s column by John Canzano regarding the circumstances of sexual assault on Ms. Brenda Tracy is shocking and her suffering saddens me,” he wrote. “It is with heartfelt compassion that I will reach out to Ms. Tracy and offer to assist her. I hope we have the opportunity to meet in the near future, and if she feels comfortable, I invite her to speak to the football program.”
He added, “Her experiences would be a powerful message and one I know our whole team would take to heart.”
Two years later, Tracy and Riley met in Lincoln, Nebraska, where Riley coached at the time. He apologized to her in person and then asked her to address the Cornhuskers players.
Now Tracy travels the country to meet athletes and coaches — both male and female. But Tracy said that she sees her talks as a way to bring the conversation to those who need to hear it the most: men.
Tracy has become a frequent visitor to Bay Area schools, starting two years ago when she talked to Stanford football players. After she visited Stanford in the spring, coach David Shaw designated a Saturday in September — the date of a home game against Arizona State — as Sexual and Relationship Violence Awareness Day. Tracy attended the game as a featured guest.
In March 2018, Tracy spoke to San Jose State’s football team before participating in a university symposium, “Gender, Sport and Society,” that most of the players attended.
In that talk, Tracy described overcoming depression and suicidal tendencies in the years she spent healing from the psychological effects of the incident. But Tracy added that the stories of other victims have left her feeling ashamed that she did not become an advocate sooner.
“I have been silent, and I am not going to be silent and I am not going to be ashamed,” she told the audience.
In October, Tracy returned to the Bay Area to speak to Palo Alto High School athletes, while also participating in San Jose State’s first Set The Expectation game and Stanford’s second such event to raise awareness about sexual violence.
The message she highlights is how men need to take responsibility for solving the problem. Tracy likes to say that 90 percent of men are not causing problems but neither are they doing enough to stop the 10 percent of those who do.
“The thing that doesn’t shock me ever” is “a lot of men don’t identify themselves as the solution,” she said in an interview. “It’s not enough to not do this. It’s not enough that you’re not harassing, or raping and sexually assaulting. Are you holding other people accountable?”
