The woman who accused Michigan State University football coach Mel Tucker of sexual harassment got an emergency restraining order on Friday afternoon temporarily barring Tucker and his associates from releasing more of her private text messages.
Brenda Tracy, a prominent rape survivor and activist Tucker had hired to speak to his team about sexual violence, filed the civil lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court in Michigan. Judge James S. Jamo granted her motion, ruling Tracy had demonstrated the need for immediate action to prevent Tucker, his attorney and others from disclosing sensitive, confidential matters that could cause irreparable harm.
“The actions of Mel Tucker and his legal team have put me in a position where I must protect the lives and the confidential information of third parties that have nothing to do with this case,” Tracy said in an emailed statement.
Jamo’s order said it also appeared to the Court that “protected, personal, private, and sensitive business information related to sexual assault survivors and employees… was gathered in violation of Michigan law,” according to a copy obtained by USA TODAY.
Investigation:Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker accused of sexually harassing rape survivor
Tucker and his attorney published a letter Thursday along with 98 pages of heavily redacted text messages apparently extracted from the cellphone of Ahlan Alvarado, Tracy’s best friend and booking assistant who died in a car accident in June. They said the messages contained “newly discovered evidence” discrediting Tracy’s account to the university’s outside investigator.
The letter said the information undermined MSU’s decision to fire Tucker last week and suggested more evidence would be coming, saying the excerpts were culled from 20,000 communications or documents that were “too voluminous to capture in a single letter.”
Alvarado was a key witness in the sexual harassment case. She worked for Tracy’s nonprofit, Set The Expectation, which aims to reduce sexual violence by engaging men, particularly athletes and coaches. Alvarado and Tracy’s private discussions “involve highly sensitive information regarding other survivors and their families,” Tracy said in an affidavit filed with her motion for the restraining order.
“As the founder of STE, survivors look to me as a support and confidant,” Tracy’s affidavit said. “I am oftentimes the sole person that the survivor confides in. These survivors have not disclosed what has happened to their families and friends.”
In addition to confidential conversations, Tracy said her assistant’s cellphone contains Tracy’s business records, calendar and other private information.
It is unclear how Tucker and his legal team obtained Alvarado’s cellphone messages, although Tracy’s affidavit seeking the restraining order and her statement point to Alvarado’s husband, Agustin Alvarado, who is listed as a defendant along with Tucker and his attorney, Jennifer Belveal. The affidavit says Tucker’s legal team got the messages from an outside party, and Tracy’s statement says they came from someone close to Alvarado.
Agustin Alvarado, Belveal and Tucker could not immediately be reached for comment. Voicemails to their cellphone numbers went unreturned.
The civil lawsuit says that further disclosure of the messages would violate several laws, including Michigan’s eavesdropping statute and the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It would also constitute misappropriation and theft of business records, tortious interference with business relations, malicious intent to damage professional and personal reputation of Tracy, her business and its clients, unauthorized release of clients’ mental health-related medical information and retaliation in violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act, which would carry at least $5 million in damages, the lawsuit says.
The ex parte order – meaning it was granted with only one party present – lasts until Oct. 17, when a preliminary hearing will take place to determine if it should end or be modified or extended. At the hearing, attorneys for the parties can present evidence and make arguments before Judge Wanda Stokes.
“It is distressing to me that the man who abused me has access to every intimate detail of my life, my business, and my nonprofit, through my best friend’s phone,” Tracy’s statement said. “I grieve deeply for my friend who does not deserve this horrific betrayal by someone close to her, and I am angered by the gross violation of my privacy and hers.”
Tracy has accused Tucker of making sexual comments and masturbating without her consent during an April 2022 phone call, which came 12 days after her second visit to campus at Tucker’s behest to be recognized as honorary captain at the Spartans’ spring football game. Her complaint filed with the university in December alleged that Tucker had pursued her romantically for months – culminating in that call – despite her repeated efforts to set boundaries, and that he subsequently threatened to harm her reputation if she spoke out.
Tucker and Belveal did not show up to the hearing in the campus sexual harassment case on Thursday, instead publishing the letter and the messages in a press release 14 minutes after the hearing started. Tracy told USA TODAY she learned about it during a break after she had finished answering questions from her attorney and the hearing officer, Amanda Norris Ames.
The letter took Tracy aback, she said. It outed her prior romantic relationship with a basketball coach, identifying him by name. It also says Tucker and Belveal obtained a witness statement “under oath” from a person who claimed Tucker and Tracy had been in “some sort of relationship” and had consensual phone sex. The letter did not include the person’s name or say how they would be privy to that information.
The letter claims that her relationship with the basketball coach shows she was willing to date people with whom she worked – which, according to her interview with the investigator, she told Tucker she does not do. Tracy told USA TODAY that she had dated the basketball coach in the 1990s – well before her activism career began – stayed friends with him after and dated him again briefly in 2021.
Under Michigan State sexual harassment policy, “questions or evidence about a claimant’s sexual history, sexual identity and prior sexual experiences” with people other than the accused person are immaterial and generally prohibited.
The letter goes on to say that her text messages to Alvarado show Tracy had been willing in November 2021 to allow Tucker to help finance a marketing project she had been working on and that in January 2022, Tucker told her he “loved her” as a friend – which the letter claims indicates she “enjoyed Mr. Tucker’s attention.”
Tracy told USA TODAY the newly released messages are consistent with her account that he showed interest in her and that they were on good terms prior to the April 2022 incident.
In the letter, Tucker and his attorney also accuse Tracy of being motivated by money. For instance, they cite messages with Alvarado in November when Tracy was considering reporting the matter to the school, in which she talks about the prospect of a settlement with Tucker. In those messages, Tracy said that Tucker should “pay me 10k directly.”
Tracy told USA TODAY that figure refers to the $10,000 speaking fee that she lost out on when Tucker canceled her planned July 2022 visit to the school. Tucker’s reasons for the cancelation were a key focus of the school’s outside investigator, Rebecca Leitman Veidlinger, who completed her fact-finding investigation in July. If Tucker intended the cancelation as punishment for rejecting his sexual advances, he could be found to have engaged in quid pro quo sexual harassment, Veidlinger’s investigation report suggests.
Michigan State’s director of football operations, Ben Mathers, was expected to testify at Thursday’s hearing but, like Tucker, was a no-show. Mathers had told Veidlinger that Tucker asked him to cancel the July 2022 visit.
During the break in the hearing, Tracy told USA TODAY that Tucker “intentionally put out more lies and mischaracterizations in what I can only assume is an attempt to interrupt the hearing.” She has previously criticized Tucker’s efforts to undermine the school’s formal adjudication process, which he has called a “sham” designed to terminate the 10-year, $95 million contract he signed with the school two years ago.
“This is just more of the same DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender), deflection, victim blaming and lies that I’ve been dealing with now for months,” Tracy said in a Sept. 11 statement in response to a press release from Tucker, in which he maligned her character while contradicting his own account to the investigator. “Coach Tucker has been delaying and trying to stop the investigative process since the beginning. He can’t afford to go to a hearing that determines credibility of the participating parties.”
None of the allegations made in the letter came up during Thursday’s hearing, Tracy said, as they had not been mentioned previously during the case. Under MSU policy, Tucker and Belveal will have the opportunity to ask for the messages to be admitted as new evidence if they decide to appeal the school’s findings.
Norris Ames will have 20 days to issue a report concluding whether the evidence raised during the seven-month investigation and hearing is sufficient to establish that Tucker violated school policies against sexual harassment and exploitation.
Michigan State athletic director Alan Haller fired Tucker for cause on Sept. 27, saying that even accepting Tucker’s version of events as fact still constitutes a fireable offense.
“As the University previously stated, [i]t is decidedly unprofessional and unethical to flirt, make sexual comments, and masturbate while on the phone with a University vendor,” Haller said to Tucker in his termination letter. “Your unconvincing rationalizations and misguided attempts to shift responsibility cannot and do not excuse your own behavior.”
Tracy has complied with every aspect of Michigan State’s sexual harassment reporting process but has been “punished over and over again” for doing so, her statement Friday said.
“This,” she said, “is why survivors do not report.”
Kenny Jacoby is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY covering sexual harassment and violence and Title IX. Contact him by email at [email protected] or follow him on X @kennyjacoby.
