Nancy Hogshead-Makar 904-384-8484 Internet Address: Hogshead@ChampionWomen.org January 19, 2018 Lou Anna K. Simon President, Michigan State University 462 Auditorium Road Hannah Administration Building, Room 450 East Lansing, MI 48824-1046 Jessica Norris Title IX Coordinator, Michigan State University 408 W. Circle Drive Olds Hall, Room 4 East Lansing, MI 48824 Re: Removing Rick Butler From Association with Michigan State University; USAV Has Recently Imposed a Lifetime Ban From Coaching Volleyball Dear President Simon and Ms. Norris, We are writing to you to urge you to use your position as the President and Title IX Coordinator of Michigan State University to cut ties with Rick Butler from association with your university and its personnel. We contacted Robert Noto, MSU’s general counsel, and Mark Hollis, MSU’s athletic director in June about the issue of MSU’s head volleyball coach supporting Rick Butler, a known child sex abuser. We received no response after sending the original letter, so we are reaching out again to inform you of this difficult situation. New developments have transpired since we sent our original letter. USA Volleyball found that Rick Butler sexually abused four minor girls, and physically and verbally abused a fifth. USA Volleyball has also once again imposed a lifetime ban on Rick Butler from coaching volleyball. Unfortunately Rick Butler continues to coach young girls in the AAU. In light of the recent gymnastics situation that MSU is facing, we hope you will take the necessary steps to handle the issue of MSU’s volleyball coach associating with Rick Butler. Below is a recent media statement from USA Volleyball concerning Rick Butler’s actions: “A hearing panel of the USA Volleyball Ethics and Eligibility Committee today issued a decision finding that Rick Butler had engaged in multiple acts in violation of USA Volleyball’s Bylaws, and banned him for life from membership in USA Volleyball. USA Volleyball had received allegations of misconduct and abuse against Mr. Butler form a number of individuals, including several former players, which led USA Volleyball to bring a disciplinary action against Mr. Butler for violation of USA Volleyball’s Bylaws and rules. A hearing was held on those allegations on January 8, 2018. Since Mr. Butler is now suspended for life, this means that he is ineligible to participate, and will forever be ineligible to participate, in any activities organized, operated, run or sanctioned by USA Volleyball. ‘We are very grateful to the courageous women who came forward,’ said Lori Okimura, Chair of the USA Volleyball Board of Directors. ‘USA Volleyball is committed, through the U.S. Center for SafeSport program, to ridding our sport of coaches and others who engage in hurtful actions against athletes and young people. We will continue to have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior.’ In addition, on December 11, 2017, a USA Volleyball Ethics and Eligibility Committee hearing panel found that Mr. Butler had violated a protective order – issued by the hearing panel to protect the privacy of the alleged victims – when he released the names of those alleged victims to the public. The hearing panel suspended Mr. Butler for life from membership in USA Volleyball for these violations.” You can read more in the New York Times article found here. “USA Volleyball Coach Rick Butler Banned for Life for Abuse.” Moreover, Rick Butler continues to try to convince people individually, when there is no victim or other substantial contemporary evidence next to him, that he is innocent. The parents do not know the facts and the ones we have spoken with are shocked to learn them. Parents are easily duped into believing that the victims were all 18 years or older when they had consensual sex with Rick Butler. Parents are primed to believe these lies because they trust that he would not have corporate sponsors as an abuser, and that sports administrators would not to allow a bonafide sexual predator to be around athletes. As an example, he and his wife, Cheryl Butler, recently sent this email to their athletes: “Dear Sports Performance & GLCYA Parents, We are sending out this email to address recent media and social media publicity surrounding allegations against Rick from the 1980’s. First, we want to state that we have an open door policy to discussing these decades old allegations and are willing to meet with anyone in a one on one setting if any of you feel that is necessary. As you might imagine there is another side to this story that is never portrayed in the press. We have had several meetings with parents over the years regarding this issue and we have never had a family leave the program once they have sat down with us and we were able to discuss the facts and show them documents that we are in possession of regarding these allegations. We believe the greatest testament we have to the quality of the Sports Performance & GLCYA programs is that so many players who played for us in the 1980’s and 1990’s have now chosen to have their daughters and sons participate in our programs.” We have convinced Mizuno and Molten, the volleyball sports manufacturers, to discontinue sponsoring Rick Butler’s Sports Performance Volleyball Programs. Almost 3900 people have signed our Change.org petition, and 900+ people have commented. If you take the time to read the comments, you will see that Rick Butler may have molested other girls, and that his molestation has had wide-ranging effects on the friends and family members of the victims: the parents, the spouses, their children. Our letters, our effort, and our petition are bigger than removing a single coach from contact with athletes. It is about getting youth sports to abide by the principles that they purport to hold. It is especially important for Michigan State University to discontinue their support, because as a school, they owe a legal duty to protect their community from sex discrimination via Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et. seq. Therefore, it is not only your moral, but also your legal duty, to make sure that Rick Butler is unable to harm more athletes. We are an advocacy organization, we believe in the many positive benefits of sports, and that sexual abuse is incompatible with that mission. We believe you share this same belief, and hope you will partner with us to remove sexual abuse from sport. Sincerely, Nancy Hogshead-Makar CEO, Champion Women