Art Briles accuses Baylor of wrongful termination

Former Baylor coach Art Briles accused the university of wrongful termination and his attorney strongly chastised the school in a motion filed Thursday as part of a lawsuit filed by rape victim Jasmin Hernandez.

Briles' attorney, Ernest Cannon, said Baylor is using Briles as a scapegoat after failing to adequately handle allegations of sexual assault.

"The conclusion is inescapable that the motive of Baylor and the Board of Regents was to use its head football coach and the Baylor athletic department as a camouflage to disguise and distract from its own institutional failure to comply," Cannon wrote to university attorneys.

The letter suggests that Briles is prepared to engage in a lengthy legal fight with his former employers. Briles went 65-37 in eight seasons at the school before being removed as coach in the wake of a report on the football program's handling of sexual assaults by the law firm Pepper Hamilton.

The report said Baylor failed to properly respond to sexual assaults and it also led to the departure of athletic director Ian McCaw and the demotion of university president Kenneth Starr to chancellor.

Briles said he still hasn't seen the evidence the school used to make the decision on his status.

Briles is named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit filed in March by Hernandez, a former Baylor student who cited Title IX violations. Hernandez was raped in 2012 by football player Tevin Elliott, who was convicted and received a 20-year prison sentence.

Hernandez has chosen to be identified as she is speaking publicly to draw attention to the situation.

In another development, three women filed a Title IX lawsuit of their own over Baylor's handling of the sexual assaults.

The women claim they were victims of "student-on-student sexual assault and subsequent sex-based harassment."