Head coach Geno Auriemma of the Connecticut Huskies looks on against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish during the National Semifinal game of the 2012 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship at Pepsi Center on April 1, 2012 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
The New York Times is reporting that a lawsuit has been filed by a female security officer for the Unites States Olympic women’s basketball team. The security officer, Kelley Hardwick, filed a lawsuit at the State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The lawsuit claims that, “Geno Auriemma, the coach of the United States Olympic women’s basketball team, followed, grabbed and tried to forcibly kiss [Hardwick] at a hotel during a basketball tournament in Russia in 2009.”
Ms. Hardwick is suing the NBA, who provides security personnel for the Olympic Basketball team, claiming that she was removed from her post as security officer of the women’s team for the London Olympics in retaliation for not responding to Auriemma’s sexual advances. Ms. Hardwick’s account of the encounter is corroborated by another female officer who was on the trip whom Hardwick called immediately following the incident with Auriemma. The Times reports:
A female security official for the National Basketball Association said in a lawsuit on Monday that Geno Auriemma, the coach of the United States Olympic women’s basketball team, followed, grabbed and tried to forcibly kiss her at a hotel during a basketball tournament in Russia in 2009.
The security officer, Kelley Hardwick, said in the lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, that she pushed him away.
This year, the suit claims, Mr. Auriemma retaliated for her rebuff by successfully demanding that the N.B.A. remove her as the top security official for the United States women’s team at the London Olympics. She served as a security official for the women’s team at the Olympics in Athens in 2004 and in Beijing in 2008.
The New York Times has the full story.
