Former Jayhawk Says Kansas Offered Him $50K to Stay Silent On Harassment

A former Kansas Jayhawk says the university offered him more than $50,000 in benefits if he left the program and stayed quiet about the harassment he experienced from players on the team.

Caperton Humphrey told the Kansas City Star that he received little help from school officials after he reported the four teammates who he says threatened and harassed him.

Humphrey played at Kansas in 2017 and 2018 — first as a walk-on and later on scholarship — and said the feud he had with several teammates culminated in a confrontation between himself and the other players in his apartment when the players threatened him, his father and his 15-year-old brother, the outlet reports.

Humphrey said someone loosened the lug nuts on one of his tires enough to make the wheel wobble and he reported it to police, but no arrest was made due to lack of evidence.

Humphrey said he told school officials about the harassment and that he saw other players selling drugs at the apartment building where they all lived, but former football coach Les Miles responded by suggesting the players work it out between themselves during full-contact drills in practice, the Kansas City Star reports.

Neither Miles nor former KU athletic director Jeff Long responded to the newspaper's requests for comment on this story, and KU compliance director David Reed and other KU Athletics officials declined to comment, the outlet reports.

The former LSU head football coach made headlines at the beginning of March after a 2013 internal investigative report was released by LSU during a lawsuit initiated by USA Today. Later that month, Miles and the Jayhawks football program “mutually agreed to part ways" — just days after the former head football coach had been placed on administrative leave — after the allegations of inappropriate behavior with female students at LSU came to light. In two seasons, he had produced a 3-18 record with the program.

Miles has been accused of taking female students to his condo alone and, on at least one occasion, kissing a student and suggesting they go to a hotel after telling her he could help her career.

In April, a $50 million Title IX lawsuit was filed against LSU, the school’s lawyers and former football coach Les Miles. The lawsuit alleges that school officials conspired to cover up a sexual harassment investigation into Miles and retaliating against LSU associate athletic director Sharon Lewis — who filed the suit — for reporting on the allegations.

Humphrey said the university offered to pay his tuition and his monthly stipend of $1,289 if he took online classes from his home in West Virginia and agreed not to talk about what happened.

The university also agreed to reimburse Humphrey for his trip home from college and pay to ship his belongings to him from a storage unit in Lawrence — the Kansas City Star reports those items were worth a little over $50,000.

Humphrey’s father, Jamie Humphrey, said his son has battled depression and started to see a psychiatrist since his time with the program, and the family is considering a lawsuit against the university and the officials involved.

“Les Miles and Jeff Long swept this under the rug and tried to buy our silence,” Jamie Humphrey said, per The Star. “This is how they operated while representing Kansas.”

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