The FBI investigated multiple complaints over a year that retired coach Bobby Knight groped and made inappropriate comments to multiple women at a U.S. spy agency, The Washington Post reported.
Employees at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) reportedly complained when Knight, with his history of bullying players, demeaning women and throwing furniture, was invited to give a speech on leadership at the agency in July 2015.
He ultimately lived up to his reputation—according to allegations from four separate women, who say the Hall of Fame coach, now 76, behaved inappropriately while he was at the agency.
The behavior ranged in offensiveness: one woman said he put his hand on her shoulder and commented on her attractiveness; another reported being hoisted by her chest. One woman employee reported being groped on the buttocks by Knight, in plain view of male employee Marc Byers, who came forward with his account.
“Bobby Knight hit you on your a—! He is a dirty old man!,” Marc Byers said he exclaimed to the woman after reportedly watching Knight grope her buttocks multiple times. Byers reported what he witnessed to a supervisor, then signed a statement that was provided to investigators as part of the discrimination complaint.
After the women reported the complaints, Robert Cardillo, the director of the NGA, invited them to speak to him personally. The woman who said she was groped took him up on the offer, but said the net result served no purpose.
“I felt that he was giving me an order to drop this issue and go back to work like a good little girl,” she reportedly said in her statement. “I felt at that moment he had chosen his friendship with Bobby Knight over my psychological welfare, and called me to his office to let me know that.”
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