Grandmother harassed by then-LSU player Derrius Guice claims Ed Orgeron lied to investigators

Every fall for the past five years, 74-year-old Gloria Scott has made the trip from her home five miles south to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, where she works part-time security at football games.

Scott has lived her entire life in New Orleans. She loves football, has been a Saints fan since 1967 and an Louisiana State University Tigers fan for almost as long.

She remembers vividly the day in December 2017 that Derrius Guice, LSU’s then-standout running back, and his friends approached her while she was sitting at her post outside Elevator 8 in Bunker G.

She glanced up, and they stopped right in front of her.

“I like to f--- women like you, you older women, because y'all know y'all like us young men to f--- y'all,” Scott said Guice told her. “And, you know you want this body.”

Scott was shocked, she said. Guice kept making vulgar comments while rubbing his body up and down, from his chest to his genitals. She said she asked Guice to move away and leave her alone, but he refused. He had a big grin on his face, she said, and his friends were on his sides, laughing. This went on for a few minutes, Scott said. She felt degraded.

Derrius Guice, who played at LSU from 2015 to '17, has been accused of rape by two former students.
She complained to LSU athletic department administrators, the school’s student accountability director, and directly to Guice’s head coach, Ed Orgeron. Nothing happened, she said. Guice, who despite being accused of sexual misconduct three times before this incident, was never disciplined by the school.

Scott said she tried to put the incident out of her mind but now, three years later, is speaking out. She was prompted, she said, by the mention of the incident in a 148-page report by the law firm Husch Blackwell that was released earlier this month by LSU. The school had hired the firm in November to investigate its handling of sexual misconduct cases, in response to investigative reporting by USA TODAY.

Scott choked back tears Friday as she testified before the Louisiana Senate Select Committee on Women and Children about the incident and the school’s handling of it. She shared her story with USA TODAY beforehand. The committee has been holding hearings on the school’s failure to comply with Title IX requirements to report and investigate incidents of sexual misconduct. 

Gloria Scott, in the center with the mask, testifies to Louisiana lawmakers on March 26, 2021, about being sexually harassed by then-LSU football player Derrius Guice and the school's handling of the incident.
“December this year is going to be four years ago it happened,” she told USA TODAY. “It’s just like it was yesterday. I don't know, maybe I might not never get over this until I die. And I'm serious.”

In his interview with Husch Blackwell, Orgeron denied having direct communications with Scott. Orgeron said Senior Associate Athletic Director Miriam Segar “told us about the incident,” and Segar, Deputy Athletic Director Verge Ausberry and an attorney for the Baton Rouge law firm Taylor Porter “did an investigation.” But Orgeron said he himself “was not sure happened.”

Orgeron lied to investigators about not speaking to Scott, she and her granddaughter told USA TODAY. The granddaughter, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by her employer, said she was listening when Orgeron talked to her grandmother on speakerphone. 

There was no mistaking his deep, Cajun “frog voice,” they both said.

“Coach O is telling a lie,” Scott said, as tears rolled down her cheek. “He's not telling the truth. I don't have no reason to lie. I know who I was talking to. He knows he talked to me.”

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Orgeron continues to deny that he spoke to Scott directly, LSU athletic department spokesman Cody Worsham told USA TODAY on March 18. He declined to comment further.

Husch Blackwell investigators did not contact Scott about her complaint, nor was she aware that LSU had documented it. She learned about it after her granddaughter saw a reference to it on Twitter and recognized the unnamed 70-year-old woman in the report as her grandmother.

Even more painful than the experience itself, Scott said, is how LSU athletic department officials handled her complaint. They told her that Guice was probably just kidding, that he came from a broken home and that she should just accept his apology. 

When she demanded he face discipline by sitting out the Citrus Bowl, Scott said, school officials ignored her and then ultimately called her to say nothing would happen. It was her word against his.

“I felt that not playing in that game would hurt him more than anything,” Scott told USA TODAY. “Because if it was my son or my grandsons, and I knew he did that, and they were playing sports, I personally myself would make sure they didn’t play.

“I didn’t think I was asking too much.”

Not the first encounter with Guice
Scott spent 24 years as a room service manager at the Hyatt, then another five at the Hyatt in the security department, she told USA TODAY.

After Hurricane Katrina cost her the job, she got a new gig with a private security company and began working the graveyard shift at a local racetrack. She still works evening and overnight shifts at a downtown office building three days a week and, come football season, games at the Superdome.

The first time Scott saw Guice in person was when LSU played Brigham Young University at the Superdome in September 2017. Guice and his family had been hanging around at the stadium about an hour after the game ended, and Scott’s job was to ask them to leave. When she did, Guice and his family refused, she said. Scott said she then told one of Guice’s coaches, who spoke to him, only for Guice to then curse out the coach.

New Orleans grandmother Gloria Scott said she was sexually harassed by then-LSU football player Derrius Guice in 2017 but that he faced no consequences for his actions.
“I looked at this young man, and I said, ‘This young man's not going anywhere,’” Scott said. “I felt his spirit. I did. He's not going anywhere in life. Because he have no respect. And he's very disrespectful. Nobody else had a problem but him.”

That was the impression Scott had of Guice when she saw him again at the Superdome on Dec. 9, 2017, while she was working the high school football state championships. 

After Guice made his vulgar comments and gestures, Scott said she told him she was a grandmother and asked him to show her respect. 

“‘Young man, respect me,’” she recalled saying. “‘I am a grandmother, and I have grandkids. How would you like somebody to talk to your grandmother this way and handle this like that?’ I said, ‘My grandsons are not like this.’ And he told me, ‘F--- your grandsons. They don't know nothing, you and I are going to the hotel so I could f--- you.’”

After about four minutes of harassment, Scott said, Guice and his friends got in the elevator and left. That night, Scott told her sister, one of her daughters and her granddaughter, who was living with her at the time, what had happened. 

Four days later, Scott decided to inform LSU.

Sit out the Citrus Bowl
How LSU responded to Scott’s complaint is detailed in the Husch Blackwell report.

According to the report, football recruiting director Sharon Lewis got a call on Dec. 13 from someone demanding to speak with Orgeron about a sexual harassment incident with Guice. 

Scott disputes that she demanded to speak to Orgeron and only wanted to report Guice’s behavior. Scott said Lewis told her Guice had a tough upbringing and didn’t mean any harm, and that Scott should go easy on him. Lewis then said she would discuss the matter with Orgeron, Scott said.

The next day, Scott said, she got a call from Lewis and Orgeron. The coach introduced himself and said Guice was in the room and wanted to apologize.

Ed Orgeron is the head football coach at LSU.
Scott said she didn’t want an apology; she wanted accountability. She said Orgeron and Lewis begged her to let Guice apologize, saying he was sad and had his head down. Scott said she refused to speak to him.

When Scott suggested Guice sit out the upcoming Citrus Bowl, she said, Orgeron promised to get back to her but never did.

Guice led LSU in rushing in the Citrus Bowl on Jan. 1, 2018, against Notre Dame. The Tigers lost 21-17. Three months later, the NFL’s Washington Football Team drafted Guice in the second round.

The team released him in August, after he was arrested for multiple domestic violence charges against his then-girlfriend, including strangling her until she lost consciousness. Guice has denied the allegations through his attorney.

According to the Husch Blackwell report, Lewis reported Scott’s account to Segar and Ausberry. No one, however, reported the incident to the Title IX coordinator, as LSU policy required.

The Title IX office learned about it six days later, when Scott called the student accountability office directly. The Husch Blackwell report notes that Jonathan Sanders, the director of student accountability, took Scott’s report and then reached out to Segar, who indicated she “was aware of the information” and had been “notified about a week ago.” 

That Segar did not inform the Title IX office, Husch Blackwell said, “was an error.” Segar also told the law firm “the President’s office was aware of the situation,” but there are no records indicating the president’s office reported it to the Title IX office either, the Husch Blackwell report shows.  

Instead, Segar said the athletic department conducted its own investigation, which entailed interviewing Guice and a fellow football player present for the encounter, both of whom denied that it occurred. According to Segar, the athletic department consulted with “their attorney” at the Baton Rouge law firm Taylor Porter and decided they “don’t see an LSU athletics connection to the behavior if it was true.”

Miriam Segar, LSU Senior Associate Athletics Director / Senior Woman Administrator
Husch Blackwell noted that this was “not the standard for assessing whether a report should have been made,” nor should athletics have conducted its own investigation.

“This was a call for the Title IX coordinator to make,” Husch Blackwell said.

Sanders ultimately forwarded his report to Title IX coordinator Jennie Stewart, who said she did not believe the incident constituted prohibited sex discrimination under Title IX. This, despite the fact that it was the fourth sexual misconduct complaint the university had received about Guice. Stewart did not explain her rationale, Husch Blackwell noted.

LSU’s then-general counsel Tom Skinner, who now holds the same role at the University of San Diego, supported Stewart’s decision, the Husch Blackwell report shows. Sanders closed the case, writing in the file that the “issue is now being overseen under the direction of Tom Skinner” and to “please call him if there are questions.”

According to Scott, about a week after her call with Orgeron and Lewis, Segar and Ausberry called her. They informed her that they would not be suspending Guice for the Citrus Bowl, nor would they be pursuing any disciplinary action against him.

“I said, ‘So in other words, what he did me is okay with you all? Y’a