Layshia Clarendon sues Cal, alleging sexual assault

Former Cal WBB star Layshia Clarendon has filed a civil lawsuit against the University of California regents due to a sexual assault that she is alleging occurred during her freshman year. She is accusing Mohamed Muqtar, a Cal graduate in 1987 and an employee for “more than 25 years”; Muqtar is currently assistant athletic director for student services

According to Clarendon, Muqtar is known as “The Mayor” on the Cal campus and frequently hangs out with student-athletes off campus, often paying for dinners. During her freshman year, Clarendon, then 18, said Muqtar invited her back to his apartment, where he allegedly followed her into the bathroom and assaulted her.

Clarendon said she never spoke about the alleged assault during her time at Cal.

When asked what prompted the lawsuit, Clarendon told Outside the Lines: “I want the shame to not be my own anymore. I want the shame to fall on him, because it’s not my shame to carry, but it’s something that I’ve had to carry. It’s a horrible thing to live in silence, to carry that pain and that weight and the guilt.”

ESPN’s Outside the Lines has spoken with one anonymous former Cal student-athlete and a former Cal instructor who served as confidante to “numerous” student-athletes with similar allegations of “inappropriate behavior” by Muqtar.

During [the] tenure [of the former Cal instructor], she said she twice approached athletic department officials with concerns about Muqtar. On both occasions, the instructor said she was told nothing could be done unless the women were willing to come forward with details.

Clarendon’s mission is to keep Muqtar from committing these crimes again. She has previously written about the shame she carried as a survivor of sexual assault.

“My biggest hope is that he never does this to anyone else,” said Clarendon, who led Cal to its only Final Four in 2013. “That no one else has to suffer under his hand, or him violating their bodies again. That this would be the end of him assaulting people. And so it feels there is a big level of responsibility there for me, to make sure this doesn’t continue. And he doesn’t continue to harm other people.”

The Cal athletic department and Muqtar has not had any comment yet; Cal does intend to release a statement.

We will cover this story in more depth as it progresses.