Tennessee AD Dave Hart at center of another controversy

A lawsuit filed Tuesday by six female former students at the University of Tennessee alleged top campus officials fostered a campus culture that enabled sexual assault and harassment by male student-athletes and then allowed those athletes to either transfer or graduate with no discipline.

Chief among the officials highlighted in the lawsuit is Dave Hart, the university's athletics director since 2011.

Hart has been at the center of controversies that accused him of mishandling sexual assault allegations and of sexism for more than a decade, dating back to his time at Florida State University.

During Hart's tenure as athletics director at FSU, his department mishandled a rape allegation by failing to report the claim to law enforcement, leading to the creation of a special task force to study how sexual assaults are handled there, Betty Steffens, former FSU general counsel and chairwoman of that task force, told The Tennessean last year.

COMPLETE COVERAGE: University of Tennessee sex assault lawsuit

Another review of the athletics department by the FSU inspector general found that Hart's department isolated itself and did not communicate well with other university departments.

The report found that the athletics department did not seek counsel from FSU police or other university departments on potential criminal matters involving student-athletes.

The inspector general report also found that Hart's department maintained a policy that "all athletic department personnel should go to their supervisor before contacting officers in the university and state administration."

"The 'tone at the top' typically indicates the culture of most business units or organizations," the inspector general report concluded. "Within the Athletics Department, we believe the culture of isolation has been established by the tone of the Athletics Director (Dave Hart), who is ultimately responsible for all facets of the Department's operations."

A separate report commissioned by the university by an outside consultant criticized Hart for "not holding head coaches accountable for the enforcement of rules for players, including classroom attendance and student conduct."

Hart sharply criticized both reports at the time as being based on inaccurate information. Hart especially took exception with the claim that his staffers were forbidden from communicating with other departments. The athletics department "communicated well with other departments," Hart said in an email from a spokesman.

The sexual assault allegation in question at FSU was against Travis Johnson, a defensive lineman who went on to play in the NFL. Johnson was accused by his girlfriend of sexual assault. The allegation was ultimately taken to police by Johnson's girlfriend and he was charged criminally and then acquitted during trial.

Steffens said her task force implemented a new policy that required all claims of sexual assault to be reported to police immediately.

"So we had a policy and everyone got trained at FSU: If anyone, student-­athlete or any student, says they were sexually assaulted, you don't make judgments, you don't handle it, you go straight to police and they'll take it from there. And you get out of the way," Steffens previously told The Tennessean.

In the past year, Hart has ushered in the controversial rebranding of Tennessee's female athletics teams.  After protests and proposed legislation by lawmakers to reverse his decision, a compromise on the "Lady Vols" brand was reached.

Hart was not named as a defendant in this week's lawsuit, but he has been named in a string of lawsuits brought against UT and other universities. They include:

2016: A lawsuit brought against Hart and UT by former employees Jenny Moshak, Heather Mason and Collin Schlosser that was settled for $750,000. The employees accused Hart and the university of gender discrimination and alleged that less qualified, less experienced members of the men’s athletics department received better jobs when Hart merged the female athletics and male athletics departments, which had previously operated separately.

2012:Debby Jennings, a former Tennessee associate athletics director for media relations, accused Hart and the university of gender discrimination in a federal lawsuit. Jennings later settled for $320,000.

2011: Former University of Alabama cheerleading coach Debbie Greenwell accused Hart and the university of retaliating against her for seeking equitable pay for female coaches. Greenwell was later charged with embezzling funds from the cheerleading squad, and her suit was dismissed.

1997: Florida State women's basketball coach Christianne Gobrecht accused the university and Hart of gender discrimination in a federal lawsuit for failing to fund men's and women's teams equitably, maintaining worse facilities for women's teams and treating female coaches and athletes differently than  male athletes. FSU reached a settlement agreement with Gobrecht.

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Reach Anita Wadhwani at 615-259-8092 and on Twitter @AnitaWadhwani.