This is the script to the the 60 Minutes feature.
Chris Kennedy is the senior deputy director of athletics at Duke, where he's been on staff since 1977, and hasn't forgotten the mob mentality on campus that spring.
Chris Kennedy: A sizable portion of people in the university had turned their backs on those kids. And believed the most heinous crimes had been committed.
Armen Keteyian: At its worst, how bad was it?
Chris Kennedy: Other than the death of my wife, it's the worst thing I've ever been through. It was painful because you had 46 kids who were really suffering who knew for a long period of time that two, three, four, some number were gonna be indicted based on no evidence whatsoever. Imagine the stress of that on the kids and on their parents and everything.
Despite Successes At Bryant, Mike Pressler Still Haunted By Lax Scandal
Duke Basketball Report -- SB Nation's site dedicated to all things Duke -- provides this thought:
He's largely rebuilt his life and in retrospect, deserves a lot of admiration for standing up for what's right even though it cost him plenty. He was (and is) a better man than most of understood at the time.
It would have been nice if former A.D. Joe Alleva had had the courage Pressler did, or the university institutionally, for that matter. People really suffered from Crystal Mangum's falsehoods.
IL's Biggest 15: Duke Lacrosse Scandal
Kevin Cassese's role in dealing with the fallout of the situation at Duke remains one of the most interesting aspects of the entire "scandal" that resulted in Pressler's resignation. What Cassese did -- in only his first year as an assistant in Durham -- in his role as a program custodian is pretty incredible:
How did this meeting come about, and when word of that it was going to happen came down, what was your reaction?
KC: The first thing was I didn’t know what the status of the program or what was going to happen. I was working at that point trying to figure out through the back channels, what’s the story? Is our program done, are they going to drop the sport? Can we save it? Whose decision is it? It wasn’t just my own future at stake, but those of the kids, families and alums. The time that elapsed, all those questions were formulated, asked, received then transformed into what ultimately became the platform for reinstating the program. During that time I was working with Eddie Douglas, and he was working with other team leaders, on this mission statement and a statement of core values for the program. Between Eddie and myself, we ranged a long time of the Duke Lacrosse Program as players and as to who we really are, what we stand for and what we believe in. President Broadhead had asked for this. The argument I presented to him is "What people are telling you is not accurate and I can prove it to you, and I can explain it in a written document." Upon his review of that document, that’s when he felt comfortable enough to move forward with reinstating the program. Eddie wasn’t present at that meeting. All of Eddie’s work was after the semester was over. It was just myself and President Broadhead in his office talking through it all. That was a week prior to the announcement. I’ve got to believe there was a thought that this was either this was the last straw, at which point you’d learn that the program was to be shuttered, or that you’d gone over the top, through the worst of it and things were going to get easier and better.