(WWJ) Brenda Tracy is speaking out after an Ingham County judge dismissed her lawsuit against former Michigan State University football coach Mel Tucker.
Tracy, an advocate for sexual assault survivors, sued Tucker in October 2024, claiming the then-coach broke a contract for speaking arrangements and deliberately tried to ruin her image after he masterbated — without her consent — while the two were on the phone.
In an exclusive interview with WWJ Newsradio 950's Darrylin Horne, Tracy said she was defamed by Tucker, whom, she alleges "told lie, after lie, after lie" about her.
Why did she file the lawsuit?
"For me, it was just really important to hold him accountable for all of these lies and this smear campaign that he had waged against me, because this was basically all retaliation on his part," Tracy said.
Tucker has consistently denied any wrongdoing, insisting that he and Tracy had a consensual relationship, and calling the April 2022 phone call an "entirely mutual, private event between two adults."
Horne asked Tracy about that characterization.
"Oh, I don't think he believes it's consensual," Tracy said. "He knows that it's not consensual....That is the lie he's chosen to tell; and, unfortunately, the public believes that. It absolutely wasn't consensual."
Tucker was fired for cause from his job with MSU in 2023, after an investigation determined he harassed Tracy during that phone call.
Prior to the call, Tracy said Tucker had been "pushing boundaries" with her for some time. When Tracy said Tucker tried to get her alone after a football game, she shut him down, saying she wouldn't go anywhere with him without her assistant.
"And he finally was like, 'What does she think we're gonna do? Have sex?' And I was like, oh my God, this is the only reason he brought me out here, is because he was trying to do something with me."
Tracy said she told Tucket multiple times that they were just friends, and that nothing would ever happen between them.
But during the phone call in question, things took a turn.
In her interview with Horne, Tracy spoke in detail about what she said happened on that call:
"His voice changed ...And I said to him, what are you doing?"
"And that was when he said to me, I can't even say what he said to me on the phone because it's R rated. And I just went, oh my God...I didn't know what to say at the time.
"I panicked in the moment cause it was shocking, number one.
"I'm also a prior gang rape survivor, so in my mind this started happening and I was like, oh my God, I cannot let this happen again. I cannot let this happen again. You have to say something; you have to say something.
"And so what I was able to blurt out was, if you do this, I don't ever want to hear it about again. Like we are just friends, that's it.
"And then I just kind of knew like this was happening whether I wanted it to happen or not, and I just kind of...I just felt like I kind of floated away.
"And he did that...and then he said like something like, 'Thank you, sweetheart.'
"And that was it, and I just, and I cried. I got off the phone and I cried."
Tracy said people ask her all the time why she didn't just hang up the phone.
"I am constantly bombarded with this whole like, why didn't you hang up? Why didn't you hang up? Number one, why did he do it? And number two, like I have intense previous horrible trauma that caused me to freeze, and that is a real thing," Tracy said.
"And I wish that I could have hung up. But even if I had hung up, then what? Then he's angry that I hung up on him. I mean, I've played it all back in my mind over and over and over and thought like: What could you have done differently? And there's nothing I could have done differently, honestly..." she continued.
"He should never have done this, and even if I had hung up, great, he still did it, and I still would have reported him to the school, because what he did is wrong," she said. "He knows. He knows who I am; he knows my past trauma. He knows the mental health issues I've had from that past trauma, he knows exactly what he did to me. He is a predator, period. End of story."
Listen to Horne's full interview with Tracy here.
WWJ has calls out to Tucker and his attorneys for comment on Tracy's statements.
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