Baillie Gibson said “He [Carter] took away my life. He took away my college years. He took everything away from me.”
University of Arizona standout, Gibson, a two-time All-American track and field star said her Olympic dreams were dashed after nearly three years of being dominated by her coach who she claims blackmailed her into a sexual relationship with explicit photos.
However, when she summoned courage to tell Carter, a touted family values Mormon, that only his threats to expose her as a “whore” were the only reason they were ever together., he went off on her and attacked her physically.
Gibson says she confronted her coach, Craig Carter, on April 2015 as her time as the University of Arizona was coming to a close.
She later told police the ensuing attack left her feeling like her head was “filling with blood” as Carter threatened her with a box cutter.
in an interview with ESPN, Gibson narrates the report she filed with police on May, 2015. She said carter went berserk, “he grabbed my shirt and I pulled and then he pulled the front end like where my bra and like upper shirt was, pulled it and then like put me on the couch.” Gibson later told police “ [he] Put his hands around my neck, or his hand around my neck and then the razor blade was in his right hand because he was facing me, but in his right hand and he said, ‘I should just cut your face up and cut your eyes so that no one can see those pretty eyes.’”
Craig Carter being interviewed by Arizona police after he was arrested for assault in 2015
Gibson’s account continued: “And he was choking me but I was like, I felt my head was like filling with blood. And it was like, it was starting where I couldn’t breathe and then he like let go and then he kind of collapsed on my side and like started crying.”
Gibson said she tried to leave Carter’s office at the McKale Center, but he blocked her and told her he wouldn’t be able to go on without her.
“I’m going to kill myself, and you’re going to watch it,” Carter said, according to Gibson’s statement.
Carter did not deny the incident took place, just the reason he did it.
“I’m in a lot of trouble,” Carter said. “I never touched her in my life, until that day … There’s no excuse to do that, there’s really no excuse. But I was told, you know, a lot of things for three years … and you don’t know that she got in my face and was pushing me and saying, ‘Hit me! Hit me! Hit me!’”
Gibson detailed her past with Carter in an extensive profile with ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” which notes that while university policy clearly bans relationships between coaches and athletes, university officials “had done little” to investigate the pair, whose relationship reportedly began in June 2012.
Gibson spoke with ESPN and gave a time line of her relationship with Craig Carter and the incident at the end which led to charges against the coach
Gibson had just finished 12th in the discus and ninth in the shot put at the US track and fieldOlympic trials in Eugene, Ore., and the team was drinking heavily on its last night in town. Gibson, then 20, said she remembered Carter telling the team to contact him if they ever had been drinking too much and needed a ride home. She called him for a lift back to the team’s hotel.
“I remember getting in the car, and then I don’t remember really what else happened,” said Gibson.
The next morning, Gibson said Carter showed her nude photos of herself on his phone, as well as the two engaging in sexual acts in his car.
“I wanted to throw up,” Gibson said. “How could I do that? How does he have that?”
Gibson said her coach threatened to assault her and share the photos with relatives and on the internet if she didn’t continue satisfying him sexually.
“He was going to post all of the pictures online so everyone could see what a whore I was,” Gibson said. “He just said that I would lose my scholarship and I would have all these pictures out and it was going to be bad if I said anything.”

Baille Gibson at the 2011,U.S. Olympic trials

Craig Carter after his arrest by Arizona police in May of 2015
Carter, who joined the university in 2007, resigned from the University of Arizona weeks after he was arrested on charges of domestic violence, aggravated assault and related crimes. He denied sexually assaulting and blackmailing Gibson, claiming what happened in his car was consensual and that Gibson, in fact, initiated the encounter.
“It’s gonna be amazing when all this comes out, because they got all the forensic stuff off my phone, and the conversation about us hooking up that night is all on the phone,” Carter told ESPN.
Gibson claims she tried to end the relationship about a month after the initial incident, but said Carter again threatened to expose the photos and make physical threats as well.
“He took away my college years,” she said. “He took everything away from me.”
Gibson said Carter also threatened to kill her and himself in phone calls, emails and text messages, some of which were included in ESPN’s report.
“I was watching you,” Carter wrote Gibson in one email. “I’m like a mountain lion, who stalks his pray [sic] before he kills.”
In another email, Carter threatened to “f–k” Gibson up so bad and then kill himself.
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