The Arizona State Sun Devils logo Sparky is shown on the court before the college basketball game between USC and Arizona St. on Feb. 8, 2020. (Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Arizona State University officials have acknowledged that allegations an athletic booster allegedly harassed three women married to members of the athletic department "could have been resolved in a quicker timeframe."

The school said in a statement released to Yahoo Sports that an outside investigation determined the booster subjected the three women to “unwelcome comments and physical contact.” It has since canceled the booster’s season tickets and informed him he is no longer welcome at university events.

ASU released the statement in response to an 11-page legal claim filed in Arizona this week, obtained by Yahoo Sports on Wednesday evening via a public-records request through Arizona’s board of regents. The notice of claim alleges multiple Arizona State officials waited nearly five months to investigate claims of “assault and sexual harassment” of the wives of three Arizona State athletic department staff members. This includes Leslie Hurley, the wife of ASU head basketball coach Bobby Hurley, who said the booster “acted inappropriately” toward her.

The notice of claim — a precursor to the filing of a lawsuit — was filed to multiple state agencies by former Arizona State senior associate athletic director David Cohen, who was removed from his position in August and formally terminated in December. Cohen alleges in the notice of claim he lost his job in retaliation for insisting athletic director Ray Anderson and other ASU officials investigate the allegations brought forward by the three women, including his wife. He’s seeking $1.5 million to settle the claim for reasons that include lost wages, pain and suffering and emotional harm.

In the notice of claim, Cohen details the encounter of his wife, Kathy Cohen, with a prominent ASU athletics booster, Bart Wear, at a Pac-12 tournament basketball game in March. According to the notice of claim, Kathy Cohen left her seat at T-Mobile Arena to use the restroom at halftime and attempted to pass Wear, a former ASU football player, in the aisle. Wear is alleged in the notice of claim to have “put his hands on her waist, moved his hands up the side of her body to the sides of her breast, held his hands on the sides of her breasts and said, ‘Dave is lucky to have you.’”

ASU’s statement said an independent investigation “did not conclude that the donor had grabbed anyone or sexually assaulted anyone.” In a Dec. 10 letter from a school official to Wear revoking his tickets, ASU acknowledged the evidence collected during its investigation supported the allegation that Wear ran “his hands up her sides, brushing the outside of her breasts while commenting she was ‘too good’ for her husband.”

When Yahoo Sports asked about the two statements, ASU said Cohen "changed his story in August of 2019 about the nature of the allegations and said that Mr. Wear had grabbed a victim's breast." ASU said the investigation “found that untrue."

Cohen's attorney Michael Perez refuted that claim, calling it a "semantics game" and said it was "an absolute fabrication" that Cohen changed his story. Perez told Yahoo Sports: "It doesn't matter if Wear grabbed, groped, touched or felt. You had a dominant male who presses himself on a female victim, and ASU is trying to defend the actions as if they're somehow appropriate."

In the letter to Wear, ASU states that its policy “prohibits any acts of harassment or discrimination against any person who participates in an ASU-sponsored activity,” and that Wear was found in violation of that policy.

Multiple attempts across two days to reach Wear for comment were not successful.

On the night of this alleged incident, the wives of two other ASU athletic staff members told Kathy and Dave Cohen that Wear had acted inappropriately around them in the past. Leslie Hurley, through her lawyer Barry Mitchell, has acknowledged she is one of the individuals mentioned in the notice of claim.

The notice of claim details how Leslie Hurley alleged to the two other women how Wear would “frequently approach her during ASU games” and “inappropriately put his hand on her leg while talking with her.” This bothered Leslie Hurley enough that she, according to the notice of claim, would “ask other people sitting with her to stand in front of her when Mr. Wear approached so as to prevent him from touching her.”

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