‘It shattered my world’: an Ohio soccer coach, sexual misconduct and the system that has protected him

Candice Fabry finished training with the under-nine girls team she coached and drove to El Camino Real, a restaurant in Toledo, Ohio. Fabry knew the restaurant from her time as a player with the University of Toledo women’s soccer team. Players would often go there and, according to a team joke, the restaurant didn’t necessarily have the best margaritas in Toledo but it definitely had “the most-known”.

It was July 2007, and Fabry was planning to meet University of Toledo women’s soccer coach Brad Evans and his wife at El Camino Real – as well as the team’s assistant coach Jennifer Whipple. Fabry had previously played for four years on the University of Toledo women’s soccer team, who compete in the Mid-American Conference.

Fabry, her playing career cut short by injury, was planning to announce at the restaurant that she would accept an invitation from Evans to join the team’s staff for the new season as an unpaid volunteer assistant coach – the first step on the ladder for many people wanting to become a college soccer coach.

As Fabry recalls, she arrived at the restaurant still wearing her training gear – T-shirt and shorts – and saw Evans, his wife, and Whipple at the bar. There was cheering and hugs when she told them she would join the staff.

The group moved to a table on an outside patio and at some point in the evening Evans left the group. While Evans was absent, Fabry needed to use the bathroom. She left Evans’ wife and Whipple at the table and walked back into the restaurant, past the hostess table and a closet area near the bathroom.

“The next thing I remember is a tug on my arm and [Evans] pulling me,” recalls Fabry, who says Evans pulled her into an alcove in the restaurant.

“I remember my back against the