After the charges of sexual abuse against Shadow Mountain’s head basketball coach, Mike Bibby emerged; he is termed no longer eligible to coach.
“He is no longer eligible to volunteer as our coach pending the outcome of the investigations,” Becky Kelbaugh, a spokeswoman with the Paradise Valley Unified School District, said in an emailed statement.
It should be reported here that Bibby is a former NBA player and the head basketball coach at Shadow Mountain High School. He is under investigation for alleged sexual abuse of a Shadow Mountain teacher.
The Paradise Valley Unified School District also confirmed on Monday that Phoenix police are investigating the claims against Bibby and that the district had been in the midst of an internal investigation into the allegations.
A restraining order has been accessed by media houses shows Phoenix Municipal Court granted the order Feb. 22.
As per the teacher’s claim, Bibby grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into his car on school grounds, rubbing his genitals against her and groping her.
However, Bibby declined the request for making any comments and his attorney, Donald Harris, denied the claims.
“I can say with pretty much certainty this alleged incident didn’t happen and that will be shown down the road,” he said. “Michael Bibby did not participate in a sexual assault of anyway, shape or form that was alleged by this lady two years ago.”
According to a statement by the district, the district was aware of the issue for more than a week. The teacher reported it to the school’s resource officer on Feb. 13, according to the restraining order.
It should be noted that Bibby assisted Shadow Mountain’s varsity boys basketball team to its fourth consecutive state championship on Saturday after it beat Tucson’s Amphitheater and Salpointe Catholic to reach the title game. In his last six years’ tenure at Shadow Mountain, the team has won five state titles.
Bibby first played as a high school student in 1996 on Shadow Mountain’s first state championship basketball team. He went on to the University of Arizona, where in 1997 he led the Wildcats to their only national championship.
He had played in the NBA for several teams as a point guard from 1998 to 2012.
Becky Kelbaugh, a spokeswoman for the school district, has also issued a statement which confirmed the police investigation:
“On February 14, 2019, PV Schools was notified that the Phoenix Police Department opened an investigation into alleged sexual abuse/harassment of a Shadow Mountain High School staff member by the boys head basketball coach, Mike Bibby. At the request of the Phoenix Police Department, the District’s internal investigation was suspended pending the conclusion of the Police Department’s active investigation into the accusations.”
Sgt. Vince Lewis, a Phoenix Police Department spokesman, wrote in an email that the department was investigating allegations involving staff at Shadow Mountain, but he refused to make the names involved or detail the allegations public.
The Allegation-
As per the allegation by the teacher according to the restraining order, in February 2017 she was walking outside toward her classroom when she spotted Bibby driving on campus. She did not know him; personally, she wrote.
He first gestured toward her. She walked to the driver’s side of the car as he swung open the door and jumped out.
According to the court’s restraining order, Bibby picked her up “around the hips” and carried her into the driver’s seat, her head on the console and her legs splayed out the open door as he laid on top of her. She smelled alcohol on his breath, she wrote.
He then rubbed his body and genitals on her, groping her, she wrote, and he told her, “What I could do to you.”
However, she could slide out from underneath him and moved toward the main doors of one of the school buildings, and he followed, she wrote in the restraining order.
As per two staff members’ version, he held her around her waist, hugged her, rubbed his erect penis against her, and made sexually explicit statements. She said she tried to push him away.
She wrote that she was “in shock, in fear, intimidated by his actions, afraid of him as he smelled of alcohol.”
A conversation in Classroom-
After a few days of the incident, Bibby reportedly passed her classroom doorway twice, she wrote in the restraining order.
And the very next day, he walked into her classroom uninvited and complimented some of her classroom’s decorations before leaving.
A day later when she noticed Bibby standing outside her classroom, she told him that they needed to talk, according to the restraining order. They sat in her classroom; she wrote that she felt safe enough to close her classroom door because a colleague aware of what had happened was across the hall.
As per the restraining order, the teacher told Bibby that he was “out of line” and that he had sexually abused her. He replied that he had been drinking that day and told her she was a “beautiful and nice person,” as per the restraining order. He told her he wanted to date her.
She said she wasn’t interested and told him to stay away. He asked her if she was going to “tell” and she said no as she was thinking of his players.
She also had reported in the document another incident in October 2018, when Bibby again stood outside her classroom door.
