An escort has claimed in her new book and in television interviews that she and others,including her two daughters, were paid thousands of dollars and given tickets to basketball games in exchange for sex with University of Louisville players and recruits.
Katina Powell, 42, alleges in the book, Breaking Cardinal Rules, that she attended more than 20 sex parties inside the basketball players’ dorm at Louisville between 2010 to 2014. She says the parties were arranged by former director of basketball operations and graduate assistant Andre McGee, who is also a former player at the school.
Five former players and recruits told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that they attended the parties.
“I looked in those young faces, and their eyes reflected their fear and loss of innocence. (We’ve) done so many recruits, it is sickening,” Powell said in a press release promoting the book.Powell told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that during the second stripping party she had at the players’ dorm, Andre McGee asked her if some of the dancers would have sex for money.
“He asked me, ‘Is there any girls that want to make extra money,’ pretty much a side deal with the players. … So I asked the girls and their eyes lit up like, ‘Well, yeah,'” Powell told ESPN. “… ‘Side deals’ were sex, and if they [the dancers] wanted to make extra money, that’s what the ‘side deal’ was, sex.”
“The recruit would pick out what girl he wanted. Andre would come to me, tell me what girl the recruit wanted, and I would tell the girl and she would say her price,” Powell said.
She says McGee paid her about $10,000 during the four-year period.Powell’s daughters, Lindsay Powell, now 24, and Rod Ni Powell, 22, were among the women who allege they were paid to have sex with players, including star guard Russ Smith, who now is in the NBA.
“I believe that McGee came to my mom and said something to her about it, and my mom came to me and I was like ‘OK,’ and we went in another room and we had sex,” Lindsay Powell told ESPN.
Powell’s book, Breaking Cardinal Rules, was published by the Indianapolis Business Journal Publishing company in early October.
According to a press release promoting the book, Powell based it on five journals she kept with “details of her escort escapades, sexual encounters, murdered relatives and activities at the University of Louisville. Most of the U of L services she provided took place in the men’s dormitory where basketball players reside. Her main contact and the man who paid for her services–the school’s former director of basketball operations and former graduate assistant, Andre McGee–kept Powell and her girls busy from 2010 to 2014. She has hundreds of text exchanges with him to set up her services as well as pictures of her girls with players and recruits.”
One of the players interviewed by ESPN, who spoke anonymously, described the parties as being like a strip club.
“I knew they weren’t college girls. It was crazy. It was like I was in a strip club,” the player, who did not attend Louisville, told “Outside the Lines.”
A former player who said he had sex with one of the women told ESPN that Andre McGee gave him one-dollar bills for the dancers, and then paid one of them to have sex with him in a separate room.
Another player told ESPN, that McGee “would give us the money, just the recruits. A bunch of us were sitting there while they danced. Then the players left, and the recruits chose which one [of the dancers] they wanted.”
Some of the players named in Powell’s book have denied the allegations.
Montrezl Harrell told the Houston Chronicle, “I don’t know anything about it,” Harrell said. “I didn’t too much stay at the dorm. I stayed off campus. I had a girlfriend off campus. … It was pretty shocking that took place, if it did. I’m right there with Coach [Pitino], as shocked as he is.”
Powell’s daughter, Rod Ni Powell, told ESPN that she was paid for sex with Harrell, who is now playing for the Houston Rockets in the NBA.
“Montrezl was there, and I don’t know, I guess he felt left out. He just kind of asked me if I would do it, and I did it. I got paid maybe $100, maybe a little more,” she said.
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