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Mitch Sherman, ESPN Staff Writer 8y

Brenda Tracy to meet with former Oregon State coach Mike Riley, talk to Cornhuskers

College Football, Oregon State Beavers, Nebraska Cornhuskers

Brenda Tracy, who doesn't "want to be angry anymore" after allegedly being gang-raped by Oregon State football players in 1998, has agreed to take up Nebraska coach Mike Riley's offer and speak to the Cornhuskers on Wednesday.

Riley was coach at Oregon State when Tracy allegedly was sexually assaulted by four men, including two OSU players, while on a visit to campus. The players were arrested, but she did not press charges.

Riley, who is entering his second season at Nebraska, suspended two players for one game.

"I did hate him for many years," Tracy said this week of Riley. "But since coming forward, my biggest wish for myself is that I don't want to be angry anymore. I want to have peace, and I want to be happy. I feel like today I am ready to forgive, and I want to find a place of forgiveness with him."

She broke her silence in November 2014, and Oregon State issued an apology for how the university handled the incident. Riley invited her then to speak to his team about the experience and its impact on her life, and -- even after Riley left for Nebraska that December -- the invitation remained open.

In addition to meeting with the Cornhuskers, the 42-year-old Tracy will have individual meetings Wednesday with Riley, with whom she has only spoken on the phone, and Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst.

Tracy said she is struggling with the thought of speaking to Riley's team, but the registered nurse -- inspired by the nurse who treated her after the 1998 incident -- plans to be "brutally honest" with the men in the room.

"I plan to tell them exactly what I remember about that night and tell them exactly how much I struggled," she said, "because I am not the exception; I am the rule. This is what happens to survivors of this horrible crime. We struggle. We have PTSD. We have depression. We want to die. We want to kill ourselves.

"I really want them to understand what this is. It's a big deal. It ruins people's lives."

Tracy said she is perhaps most anxious about meeting Riley, who coached at Oregon State from 1997 to 1998 and 2003 to 2014 and with the NFL's San Diego Chargers. She said she needed several months to reach a place of emotional readiness to handle a moment like what she faces Wednesday.

"There are definitely things that I have not said to him on the phone that I would say to him in person," Tracy said. "What I have to understand, though, is that forgiveness is not for him. It's for me. And so regardless of what he says to me or doesn't say to me or how this trip goes, forgiveness is in my control.

"That's something I get to choose. And that's something I really want. And that's something I plan to leave Nebraska with."

Tracy, who was hired by Oregon State last year to help shape campus policy on sexual assault prevention, has worked to promote legislation nationally and in her home state. The Pac-12, at her urging, passed a rule in March that bans transfers with backgrounds that include violent crime.

Tracy's son, Darius Adams, published a letter to the NCAA this month on Change.org, urging the organization to create policy that bans violent athletes.

Tracy, who spoke to every athlete at Oregon State last year but has never talked to a football team as a group,  said she would like Riley to "step up and be a leader on this issue -- and be an example to other coaches and other programs."

She said that the news out of Baylor has been "devastating" for her to digest.

"It's shocking," Tracy said. "It takes me back to that place where that happened to me and makes my heart hurt for all of the victims. It's sad that we haven't changed anything. It's hurtful. It's really hurtful, because I don't want this to happen to any other family."

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